Launching a startup is hard; with or without funding, experienced or not – but, if there was one thing that might just separate the top founders from the pack, it’s understanding the value of time.

Imagine this, when Instagram blew past 1,000,000 downloads they still had just a 13 person team… THIRTEEN!

How is that possible? I’ll tell you how; it’s possible because of exceptional time management skills (and accompanying collaboration tools).

In case you’ve never heard of G2 Crowd – which is hard to imagine, given the millions of monthly site visitors – G2 is something of a Yelp for SaaS tools and it has quickly become the go-to spot for founders and other tech-enabled businesses to review, read and engage with popular apps like Salesforce, Heroku, Sprout social and others.

Newly (9 months on the job) hired CMO Ryan Bonnici joined me live in-studio to discuss what it’s been like taking on such a senior role, how scaling with G2 Crowd compares to his last previous role at HubSpot, and to share his (and G2 reviewers) must-have tools for achieving startup immortality!

1. Asana

Asana easily organizes and plans workflows, projects, and more, so you can keep your team’s work on schedule. Start using Asana as your work management tool today.

We use Asana every single day. If your team works remotely (or if it doesn’t at all) it can be a full time job just tracking projects and trying to keep an eye on the team; enter Asana, or Wrike, or Trello… or several others. But, in our (and Ryan… and apparently millions of reviewers) Asana is King!

“Surprisingly, a LOT of tech companies like G2 spend an exorbitant amount of time on Product Hunt looking for next gen tools ”      –Ryan Bonnici

 

2. HubSpot

HubSpot is an inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers.

I’m not gonna bullshit you, we have a longstanding partnership with Salesforce, but we use HubSpot (and given that Salesforce is a major investor in HubSpot, I suspect they do too). As Ryan notes in our chat, how can you argue with FREE? Yes, HubSpot offers completely free services to startups looking to get that CRM action started. But, the fun doesn’t last forever – once you begin bundling or needing an additional layer of support the pay walls begin to stack up.

For now though, HubSpot is an absolute MUST for early stage companies.

3. Greenhouse

Greenhouse‘s applicant tracking system and recruiting software is designed to help you find better candidates and improve your entire recruiting process.

This next one, however, you’re going to have to take Ryan’s word because I had never even heard of it before! But, according to G2’s own reviews, it’s a top performer and since getting the goods from Ryan, my team has looked into the platform and we’re happy to report… we’ve been missing out!

Give it a whirl and tweet us your feedback, or better yet… give it a review on G2 Crowd!

EXTRA CREDIT: In case you found something better to do with your time, and didn’t finish the interview, Ryan tossed out one more pro tip for founders, Product Hunt, which is a curation of the best new products, every day. Discover the latest mobile apps, websites, and technology products that everyone’s talking about.

And, honestly, we agree… Product Hunt is like window shopping at the mall.

What an exceptional place to keep one’s finger on the technology pulse – if you want to know what the latest and greatest is… give Product Hunt a scroll.

Hint: it’s like shopping for unnecessary (but incredibly amazing) new travel bags on Kickstarter!

This episode is sponsored by Bank of America and Trinet.

Hey, everyone! Check us out on Spotify… or wherever else you get your podcast fix!