One of the most important questions I love to ask founders is: Please share the top 3 tools and resources you're currently using to grow your business? In some cases, it's usually something that I already knew or heard about in the past. But every so often I'll discover something new, something that can make life as an entrepreneur much easier.
It is with that mindset that I bring you this compilation of the top tools and resources entrepreneurs use to grow their business. I must admit that some of them you'll easily recognize, but I guarantee that most will be new.
So here you go! The startup resource list: 300 + tools and resources for startup founders and new entrepreneurs.
STARTUP ACCELERATOR & INCUBATORS
"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." ― Benjamin Franklin [Tweet it]
- Ycombinator: Funding for early stage startups
- TechStars: Seed funding, intensive mentorship (Founder story here)
- 500 Startups: Invested in over 500 companies world wide
- Boom Startup: Mentorship driven investments (Sandy, Utah)
- Beta Springs: Accelerator for technology and design entrepreneurs (Providence, RI)
- Launchpad LA: Los Angeles startup accelerator
- Jumpstart Foundry: Tech product accelerator in the Southeast (Nashville, TN)
- Capital Innovators: Accelerator Program, based in (St. Louis MO)
- AlphaLab: Accelerator for startups (Pittsburgh, PA)
- FounderFuel: Accelerator program in (Montreal)
- AngelPad: Global accelerator in SF and NYC
- Brandery: Seed-stage startup accelerator
- Capital Factory: Incubator and co-working for entrepreneurs. (Austin, TX)
- Fortify Ventures: Early stage technology investment fund (Washington, DC)
- Colodesk: Ecosystem for lean startups (Stamford, CT)
- Social Enterprise Trust: Focus on developing the social entrepreneurship sector in (Hartford, CT)
- Tech Wildcaters: Turning people into entrepreneurs and startups into companies (Dallas,TX)
- Mucker Capital: Los Angeles seed and pre-seed stage venture fund
- Karlin Ventures: An early-stage venture capital fund (Los Angeles, CA)
- Bizdom: Startup accelerator in Detroit and Cleveland
- Society 3: Startup Accelerator with focus on traction
- ER Accelerator: Entrepreneur round table accelerator (NYC)
- Dream it Ventures: Helping people build great companies (Austin, TX)
- Launch Box: Seed-stage investment firm
- Surge Ventures: They invests in entrepreneurs solving energy problems using technology (Houston, TX)
- Micro Ventures: They raise capital for tech related businesses (CA, TX)
- Be Great Partners: Seed funds, co-working and events. (Los Angeles, CA)
- Ecommerce Accelerator: Hybris multi-channel commerce integrators for technology startups
- Lemnos Labs: Hardware incubator in San Francisco, CA
- Catapult Chicago: A peer-selected environment designed startups and talented people
CROWD FUNDING
" Life is not scripted. Conversations with our donors should not be either" - Unknown [Tweet it]
STARTUP EVENTS & ORGANIZATIONS
"The new source of power is not money in the hands of the few but information in the hands of many." ― John Naisbitt [Tweet it]
- Startup Weekend: Launch a startup in 54 hours no talk, just action (How it Works)
- Tech808: A conference focused on entrepreneurs who love Hip Hop (Founders Interview)
- Startup Grind: Global startup community designed to educate, and connect entrepreneurs
- (YEC) Youn Entrepreneurship Council: Invite only entrepreneurship organization
- Startup Riot: 1 Day. 2 keynotes. 30 startups
- SXSW V2V: A Boutique Event for Startups to Learn, Connect and Grow
- Launch Festival: Launch startup, learn, starup pitches and hackathon
- SXSW - South by Southwest: Annual startup accelerator pitch event for companies
- Future Stack: Changing the world with software and data
- Velocity: Conference to building a faster stronger business
- Structure: Startup events by GIGA OM
- Infusion Con: Small business conference and events
- Apps World/ North America: Developer conference & exhibition
- ITAC: Improve the performance of mid-size firms that create technical and manufactured products
- DEMO: New Tech Solving Big Problems
- Startup Connection: Venture showcase entrepreneur resource fair
- Technori pitch: Monthly event where new startups showcase what they have just launched
- TechWeek: A startup launch competition by Techweek
- Founder Showcase: See tomorrow's companies, today
- Finovate: Conference showcase the future financial & banking and technology
- Startup Pitch Night: a place where founders can practice and improve their startup pitch
- The Startup Conference: Startup meet and select promising entrepreneurs between February and May
- Social Media Strategies Summit: Social media marketing summit
- Pitch Force: A monthly fundraising event for startups
- Social Media Marketing World: A large social media marketing conference.
DOMAIN GENERATOR & SOCIAL PROFILE NAME CHECK
SOCIAL PROFILE NAME AVAILABILITY - NameCheck: Check username availability for multiple social sites
- NameVine: Instantly find domain name and social media account
- Name Checkr: Check domain & social username availability across multiple networks
PRESENTATIONS & VIDEO EXPLAINERS
"I think people don't like when you're not confident about what you're pitching, and they don't want to invest in you or get behind you"- Lori Greiner [Tweet it]
BETA TESTERS & STARTUP PITCHES
"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning" - Bill Gates [Tweet it]
LEARN TO CODE - THE LANGUAGE OF TECH STARTUPS
"Learning never exhausts the mind" - Leonardo da Vinci [Tweet it]
HR FINANCE, ACCOUNTING & PAYROLL
"People always ask me, 'Were you funny as a child?' Well, no, I was an accountant" - Ellen DeGeneres [Tweet it]
- Expensify: Expense report that don't suck (Founder Interview)
- Freshbooks: Cloud accounting and invoicing
- ZenPayroll: The easiest way to pay your employees
- BanbooHR: Human resource software for small businesses
- Harvest: Online time tracking software
- KashFlow: Accounting software for business with payroll
- LessAccounting: For Business Owners Who Dislike Bookkeeping
- Kashoo: Cloud based system for invoicing, expense tracking & bookkeeping
- Wave: Small business accounting software
- Cheqbook: Accounting small business bookkeeping
OUTSOURCE AND FREELANCERS
"If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you're putting yourself out of business" - Lee Kuan Yew [Tweet it]
- Fiverr: The $5 market place for creative and professional services
- Elance: Access to freelance professionals
- Odesk: Hire freelancers and get freelance jobs online
- Staff: Hire skill staff around the world (Founder Interview)
- Guru: Find and hire talented freelancers
- Freelancer: Hire freelancers for you online job
- Outsource: Hire freelancers or find freelancing job
- Rent a Coder: Exactly what the name said "Rent a Coder"
- Tomigo: Employee referral program - social recruiting
- Accelerance: The process of finding outsourced software developers
MUST HAVE APPS & CLOUDS
CLOUD STORAGE NOTE TAKING & TASK APPS 
EVENTS & COMMUNITY TOOLS - Eventbrite: Discover events that match your passions, or create your own with online ticketing tools.
- Meetup: Neighbors getting together. Local meetup community
- Ticket Tailor: Sell tickets online. No booking fees.
- PickEvent: Event management and community solution
- BigTent: Group forum, calendar and file shares
- GroupSpaces: Group website membership database tool
A/B SPLIT TESTING & LANDING PAGES
"Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding" - Burt Rutan [Tweet It]
CUSTOMER SERVICE, FEEDBACK & TICKET SYSTEMS
"You'll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can't be copied" - Jerry Fritz [Tweet it]SURVEY BUILDERS AND FORMS EMAIL NEWSLETTER & SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE
ANALYTICS & HEAT MAPS
"Without big data analytics, companies are blind and deaf, wandering out onto the Web like deer on a freeway " - Geoffrey Moore [Tweet it]
- Google Analytics: Free web analytics
- KISSmetrics: Customer intelligence & web analytics
- SeeEvolution: Website's heat maps in real time
- Mixpanel: Analytics platform for mobile and the web (Founder Interview)
- Inspectlet: Record videos of your web visitor as they use your site
- Clicky: Analyse web traffic in real time
- Crazy Egg: Visualize where your visitors click
- Quintly: Professional Social Media Analytics
- Itrend: Insight from social data analytic
- SocialBro: Analyze, engage and monetize your Twitter audience
- Follower Wonk: Twitter analytics, follower segmentation, social graph tracking
- ClickTale: Improve digital customer experience heatmaps
- User Report: Survey, click tracking and feedback for websites
- Ghost Rec: Record real visitors surfing your website
- Mouse Flow: Mouseflow lets you record website visitors and see website heatmaps
TASK & PROJECT MANAGEMENT
"Procrastination is the foundation of all disasters." ― Pandora Poikilos [Tweet it] - Podio: Manage task, create custom app to your needs (Founder Interview)
- Trello: Keeps track of everything, from the big picture to the minute detail
- Asana: Team work without dealing with emails
- Do.com: Run productive meetings
- ProofHub: Online collaboration software
- Hall: Bring your team together
- HipChat: Private group chat, video chat
- Slack: Brings communication together
- Sqwiggle: free server-less peer to peer LAN messenger
VIDEO CONFERENCE CALLS & ONLINE MEETINGS
PHONE SERVICES & PROFESSIONAL PHONE NUMBER
STARTUP NEWS, BLOGS, AND MAGAZINES
"Keeping a 'CEO blog' or 'founder's blog' can be a great platform for engaging your users in a nontraditional way, reaching people outside of your product pitch and building rapport without selling them anything except a belief in your ideas" - Kathryn Minshew
REPORTERS. JOURNALIST. PRESS & MEDIA RESOURCES
"Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay." - Benjamin Disraeli
STARTUP REVIEW & INTERVIEW SITES
LISTEN & WATCH INTERVIEWS - TWIS: This week in startup with @Jason Calacanis
- Mixergy: Learn from proven entrepreneurs @AndrewWarner
- Growth Hacker TV: Bronson Taylor interviews successful entrepreneurs and marketers
- Valley Girl: The valley girl show with Jesse Draper
- Eventual Millionaire: Jaime Tardy interviews self made millionaire entrepreneurs
- Ted: Ideas worth spreading
- FounderLY: Sharing startup founder stories
- Startup Talk TV: A curated collection of startup interviews
- Entrepreneur on Fire: Daily interview show with successful entrepreneurs (host John Lee Dumas)
- Rocketship.fm: Listen to interviews with startup founders about growth, funding, sales and startup life.
STARTUP COMMUNITIES & DIRECTORIES
ENTREPRENEURS PROGRAMMERS, CODERS COMMUNITY"Every person is defined by the communities she belongs to." ― Orson Scott Card [Tweet it]
CRM SOFTWARE & EMAIL TRACKING
"I'd rather send out a mass email then hang posters all over the place"- Todd Barry [Tweet it]
- Nimble: Powerful CRM system combine with social media (Founder Interview)
- Zoho: Web-based online office suite
- Close.io: Close more deals, make more sales
- Pipedrive: Sale CRM for small teams
- Salesforce: CRM and cloud computing for businesses
- SugarCRM: Online customer relationship management
- Pipeliner: Sales management software for apps (Founder Interview)
- Yesware: Email tracking. Learn what happens after you hit send (Founder Interview)
- Boomrang: Schedule sending email (Gmail)
- Rapportive: Shows you everything about your contacts right inside your inbox
VIDEOS, GRAPHICS & ICONS
GRAPHICS PREPARING MOCK UP STOCK PHOTOS"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works" - Steve Jobs [Tweet it]
- Fotolia: Royalty free images, photos, vectors and videos
- ShutterStock: Stock photo royalty free images
- Istock Photos: Stock photos royalty free
- 500px: Find the perfect royalty-free photos
- BigStock Photos: Affordable high-resstock photography. (7 day trial Free photos)
- Unsplash: Free Hi -Resolution photos (All Free)
- Iconfinder: Free and premium icons
- Glyphicons: Prepared monochromatic icons and symbols
- Dry Icons: Icons and vector graphics
- IconMinds: Vector icons for iOS8,iOS7 & Android
- The full list here: 15 Best Websites To Download Free Icons
WEBSITE BUILDERS & CMS TOOL
CREATIVE PROFESSIONALS & DESIGN COMMUNITIES INFOGRAPHICS CREATORS AND SCREEN CATCHERS
INFOGRAPHICS SCREEN CAPTURE & RECORDER ENTERTAINMENT FOR ENTREPRENEURS
I know HT M L (how to meet ladies) - Erlich of Silicon Valley [Tweet It]BUSINESS TV SHOWS
- Silicon Valley: Watch a computer programmer and his friends as they attempt to launch a new startup in a high-tech gold rush.
- Shark Tank: A show where aspiring entrepreneur pitches their business to a panel of "shark" investors.
- The Profit: Successful entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis helps struggling small businesses by investing his money in exchange for an ownership stake in the company.
- Undercover Boss: Executive leaving their corner office for an undercover mission to examine the inner workings of their corporation.
- Restaurant Startup: A quest to discover, develop, and invest in America's next generation of culinary superstars
STARTUP DOCUMENTARIES - Startup.com: (2001)
- Something Ventured: (2011)
- Steve Jobs:
- Pirates of silicon valley: (1999)
- Ctrl-alt-compete: (2011)
- Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room: (2005)
- The Call of the Entrepreneur (2007)
- The Corporation (2003)
OTHER COOL THINGS
"Keep calm, and stay cool. you're an entrepreneur" - Herby Fabius (made this one up)
[Tweet it]
NEED MORE! - These guys can help.
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