We asked Master Yoda to put together a list of the best apps to work smarter and faster at your startup. These 36 tools will help you to turbocharge productivity and hustle your way to become a true Jedi Master.

1. Killer tools
To become the
jedi master
of your
startup

2. Team Communication Slack.
I have troubles imagining how teams coordinated team
communication in the pre-Slack era. If used to its full
power, Slack acts like a central hub where everything
comes together. You can set up an army of bots to keep
you notified of everything happening throughout your
startup, or to just keep fun levels high with the
occasional meme and GIF. It’s an ever-changing
blackboard filled with output of your team’s efforts,
from every possible corner of your endeavors and a
must-have for every team.
There’s no going around Slack
these days.

3. Project Management Trello.
Trello is a great tool to keep your team right on top
of the work. Everything we’ve done , are doing and
are planning on doing over at our startup is on
Trello. Every meeting starts with looking at the Trello
board and ends with putting down ideas in
actionable tasks on that board. Simple and
minimalist interface, yet highly configurable. Double
the fun with the Slack plugin.
Everything we do, starts and ends
with Trello.

4. SEO AnswerThePublic.
Finding the right keywords to grow your
organic search words starts with knowing what
questions your target audience is looking
answers to. Answer The Public will give you
beautiful visual insights in the questions most
frequently asked about your topic.
Everybody is searching for
something, right?

5. SEO Ahrefs.
Ahrefs shows you backlinks (plus its URL, domain
rating and more ) of every website, which makes it
great to dig into the SEO strategy of competitors.
There’s a keyword explorer, which can be of great
help to choose keywords to target. You can use it
day-to-day to keep track of how you rank in
search engines, in different locations, for different
keywords etc. I’ve written a more in-depth guide
on how to effectively use Ahrefs for keyword
research on Quora.
About the best thing around for
organic traffic research and SEO.

6. User Engagement Intercom.
Talk to your website’s visitors in real-time.
Intercom’s in-prompt personal messaging
allows you to activate leads in the early stages
of the sales cycle and is a great way to provide
support for customers. Moreover, it’s great for
tracking frequency of use and behavior inside
your app. Hands-on, low-threshold solution to
get and stay on top of your users, whether
they’re still in your sales funnel or already
locked in.
Put a face to your anonymous
website visitors, in real-time.

7. User Engagement SurveyAnyplace.
Surveys are a great way of getting a hold of your
customer’s feelings and thoughts. Too bad surveys
are among the most boring things in the world and
nobody really likes to take them. SurveyAnyplace is
changing that with beautifully designed, interactive
surveys that are easy to make for you and fun to
take for your target audience. They play with
ingenious ways and the newest technologies to
engage your users and get you the insights you’re
looking for.
How about a survey that is
entertaining?

8. User Tracking Google Analytics.
Default analytics tool for your startup’s website
and web apps. There are some great, arguably
more powerful alternatives out there, but this is
still solid as a rock and just very convenient to
use with your Google apps and accounts.
Solid as a rock solution for your
website’s analytics.

9. User Tracking Kissmetrics.
Whereas Google Analytics will assume each visit is
from a new person, Kissmetrics will assume each
visit from a particular device is from the same
person, making it arguably more powerful. In case
of a sign-in option, Kissmetrics will also learn about
the various devices a particular user is using and
assign sessions from those devices to the same ID.
This makes Kissmetrics more effective in filtering
out potential leads from your website into your
sales funnel.
More user-centred, more powerful
than Google Analytics.

10. User Tracking CrazyEgg.
CrazyEgg is a lightweight but powerful heat-mapping
tool that can fill in those gaps. It will tell you exactly
where users have clicked, scrolled and which parts of
the pages they’ve spent the most time on. You can
segment clicks on your website by variables such as
referrer and search keyword and visualise the results
on a confetti map. Crazy Egg is not the most
powerful heat-mapping tool around but does stand
out for simplicity and affordability. It does one thing
and it does it well.
What are your visitors doing and
clicking on your website?

11. User Testing UXProbe.
UXProbe is a remote user testing tool that allows
you to have users remotely test your website or
app. Set different tasks you want the user to carry
out and see his on-screen and off-screen behavior.
UXProbe frees you of having to go through all the
trouble of inviting people, setting up the session
and providing all the gear. After the session, the
app provides you with insightful metrics, giving you
a full-fledged idea of how your website ranks in
terms of user experience so you know where and
what to improve.
Remote and easy user testing of
the UX at your website and apps.

12. Lead Generation Sales Navigator.
LinkedIn’s own sales solution is not likely to be the
cheapest tool you’ll come across, but nor are you
likely to find something a lot better for prospecting.
It’s a great place to kickstart your sales pipeline for
the simple reason that it allows you to fish from the
biggest pool of business professionals there is to be
found. Its wide range of filters allow you to search for
very specific customer profiles. Sales Navigator
comes with powerful analytics, insights and
recommendations so you can stay updated and
focus on the right people.
Fish from the biggest pool of business
professionals to be found.

13. Lead Generation Dux-Soup.
Use Dux-Soup to automate lead generation from
Sales Navigator. It’s a Chrome plugin that acts like
a tiny robot you can send out to visit LinkedIn-
profiles from a given list and collect their data on
its way. Just set the filters of Sales Navigator to
target a certain person and tell Dux-Soup to go and
visit the search results. Not only will all these
people be notified of you visiting them, you’ll also
have their names, industries, roles, company
domains and more. Data you can extract as a .CSV
and use for several other purposes later on.
A robot duck to automate lead-
sourcing from LinkedIn.

14. Lead Generation Email Permutator.
Once you have names and domains, the way to get
their email addresses is to make reasonable guesses
and confirm their existence. Common formats are
firstname.lastname@domain,
firstnameinitial.lastname@domain and
firstname@domain.com. Trying all possible
combinations however is pretty time-consuming. You
can automate this process with Email Permutator+.
Permutator+ generates possible email addresses
from firstname, lastname and domain.
Need any help guessing email
addresses?

15. Lead Generation Hunter.
Hunter will help you find out e-mail addresses
based on company and domain — which you can
thus easily get from the magical Sales Navigator +
Dux-Soup combo. Just bulk upload email
addresses in a .CSV and Hunter will tell you which
ones are ‘deliverable’. Hunter is not perfect though,
we’ve had confirmed email addresses that turned
out bad anyway.
A wolf to help you hunt down your
leads’ email addresses.

16. Lead Generation Elucify.
If guessing and Hunter don’t cut it, try Elucify. It’s a
crowdsourced and free database for business
contact information. Just enter what company you
want email addresses from and see what it has in
store for you. Not airtight, but it’s really free so no
reason to complain.
Find contact info of your prospects at
any company, for free.

17. Lead Generation Rapportive.
Rapportive is a Chrome plugin that shows you
social accounts like LinkedIn, Google and Twitter
for any given e-mail address, from within your
Gmail inbox. Use it to guess e-mail addresses you
didn’t find with Hunter or Elucify. Try typing
possible email addresses following common
formats + and see the magic happen while
Rapportive digs up linked accounts. If you haven’t
found email addresses with company domains at
this point, try gmail.com. A lot of people have a
Gmail account next to their company email.
See social accounts for any given
email address.

18. Lead Generation Datanyze.
Datanyze is another intelligent lead generation tool
you can use to fill up your sales pipeline. It does
tells you the exact software stack of a given
company. You can even find out exact dates of
when a certain technology was dropped by the
company you’re investigating. Datanyze can also
be useful to help you find email address and other
contact information, per website. In fact, Datanyze
offers a free Chrome plugin you can use to request
technology reports, company information and
contact data on websites you visit.
Find out the software stack of any
given company.

19. Lead Generation Socedo.
Socedo is a tool to gather and activate leads from
social media channels and effectively add them to
your sales funnel. It works by scanning social
networks based on keywords, twitter handles,
location tags and stuff like that and digging up
leads that match these criteria. You can then
trigger their engagement via automated outreach
tools. Socedo will automatically create a database
with social data you can export and use in your
CRM, email outreach campaigns or other
marketing and sales strategies.
The power of social media to load up
your sales funnel.

20. Email Outreach MailChimp.
MailChimp is the go-to tool for managing
newsletter-ey email campaigns. It allows for
effective email campaigns that won’t end up in
your recipient’s spam box. Other than that: low
learning curve, powerful analytics, email tracking,
great resources on email templates and easy to
integrate with other tools. Just wonderfully easy to
use.
The monkey you trust with your
most precious email campaigns.

21. Email Outreach Mixmax.
Mixmax is ideal for cold emails because it sends
emails directly from Gmail, unlike MailChimp and
alternatives. This will make sure your email doesn’t
end up in the ‘Promotions’ tab of your lead’s inbox.
Mixmax gives you more power in setting up email
sequences; you can for example break off a sequence
when a recipient responds to your first email. It’s
filled with cool features to spice up your email game:
slash commands, email templates, email and click
tracking, embedded surveys and more.
Turbocharge your Gmail, own your
cold email campaigns.

22. CRM & Sales Funnel Salesflare.
Salesflare is built to automate most of your sales
funnel. It automatically fills out your address book
and tracks and logs all interactions of leads
towards you (phone, email, calendar, website).
Find everything you need in an automated timeline
at every stage of the sales cycle. Salesflare will also
tell and remind you what to do about leads so no
deal can fall through the cracks anymore. Basically
all you have to do is write emails, do meetings and
have coffee. It’s not a robot yet, but it does do most
of the working and thinking for you.
Our very own intelligent sales CRM
that thinks and works for you.

23. Online payments Stripe.
Stripe is the friend that takes care of your online
payments. No effort required from your side
whatsoever. Very easy to work with and great in
handling different subscription plans. Highly
flexible in its integrations and a friendly API. Hook it
up to Salesflare to automatically mark an
opportunity as ‘won’ when the customer starts
paying in Stripe. Then have it tell in real-time you
when your money is flowing in by linking it to Slack.
Awesome, right? You’re gonna need Zapier for this
though, read on.
The friend that takes care of your
online payments and subscriptions.

24. Password Management LastPass.
With the gazillion tools and accounts you and your
team are using, you’ll have a lot of passwords
laying around. LastPass allows you to have
everything safely stored and easily accessible at all
times so you don’t have to waste time anymore
getting headaches trying to remember that one
password of that one website.
All of your team’s passwords,
safe and in one place.

25. Video Hosting Wistia.
Wistia is a video hosting service that will give you
insightful analytics and heat maps on the views
and viewers of your videos. You can completely
customise the video player to fit your brand and
control the pre — and post-roll behaviour of the
video. It has an API so you can make adaptations to
videos, accounts and statistics in the back-end.
Perfect for tutorials, how-to videos and a lot more.
Host it like it’s hot with this friendly
neighborhood video platform.

26. Content Creation Hemingway.
Must-have if you’re serious about creating great
content. Hemingway will analyse a piece of text
and grade it on readability. It does so by taking into
account stuff like complex sentences, use of
adverbs, use of passive voice and common spelling
errors. We use it to make sure our content is easy
on the eye and suited for publication.
The app to make your writing
bold and clear.

27. Content Creation BuzzSumo.
BuzzSumo can give you insights on the most
popular content on any given topic or website. It
works as a search tool that tracks content on social
media and ranks them according to the number of
shares on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+
and Pinterest. You can monitor content by topic or
user and get insights on average shares, shares by
network, type of content, publication date, content
length and shared domains. All of this makes it
great for SEO, competitor analysis and hunting
down the key influencers in your space.
Great content begins with understanding
what kind of content your users want.

28. Graphics Free Stock Photos.
StockSnap.io
Pexels.com
UnSplash.com
Pixabay.com
Great pictures shouldn’t cost you any
money.

29. Graphics Free Icons & Vectors.
Flaticon.com
Freepik.com
The internet’s largest stocks of free icons
and vectors, in all possible formats.

30. Graphics Canva.
Canva is where you make magic with the stuff you
found on free stock photo directories and Flaticon.
It’s the most user-friendly graphic design tool you’ll
find, and it’s free. Canva gives you the power to
create practically anything — social media
graphics, banners, invitations, infographics, flyers,
business cards — by just dragging and dropping.
It’s filled with great resources and templates you
can easily combine with your own images. Plus: it’s
stacked with tutorials, inspiration, tools and
templates.
Your graphics will have
never looked better.

31. Affiliate Marketing GrowSumo.
Partner programs can be a great way for startups
to accelerate traction across channels and get your
sales pipeline going fast. Partners bring in leads,
set up advertising for you and put backlinks all over
the internet, which is great for SEO. You only pay
for actual results, which makes it very cost-effective
as well. All you have to do is set up the partner
program and find your partners. GrowSumo makes
this process wonderfully easy, by providing a
platform where you can quickly find partners to
promote your startup and vice-versa.
Have someone else bring in leads,
do marketing and boost SEO.

32. Social Media Buffer.
For the sake of being fast and smart, Buffer is a
social media management tool that helps you to
share content effectively to your social media
channels from one single hub. You can schedule
posts to spread and have Buffer pick the most
appropriate times for you to post.
Spend less time on better
social media management.

33. Social Media CROWDFIRE.
You can think of Crowdfire as a little sidekick that
helps you to get things right and grow fast across
social media channels. It works as a little bot that
assists you in finding great content to share and
the right audiences to share it with. Using
Crowdfire takes about 1 to 2 minutes a day, which
makes it really easy to keep on using it on a day-to-
day basis.
A bot that finds you great content and
the right audience to share it with.

34. Workflow Automation Zapier.
Zapier is pretty much the holy grail of all SaaS tools
for the quite simple reason it can make them all
work together. You can just pick out your favourite
tool for every job of your sales cycle and tell Zapier to
streamline them into an effective app flow that is
perfectly aligned to your startup. For us, Zapier is like
an engine in which every single app of our toolset
works together. Workflow automation done right.
If you don’t know about Zapier yet,
you’re missing out.

35. What tools are you using
to be a Jedi
at your startup?
Let us know in the comments
Tweet us @salesflare with #startuphustletools

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37. May the Flare be with you.
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