Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Babson Entrepreneurs

How 2 Use Free Tools for Your Startup

How to Use Free Tools with Greg Gomer ’07

Greg Gomer ’07, a serial entrepreneur, co-founder of BostInno and HqO, led a How 2 Tuesday on using free tools for your startup. Greg began the presentation with the statement that believing you need to raise capital before you really start your business is a “death sentence.” People who say this are already making excuses, and business is about determination and zero excuses. The barriers to entry to start a company have never been lower. Determination is something that investors and future customers understand and expect.

As an entrepreneur, it is your goal to do more with less. Every early-stage company is resource constrained. Successful startups know how to use this to their advantage. Do whatever it takes to get your company off the ground. Greg’s recommendation is to never pay full price for anything. There are always local events you can eat for free at. Don’t be afraid to tell people that you’re a resource-constrained startup and own it.

Large companies love supporting startups! Reach out to corporations such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft to see what discounts they provide to startups. Greg also recommends getting “free money” by applying to every business plan competition, grant, accelerator, and incubator in the world. Use that non-diluted capital to your favor.

He listed “places to look for free stuff,” which included colleges, libraries, accelerators/incubators, day jobs, bundled packages, the internet, and free trials of software. He then recommended the following free tools for specific needs, and urged everyone to search for promo codes for each if they’re not free. Please note the following are not endorsements.

Website, blog, or homepage:

Social media:

Email:

Marketing & sales:

Operations:

Design & Creative:

SEO:

Learning & Training:

Development:

Payroll/HR:

Payments:

Greg then recommended the following community resources:

Early stage venture resources:

Incubate & accelerate:

Co-working spaces:

College incubators and accelerators:

College business plan competitions:

Events:

If you want to get a job at a company in order to gain experience before founding your own startup, Greg recommended looking at the following companies:

Hearing from an experienced entrepreneur was very inspiring. I hope you are able to use some or many of these resources!