Tools and services for a lean startup

Notes Essays—Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup—Stanford, Spring 2012 Blake Masters Notes Essays—Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup—Stanford, Spring 2012 Update: Peter and I have written a book, based on these notes. Zero to One is a #1 NYT Bestseller, with more than 2.5 million copies sold worldwide. Order it here. 40 Small Businesses and the Online Tools They Can't Live Without There are a million tools online and it can be tough to decide which ones are right for your business. Many times you will find 5 things that all look like they do the same thing. We decided we would ask small business owners what tools they used and could not live without for their small business. Below are 40 small business owners responses to that question! Learn How our Standard Services are Free Our Web-Scheduled Standard and Reservationless Standard conferencing services are free, but we do not provide Toll-Free (800) Dial-in Numbers. Although some callers may be local to our Dial-in Numbers, most callers should expect to dial a long distance number to access our conference bridges and, therefore pay only the normal domestic long distance rates charged by each caller’s long distance carrier for the length of time they are on the call. Our Web-based conference call scheduling and management tools, as well as our conference bridges, are offered entirely free of charge!

35 Free Graphics Programs There are a lot of excellent graphics programs on the market these days, but just because they come with a premium price tag doesn't mean they are the only option. Take a look at this list of our favorite, and free, alternatives to some of those pricey programs. Paint, Drawing and Graphics Programs Gimp – Very powerful image manipulation program, great for photo retouching and image creation. There are other downloads, GTK and runtime environment for this program to work properly.

Social Media Insights Platform We want to build a great tech company that’s focused on doing the right thing for our users, our community, and the web. To do it right, we’re building a company that respects users more than any other tech company. ThinkUp does NOT try to turn your social network into a popularity contest. Indexes Benchmarking app store competitiveness & the cost of mobile app marketing Fiksu Indexes for February 2014: Cost per App Launch Index: February 2014 The Cost per App Launch Index tracks the cost of each repeat app launch over time, which focuses on engagement and life-time value of mobile users. In February, the Android Index dropped 25 percent to $0.12 from January’s $0.16 –a 33 percent decrease year-over-year. The iOS Index saw a slight increase to $0.17, a four percent increase from January's $0.16.

25 Best Business Software Tools and Web Services Anyone who says their business "runs itself" probably owes a great debt of gratitude to a small army of software applications and Web services that tirelessly feeds the machine from behind the scenes. From creating and storing documents and staying on top of e-mail to keeping the books and getting teams working together, it takes a lot of code to run a business, or at least to run it well. But setting up your company isn't as easy as just fishing apps out of a barrel. You want the best you can get, and at a price that isn't through the roof. With capability and frugality firmly in mind, we rounded up 25 of our favorite software tools and Web services that we deem the best for powering small and medium-size businesses.

30 Apps You Need to Run Your Business from Your iPad This week, TIME Magazine editor-at-large Harry McCracken interviewed himself as a follow-up to his piece on how he had been using his iPad as his primary computer. During the interview he mentions that he still uses his iPad a lot – so much so that it is still his favourite computer. Yes, he’s a journalist. But he points out that others have taken up the charge of becoming “big time” iPad users: Beautiful (Free) Fonts for Titles and Headlines What do you first notice before you start reading an article’s content? It’s the title and title delivers the basic idea of what is to be discussed in an article. For example, people are able to catch the drift of an advertisement base on its title. If you manage to produce a magnetic title, you are for the win because when a title is appealing and interesting, people will take the content of your article seriously. Choosing the right font for your article is crucial because it’s your audience’s first impression.