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    What are some tools that you actually pay for?

    Hey fellow founders- every day I get 10 emails different startups trying to sell me something and there is so much noise that I barely pay any attention to cold emails, news about startups these days.

    That said, my pessimism might have given me a blind spot making me miss a few. So would love to what tools you all pay for as founders. Comment below 🙂

    What are some tools that you actually pay for?
    byu/lappetrice inEntrepreneur



    Posted by lappetrice

    View 10 Comments

    10 Comments

    1. Sky1532 on

      I’m just tossing out some ideas here, but I don’t think I’ve ever paid for something because of a cold email.

      – Adobe (creative tools)
      – Canva (image editing)
      – Photoroom (image editing)
      – Endel (productivity)
      – DREAM SHEEP (productivity)
      – Indie Hacker (entrepreneurial insights)

    2. timalex85 on

      Some tools I can’t live without and use pretty much daily from the top of my head are (in no particular order):

      * Claude AI
      * Canva
      * Loom (super easy to just make a quick video if you want to explain something)

      There are others, I’m sure.. but these are the ones I probably use most often.

    3. mumplingssmake on

      Great question. Here are some tools I have been paying for:

      * **Webflow**: My businesses website is made in Webflow. I initially used a freelance to create a template but since then it’s it’s super easy where I can myself make changes without any technical help.
      * **Openphone**: I use Openphone as my business phone number for me and my team. This help us have a clean and shared inbox and not worry about not having network coverage inside office since it works over Wifi
      * **Wosily**: I use Wosily to publish blogs and send out weekly content marketing emails to my existing customers. It pay for itself since most of the existing customers tend to come back and buy something.
      * **Apollo**: Our sales team use Apollo to find leads and email them. Again Apollo pays for itself by the revenue our customers bring in
      * **Slack**: Slack helps me and my team collobarte much faster and share things quickly. We even use Slack huddle over Zoom etc for calls. Pays for itself with improved productivity.

    5. External-Phase-6853 on

      I openly admit I’m an affiliate partner, but I also pay to use ScoreApp for my own purposes.

      ScoreApp is an ai powered quiz funnel builder and a platform intended for generating high quality leads that convert, but because it delivers dynamic results tailored to the user and collects tons of data, it’s also great at event planning, waitlists for new products and services, onboarding and more.

      It’s got a drag and drop landing page builder, integrations, and a ton of features I’m still a ways from growing into, like audience segmentation, tracking, and split testing landing pages. You can use it for free indefinitely with a cap of 10 responses per month too so if your business only needs that many clients to grow… it’s a no brainer. Then the first tier of subscription raises the cap to 100 and unlocks extra features.

      I’ve a code for a discount on a month to mitigate risk even further if anyone is interested 🤷🏻‍♂️

    6. kamilkur on

      Notion (Product notes, Account scope and requirements)
      FIGMA (UX work)
      Apollo (Lead gen)
      LinkedIn (Research)
      Calendly (Sales)
      Loom (Sales Updates)
      JIRA (Tickets!)
      AWS (Hosting our product)
      Auth0 (Login)
      ChatGPT
      Dropbox (Company Docs)MSFT365
      Slack (Internal Comms)
      Webflow (Site)
      Zoom (Comms)

      I can say this adds up!

    7. toppo_prema on

      * Crisp : For live chat and customer support.
      * Mailchimp: For cold outreach
      * SEMrush : For SEO and marketing analysis.
      * Feedspace : To collect video testimonials.
      * Basecamp: For project management and team collaboration.
      * Gathertown : For virtual meetings

    8. OrionTyce on

      Hey there! Totally understand the noise—there’s so much coming at us as founders that it’s hard to filter out what’s actually useful.

      As for the tools I pay for, I invest in:

      * **Notion**: Great for team collaboration and organizing all aspects of my startup in one place.
      * **Slack**: Keeps communication efficient with my team, especially while working remotely.
      * **Airtable**: For project management and keeping track of data in a more flexible way than spreadsheets.
      * **Stripe**: Our go-to for payments and subscription management.

      And speaking of filtering through the noise, I recently developed an AI tool called **Ries AI** that might be right up your alley. It helps cut down on time spent sifting through startup content by summarizing insights from top resources (like Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman) in just minutes.

      We’re still early, so if you have time, I’d love to hear what you think! Any feedback from a fellow founder would be awesome.

    9. oalbrecht on

      GitHub for code storage and version control
      Drip for automated email marketing
      GitHub Co-pilot for AI code completion
      Canva for creating marketing assets
      Azure for hosting the website
      Microsoft 365 Business

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