“Getting a startup going is easy!” said exactly no one ever. Turning your million dollar idea into an even hundred dollar company is time consuming, stressful, scary, and (hopefully) totally worth it.
While there’s no way to avoid all of the stresses of founding a company, there are tools to make the whole process a bit less painful. One such tool (or, rather, toolbox) that I’ve just stumbled across is Foundersuite.
And it’s exactly what it sounds like.
Foundersuite calls themselves an “incubator in a box” because, like an incubator, they provide all of the tools you need to get your venture up and running along smoothly. They’ve worked out everything from top to bottom, guiding you through the process as seamlessly as possible.
If you’re still in the very start of your startup, check out the Idea Validation module, which helps you figure out exactly what you want to do. It even provides survey tools so you can test out what you’re working on, run focus groups, and do A/B tests.
Once you’re past the ideation stage and into the nitty gritty boring stuff, Foundersuite provides you with all of the documents you need to turn that idea into a real, functioning business. They’ve put together all of the spreadsheets and templates you need, from splitting equity to building a cap table to recruiting advisors, to working out a hiring plan.
Then you’re ready to pull in the dough.
While attracting investments might sound sexy, the unfortunate truth is that it’s one of the hardest things you’ll have to do as a startup founder. Foundersuite’s Investor CRM tool provides you with a visual dashboard to keep track of exactly what’s going on in your quest for cash, from notes on each investor to connecting with your team, attorneys, and advisors right on the platform.
Last but not least, keep track of your competition with the Competitive Matrix tool, which allows you to “track your competitors without obsessing about them,” because while it’s important to know what’s going on in your field, it’s all too easy to spend too much time focusing on what everyone else is doing.
For startup founders, by a serial founder.
Founder Nathan Beckord is no newbie in the startup scene. During the dot com bubble of the late ‘90s, Nathan was riding the wave doing technology M&A valuation and investment banking. When that bubble burst, he traveled for a bit before ending up in grad school in Texas, where he founded his first startup.
Planning on working for his company after graduation, Nathan avoided the recruiters swarming around at the end of his term. Unfortunately, his company went belly-up the week after he finished school, leaving him a little stranded.
His solution? Take that background in finance, venture capital, and startups and turn it into a consulting business. He called it VentureArchetypes and when he switched over to creating Foundersuite a year ago he’d already worked with hundreds of startups.
The Foundersuite Office
Needless to say, he knows what he’s doing and if you feel like maybe you don’t know what you’re doing (and, real talk, we all feel that way) why not check out Foundersuite and see if they have what you need? They even have a free trial so, really, you’ve got nothing to lose.
Photo Credits
Foundersuite | Courtesy of startup founder
