

Ask HN: What web/desktop apps do you use to manage your startup? - acangiano

What set of utilities and services (online or offline) do you use to manage your startup? There are obviously many possible needs, like book-keeping, private and secure sharing and backing up of files, communication between co-founders and partners, customer care and ticket handling, etc... I'm not clueless about these subjects, but I'd like to hear what the HN community recommends.
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caffeine

      Planning: VIM
      Blogging: VIM
      E-mail:   VIM
      Coding:   VIM
      Finances: VIM
      VCS: Git .. with comments edited in VIM ;)

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hbien
Out of curiosity, how do you do your email and finances from Vim? Is there an
awesome email plugin for vim that I don't know about =]

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brl
Have you seen this:

<http://vimperator.org>

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pclark
Planning: Pivotal Tracker.

Finance: Kashflow.

Todos: Basecamp.

SVN: Beanstalk.

Tickets: Zendesk.

Files [internal, collaboration & sharing]: Dropbox.

Email: Google Docs.

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pyroman
This wiki was created to list what tools are used by which startups.
<http://startuptools.pbworks.com/>

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Oompa
Github, Campfire & Basecamp, and Google Apps for Domains.

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ErrantX
In no particular order:

Bitbucket (mercurial hosting), Gmail, Komodo Edit, Dropbox, Gtalk, Zoho Docs

For the record I know Komodo isnt really "management" but as it's the most
crucial part of my workflow.... :)

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pxlpshr
PM: Basecamp

Finance: OSX Numbers

Billing: iBiz

Files/Hybrid SVN: Dropbox

External Com: OtherInbox.com

Internal Com: GTalk, Skype, iChat, etc.

Documents: OSX Pages and Google Docs

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sidmitra
Just to mention, Microsoft office offers some pretty nifty services in this
regard. Check out Office Live Small Business. You get a workspace with 5Gb of
file storage. You can view docs, ppts right in the browser and with a plugin
you can edit them right on your desktop MS office.

There's also Live Mesh service (seperate 5 GB) that allows you to sync files
across different computers. You can use it as a documentation, file sharing
tool. .

.

.

We have a Team of 5. We started with a google based solution for now.

Conference Calls: Skype 3$ accounts(to dial into US) +
<http://www.freeconference.com/>

Mailing List: Google Groups

Collaboration: Google Docs

Scheduling: Google Calendar

Project Mgmt: Google Sites (with different task list), with widgets showing
our docs + calendars on google services.

Files: Google groups has 100 MB, so does Sites.

VCS: git/svn on pvt server.

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coopr
Do we seriously have to re-ask this question every few weeks?!

<http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>

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twrensch
I'm not happy with my mix yet, and spend too much time trying out new things.
Here's what I'm currently using:

PM: Google notebook, Google calendar, "Stickies app" (Tomboy)

Finance: _sigh_ still looking

Files: Dropbox

Communications: GMail, Skype (NOT Twitter)

Documents: Mix Google Docs & OpenOffice. I've started using Etherpad quite a
bit as well.

Invoicing & Billing: Still looking for something that fits my needs,
Spreadsheets & Docs for now

Source code: Local SNV server, thinking about Github

~~~
laktek
Give a try on CurdBee (<http://curdbee.com>) for invoicing and billing. It
would fit perfectly for your startup if you are looking for a smart and low
cost solution (you can start using it for Free!)

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NemanjaSAGE
A couple of FREE products I would recommend are:

Simply Accounting First Step Express for accounting
<http://www.simplyaccounting.com/downloads/firststep/express/>

and

Billing Boss for invoicing <http://www.billingboss.com/>

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niyazpk
I am a single programmer startup. Still working on my website.

TortoiseSVN (source control) is the only thing I am using as of now.

I have a to-do.txt in my desktop to remind me of what next. I use Gmail to
communicate and StackOverflow to get help. Since I haven't completed building
my application, I never needed other services to manage the work.

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jseifer
As a freelancer:

Misc: Backpack

Project proposals: Writeboard

Invoicing: Freshbooks

Source control: Github

Bugs: Redmine and Pivotal Tracker

Other docs: Google Docs

To dos: Things

Files: Dropbox

~~~
juliend2
As a freelancer :

Project management : BaseCamp

Personnal GTD improvement : RescueTime

Invoices & estimates : Freshbooks

Accounting : my accountant uses Simply Accounting (Windows app on my vmware
box)

Files : dropbox

Source control : Git on RepositoryHosting.com (6$/month and i can manage any
number of SVN/Git repositories. And it just works)

Synch iCal with google calendar

Synch contacts with Plaxo

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slig
Thanks for the tip on RepositoryHosting :-)

Their price rocks.

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jlangenauer
Book-keeping: Saasu Issue/Bug Tracking: Lighthouse SVN hosting: Beanstalk
Backups: Amazon S3 Site Monitoring: Pingdom

All of which I'd recommend - Saasu especially if you're based in Australia.

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entelarust
Project management: Trac Versioning: SVN/Trac Monitoring: Nagios, Pingdom
Support: Get Satisfaction Newsletters: Campaign Monitor Communication: Gtalk,
Email

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stumpy124
We use <http://www.helpspot.com>

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chique
Pivitol Tracker, Harvest, Google Apps for Domain.

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ComputerGuru
Jira & FishEye.

