Founding and running a startup is tough business, so why not make the life of entrepreneurs a little easier at least? To help you hit the ground running we wanted to share with you the tools we at Founder2be.com use most. Here goes:

Dropbox

With Dropbox you can save data in the cloud and access it from desktop, mobile, or the web. It helps sharing stuff across devices and with others  -within the team but also publicly. Try Dropbox for free

Google Drive

Yes, Google Drive is nowadays positioned to offer cloud storage just like Dropbox but frankly we prefer it for it being basically an online Office solution offering word processing, spreadsheet functionality, presentation creation, and more. One of the greatest features is that documents can be easily shared with others and worked on together at the same time, on desktop and mobile. Try Google Drive for free

Skitch

With Skitch it becomes super simple to take screenshots, annotate them, and share them. It speeds up work tremendously. We’re using it constantly. Try Skitch for free

Skype

This is a no-brainer. It works good most of the times… *crackle* …and it can be used to chat, call, screenshare, and more for desktop and mobile. Try Skype for free

Trello

Free yourself from taking paper notes or sending self-addressed emails to remind yourself of things and make it easier to keep track of the stuff you and the team are working on. Trello is a simple but powerful project- and task-management tool for desktop and mobile. It really makes collaborating and tracking progress much easier. Try Trello for free

1Password

Although most modern browsers offer password saving functionality, 1Password is just so much better. It doesn’t only save passwords but it can also store notes and user info securely. Content can be tagged and easily searched for. Also you can save the encrypted password file on Dropbox, too, so that it can be used across devices. Oh, and it also helps generating unique and secure passwords. Try 1Password for free

HootSuite

With HootSuite it gets much easier to manage multiple social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, etc. from mobile and web desktop. Updating a status or answering user feedback becomes a breeze with it. Try HootSuite for free

Balsamiq Mockups

Thanks to Balsamiq Mockups almost anybody can create sketch-style wireframes and mockups in no time. It’s a great way to visualize ideas quickly. Using the wireframes as basis for discussion among the team also helps making sure that everybody is on the same page. Try Balsamiq Mockups for free

Edit Pad

This one is especially good for Designers using a Mac: copying and pasting text from A to B tends to also copy the whole font styling on Mac. There comes no software with Mac to utilize the old Windows trick of pasting something into Notepad first and then copying it from there to loose all formatting. Use Edit Pad instead. Try Edit Pad for free

Doing something completely new is not easy. Not only because coming up with something completely new is hard but also because technically even new ideas are often just an improvement of something already existing. So, let’s start there…

Improve something

Trying to solve an actual problem is probably always a good idea and most commonly the way to start a startup. And it could literally be anything.

Think about what Apple did with the introduction of the graphical user interface (GUI) for computers launched with the original Macintosh (and actually invented by Xerox PARC). Before that people needed always to use command-lines, no mouse at all. The user simply had to know all there was to know to use a computer. But the introduction of the GUI was key to make the Mac and PCs overall become a mass market product by lowering the entry-hurdle to even use a computer.

So, look at what bothers you in everyday life, or where you find things, which can be improved. Remember, it does not always have to be something absolutely new. It can be enough to improve existing things to make a huge difference. Here again think Apple: they did not invent the phone, they simply improved so many things with the introduction of the original iPhone, which made it an outstanding device compared to the competition.

Re-think the existing

Instead of improving something existing, you can also re-think or re-purpose something. Wesley Tansey has on his blog a good list of strategies, which could be applied:

Repurpose

Take a service or approach applied to one market, and apply it to another.

Examples: Chill (Turntable.fm), Yammer (social networks for businesses)

Digitize

Take content or functionality that exists only in a legacy form and put it online or in an app.

Examples: Dr. Chrono (medical records), Google Books

Automate

Take a task that seems tedious and currently requires humans and automate it away.

Examples: Google (search rankings), EffectCheck (emotional impact analysis)

Unify

Create a common platform that ties together proprietary solutions or providers.

Examples: Twilio (abstracts away carrier-specific APIs), Greplin (single search engine for lots of services)

Componentize

Take a piece of functionality that people currently implement themselves and make it a reusable component.

Examples: Apigee (APIs), Get Satisfaction (support forums)

Connect

Transform a situation where people are isolated or lonely by connecting them in a novel way.

Examples: Facebook, Meetup, LetsLunch

Catalyze

Encourage people in a community to generate data that would otherwise be less structured or available.

Examples: StackOverflow (programming Q/A), reddit (social news), Curvio (IMDB for products and apparel)

Talk to people

OK, so everything in your life might be perfect and everything you do daily or use on a regular basis doesn’t need improvement? Well, then you might want to talk to people. It doesn’t help to force a Q&A session on finding a startup idea. Much more helpful is tro get general information from people about all sorts of things. About things they do care or could not care less about. About things they see as hurdles or problems. About things they would improve. Simply get inspired by real-life stories.

Startup ideas

There are many more ways to find startup ideas. Many people out there talk about what they would do or change. Probably even more write about it - books, blogs, etc. You could use Google, which would probably lead you to one of my favorite pages on this topic, titled Hamster Burial Kits & 998 Other Business Ideas.

Or, even better, you could simply browse Founder2be’s ideas section to find a startup idea you like. From there on, the possibilities are endless - start a startup or join a startup today.

Image by Saad Faruque.

What’s better than losing a ton of money? Building a start-up!

And what better way to learn how to build a start-up than attending Startup Weekend? Getting a free ticket to the hottest gig in town this weekend: Startup Weekend Las Vegas!

You heard right: Thanks to our good friends at Startup Weekend, Founder2be is giving away a free ticket to Startup Weekend Las Vegas. And all you have to do is send us an email saying you want to go. So, hurry up. First come, first serve.

If you’re lucky, you could go for free to this amazing event tomorrow, Friday, Jan 6th at 6pm.

Enjoy!

PS Be the first to know about start-up news, co-founders and other opportunities and subscribe to our newsletter.

Sometimes people wonder if it is possible to start a startup all by yourself.

The situation

Most people are very good in one area. Some are in addition good in a second area. But only very, very few (actually probably nobody) are good at everything. So, if you think about it in a tech startup way, a person could be a very good designer, and he might even be also good at doing front-end development with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. But he most likely won’t also be good at doing back-end development with e.g. Java, Ruby on Rails, MySQL database stuff, etc. He might also be less good at marketing. Or business development…

Or, looking at it from a different angle, a person could be a very good back-end developer, capable of all sorts of special tech things but maybe won’t be good at design…

The options

i) Hire the right people

That’s easier said than done. Because most of us simply don’t have the money to just hire all the people needed to cover all the areas. You might think, it’s just design and coding, then it will go viral Gangnam Style. Sorry to disappoint but that most likely won’t happen. Bring some investors on board to give you money, so that you can hire the right people, you say? That leads to option two…

ii) The prototype aka minimal viable product (MVP)

You could try building a working prototype of your startup idea alone with all what’s necessary, like all the behind the scenes back-end work, design, and front-end development. Then you would try pitching this to potential investors and hope for the best. If you would get money, you might be able to hire people to make the product more mature in all the areas, where you’re not an expert in.

The biggest problem here is, you will need a lot of time to get better at all the things, which are needed, but which you’re not an expert in. For example a tech guy would need to do design for a consumer web start-up. Without good design, there may not be many users. Without users, there may not be paying customers. And without at least a bit of revenue, it may be hard to convince investors.

iii) Find a co-founder

It’s as simple as it sounds. You’re looking for complimentary skills for starting a startup. A designer will probably look for a tech co-founder. A developer will probably look for a design co-founder. A front-end dev might look for a marketing guy to help him out and so on. Eventually you need a startup co-founder.

And there are many ways to find one. You could go the traditional way of attending tons of meetups trying to find somebody (who himself is not looking for somebody for his own idea), or you can find a co-founder the modern way by doing it online. It’s probably easier and less time consuming. Also you can search around the globe and not only in your neighborhood.

Bottom line

Yes, you can start a startup by yourself but it’s not the easiest way of doing it - but who said startups are easy? And remember that most of the successful companies out there where started by co-founder teams, like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, …

Happy startup founding!

Image by TESFox.

When you start a startup, you typically work a lot, usually on many different things all at the same time. At times it can feel a bit uncoordinated and even make people feel less productive. Although they do a lot, sometimes in the evening one looks back and thinks ‘what did I actually do today?’

There can be many reasons why this happens

One of the most common reasons is that we do work on many small things but do not really keep track of them. This could be replying to emails, doing paperwork, calling the accountant, etc. These small things are of course important but compared to other things happening during the same day, like creating new product features, agreeing on a new design language, moving forward with important partnerships, hiring a new employee, etc. they might still look less important.

Get organized

One of the most important things is actually very simple: have an up-to-date todo-list and actually use it. But don’t just put all the tasks on one list because then it will simply grow without end. It might make more sense to have two todo-lists: a short-term and a long-term one. The short-term one should only have tasks, which you really intend to work on within one day or one week for example. On the long-term one, you can basically add whatever you want. And always when you completed a couple of tasks from the short-term list, simply move some over from the long-term one.

In addition it can help to reserve some mediation time every morning, like 5 to 10 minutes, to plan the day. This would also be the time to check the todo-lists, to make sure they still make sense.

Mark things as done

There’s one more important thing, which can be done. As Marc Andreessen pointed out, it can be very helpful to create an anti-todo-list.

So, what is an anti-todo-list? It’s actually a very simple but very powerful thing: always when a task is completed, note it down on your anti-todo-list. It doesn’t really matter how small the task is, the only things that matters is that it consumed some of your time and that you completed it.

After a day’s work is done, simply look at your anti-todo-list and smile. Yes, you did all these things in a single day!

Being organized helps big time

We tried the above described techniques for quite some time now and although it needs time to get used to it, it works and helps!

Being organized can be very rewarding but it also requires discipline, especially in the beginning. If you’re not organized all the time, it will feel like a waste of time because you will constantly be trying to catch up. But if you are organized constantly, you will be able to work faster, more productive, and even feel better.

Now gather all your newly won motivation from being organized and start a startup with Founder2be and become part of one of the biggest co-founder finding communities!

Image by pjohnkeane.

This is a question we hear regularly. And there is nothing wrong about this thinking. It’s totally understandable.

There are many angles to this question. Let’s try to tackle the ones, which are most important - at least from our point of view.

Ideas are not a rare thing

Think about it, people come up with ideas constantly. It doesn’t have to be anything super-new oder super-special. Having an idea for improving something, which exists already, can be a very valid idea, too. Think mobile phones: Apple was not the first company creating a mobile phone. Actually it was one of the last ones. But what did they do? They re-thought the idea of how mobile phones work. They improved and invented on top of many things, which already existed. They simply made the whole experience feel easier.

As you can see, having an idea is not the fundamental thing. But then what is?

Ideas are nothing without execution

That basically sums it up quite well. Think about it. Almost anybody can have an idea. But who’s enthusiastic enough to make it become real? Only the fewest people. And even if somebody would try to create an idea from somebody else, he would miss certain qualities to succeed.

People who come up with an idea and who are crazy enough to bet on it and start executing truly believe in their idea. And believing in it is one of the most important things. Imagine somebody would hear about an idea but just think ‘cool, let’s make some money out of it’ and he would try to copy it. He would miss the essential, his driving force would be money-making, not the true believe in the idea, which makes a big difference.

What’s more important than a startup idea?

No, it’s not having money or having a lot of free time. The team working on the startup idea is actually the most important factor. That’s the reason why many investors look more at a startup team than at their idea. Just remember that you can apply for Y Combinator without any idea. But why ist that? Good question. The reason is again pretty simple: a great team can bring any idea to live and make it a success. For them it wouldn’t matter at all what the idea would be about. The great thing about a team is that usually the team members have complimentary skills. They simply do the best in their respective fields and magic things will happen.

Do tell people about your startup idea

Actually telling people about your idea is a very important thing to do. Only in this way you’ll be able to start collecting feedback early and shape your idea into a startup success story! And feedback is so important, just remember who came up with using hashtags on Twitter: the Twitter users.

Also, just today we stumbled across this interesting post by John D. Cook, who also explains why nobody’s going to steal your idea. And he pretty much nails it.

Startup ideas on Founder2be

On Founder2be you can post your ideas to get feedback early on, find a co-founder and start a startup. This is a major part of the Founder2be community - some want to find a startup co-founder, and others are searching for an interesting idea to join as a co-founder!

You don’t have a Founder2be account yet? Start a startup now with Founder2be and become part of one of the biggest co-founder finding communities!

Thank you everyone for making the first Founder2be event in New York a big success! The energy in the room was simply amazing: Lots of connections, introductions, and showing of the latest demos and prototypes. Forty entrepreneurs with start-ups and ideas in various stages, from first prototypes to revenue generating businesses made for a great combination of different skill sets.

And for all those who did not have a chance to attend: Don’t worry. We will be back in NYC with another event soon. Make sure to keep on networking online, start a startup and spread the word among your entrepreneurial friends as well.

See you soon again!

Update 2: We got some more space and released a few more tickets. Go for it!

Update: We sold out! We are now looking for a bigger venue. Stay tuned and keep on joining the waitlist and inviting your friends. First come, first serve.

We are hosting our first ever in person co-founder finding event! And what better place than NYC to make it happen?

Join like minded entrepreneurs and others who are looking to join or start a startup for a fun evening and take your ideas to the next level. Unlike Founder2be.com which features thousands and thousands of co-founders, we are keeping this event small.

Register early to join this exclusive first in New York this Sunday, July 22nd, at 6pm. Newbies welcome. What a great way to start the week!

See you there,

Oliver

PS Image credit: Frank Haubenschild. All rights reserved.

I stumbled across this question on Quora yesterday and found it quite interesting. So I wrote an answer for it.

But actually it kept me thinking and I decided to use my answer as a basis to expand a bit more upon. So, read on…

What should a non-technical co-founder offer to attract a good technical co-founder?

In short, a non-technical co-founder should offer experience in a non-technical area. :) Easy, right?

But OK, let’s take a step back and ask in a more general way: What is a technical co-founder good at? Technical stuff, right - which could be in general software engineering or in more detail something like Java development, iPhone/iOS development, Android development, or front-end development/web development, etc.

Is a technical co-founder all you need for a startup?

In most cases not. Because unfortunately in most cases a startup will not just run because it’s suddenly there with a product. So, your product is new - what do you think who knows about it? Probably almost nobody (beside the people you told personally like friends and family, maybe some colleagues). There you have it, your startup would probably be better off with somebody, who is good in marketing, SEO, somebody who knows the right people and can convince bloggers, etc. to cover your startup/product. Because if only a few people out there know about your startup, it’s really hard to grow.

No offense, if you’re a technical co-founder and you’re good at all that, too, you have my deepest respect because IMHO this is not easy.

So, what else could a non-technical co-founder do for your startup?

What about design and UX (no, these are not the same, sorry to disappoint)? If you could have a co-founder on your team, who’s good at design and UX, chances are good that your product will be better and less sucky. Why? Well, you probably read, especially in the last time, that design suddenly is super-important for startups (haven’t heard about it yet? Go read Design Is Now Crucial to Startup Success). Somebody who is good at design and understands UX is able to shape your product in a better, probably more user-centered way, which is good for the user and in the end good for you (because he will love your product more and tell all friends and cats about it). IMHO a product cannot exist or even succeed without good design and UX.

But is there more a non-technical co-founder could do for your startup?

Oh, absolutely. For example in the case that the technical co-founder might not be a rockstar business development guy (can happen more often than one would think). You think you don’t need a biz dev guy? Well, think again. Also business development should be core (just as technical stuff, design, and marketing) to your startup. Why? Well, what do you think, who’s building all the necessary relationships? Who brings in partners? Who thinks about where your product and its content could go? No business development, no growth.

What should a non-technical co-founder offer to attract a good technical co-founder?

Seems like back to square one. But now that you read some examples of what a non-technical co-founder should offer to attract a good technical co-founder, the image might be clearer (at least I hope I didn’t confuse you too much).

He should offer complementary skills, which are useful to build your startup and develop a great product - no matter in which area. As you can see marketing co-founders, design co-founders, business development co-founders, … are also very important people to have on board at a startup.

And just in case you’re not sure where to find a non-technical co-founder, check out our product Founder2be.com - the online matchmaking service for startup co-founders.

Posted by Wolfgang from the Founder2be team.

Finding the right co-founder can be tricky. With Founder2be.com we’re already helping you to find the right tech co-founder, rockstar designer, future CTO, … or whatever other startup co-founder you need for starting your startup as soon and as easy as possible.

And today we’re making it even better - introducing Favorites on Founder2be!

Favorites is a great tool. As simple as it is, as huge will its impact be.

Some time ago we already introduced the great Pro Search feature on Founder2be, which enables you to find potential co-founders in a much more accurate way and even faster through a great set of search options and filters.

Now with Favorites you can do so much more!

Favorites is built right into the most important sections of Founder2be:

• You’re now able to favorite potential co-founders right from the profile pages.
• Your favorites are collected into your personal favorites list for easy access.
• And for every single favorite you can even add a private note for your reference.

Now you can simply search for potential startup co-founders, favorite the best matches, and create private notes to follow up upon!

Finding a startup co-founder has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Simply sign up for Founder2be!

Enjoy the Favorites! And happy co-founding!