Zero to 100,000 downloads - the productivity software stack

I love sloths and I love software. I especially love selecting my stack. This is what I used over the last 6 years growing Insane Logic. 

Accounts - I’m a dedicated fan of Xero. It just works! I moved to it in 2012 for Insane Logic and I will use it again for ZobiWan. Use it for book-keeping/reconciling the accounts, pulling off management accounts for the board, creating quotes and invoices, credit management tracking. It’s one of those pieces of software that it’s hard to switch away from as setting up your trial balance takes a bit of experience.

CRM - Been through a few over the years. I started off with Highrise but as the company grew it didn’t grow with me. I’ve been used Capsule CRM since 2012 and I’m quite happy with it. Not costly, copies all my emails to the database, I can easily input new contacts via email. My sales team prefer Zoho CRM due to it having ability to track sales pipeline visually, but this is all they seemed to use it for and it got very costly as they were not using it to store all customer conversations...no matter how many times I reminded them. To integrate the two turned out to be impossible as the data tags did not match up. Be warned!

I guess in the end they are just tools and it’s all down to how you use them as an organisation. I will have to be a CRM nazi for ZobiWan! Really important that your team stores everything to do with clients/customers centrally. So I am open for trying a new CRM system….all suggestions welcome! Pipedrive looks cool.

Customer Service/Community - In the beginning I used Get Satisfaction - I loved their brand and the positive way of getting feedback. But I think I was too early for the UK consumer market. I stuck with it for 18 months but hardly anyone used it, they would just email me directly instead. Another brand I loved was ZenDesk and I knew when we were big enough I would get this. We do use it and I am a big fan and I will use it again in the future.

Email client - Mailchimp - used this from the very beginning in 2011. Was and still is very simple to use. Get’s costly at scale but then I haven’t come across one that didn’t. Mailchimp is hooked into our app MyChoicePad so everyone who downloads the app automatically goes on the mailing list. They get 5 days of automated emails introducing them to the app. I love automation for onboarding! For my next project I need to be able to use forms that can then use logic to split into different mailing lists. I would love to use typeform but it doesn’t seem to use logic...which makes me sad as I love their forms they are so beautiful! Open to new pieces of software in this area six years is a while...

Design/Wireframes - At Insane Logic we have very successfully used Sketch for design and then Invision for wireframes - very time saving for prototyping and testing apps. We fell in love with these two. I want to learn to use Sketch...need to carve out more time.

Project Management - Trello. Totally. Using it every day...I still have a note pad though. I like to scribble. The dev team took on Slack and for my next project if i have remote teams I think this is the way to go too.

Analytics - For Insane Logic we use Google Analytics (website and app) and Flurry Analytics (apps). I used Flurry right from the beginning in 2011 and was a massive fan then things dropped off and we went to Google but then in 2015 Flurry got its act together again. For future projects I would start with google analytics again but depending on growth I would certainly now look at MixPanel as the next project has a very defined funnel process.

Email and storage - We moved from mac mail and dropbox to gmail and google drive in 2013. Have not looked back since. Just need to remember when someone leaves and they didn’t share their files with you don’t delete their account until you’ve backed it up!

Things not used yet but looking at for next project

Zapier - to hook up and automate customer contact emails to mailchimp and trello

Intercom - for live chat and tracking on website

Mailmunch or appsumo for growing my email list with welcome and leaving mats

Canva or Snappa for FB and Instagram images on the fly - looking forward to this!

Audiense for influencers on twitter and instagram

Xtensio - loving using this for creating personas