I keep a more extended version of this article here on haideralleg.com
. You can visit it for more insights about brand technologies in regulated industries.
There is one thing no one wants to waste; it is time.
Working behind a desk or in a mobile fashion means developing a natural organisation for efficiency. But as you grow, you want to find a sustainable way to scale efficiency to your colleagues and harmonise. Here are some gears and tools that save my colleagues and me some precious hours. I learned so much on Medium from others people’s setups that I felt I’ll share my findings on what works for me and why.
Some of the apps that make my life easier.
On my mac, I use mainly the following apps:
- Chrome: I had to choose one browser, and being a google workspace company, the choice was easy
- Whatsapp for Desktop: for personal stuff
- Slack for desktop: working remotely with our team across the world without it is impossible
- Apple Mail: mostly to clean up and declutter by moving emails from one box to the other
- Apple Calendar: for a bird’s view of the multiple calendars
- Delineato: brainstorming app (love the minimal approach)
- Discord for desktop: mid-journey prompts and keeping myself updated on sim-racing and gaming
- Descript: recording videos and screencasting
- Rectangle: some order for mac windows
- 1password: I don’t recall remembering a password now
- Google Drive for desktop: my unlimited space at a click reach
- Adobe Xd: prototyping and reviewing projects
- Microsoft Teams: obligated to submit to it
- Microsoft Outlook: feeling punished when using it
- Adobe Photoshop: mostly when I need to review stuff
- Adobe Indesign: reviewing printables
Looking at my usage in 2022, most of it was 1password, Google Drive and Google Chrome. I can’t live without Google anymore…
You find the same list on my PC except for more gaming platforms and no apple products.
What about online tools on Chrome
I have switched entirely to Chrome right from the beginning, and it is becoming my go-to-platform for everything; here are my top saas tools:
Tech
- Cloudways: managed VPS where we host websites (we are a silver partner, reach us for prices)
- Cloudflare: DDOS protection and DNS zone management
- Gandi: corporate and global registrars (we are .swiss resellers)
- Digital Ocean: Kubernetes and droplets management for testing new apps
- AWS: managing our S3, CloudFront and EC2 setup
- Google Cloud Platform: managing our API for google maps and other credentials
- Closte: VPS running on LiteSpeed tech (mostly for very high load setup)
- GitHub: repo for cloning and finding snippets
- Gitlab: private code built by me or my team
- Browserstack: QA for web and mobile apps
- Jira:?agile for DevOps
Venture Capital & Investments
- Leva: Managing Swiss SPVs
- Vauban: Managing non-Swiss LPs and SPVs
- Etoro: investment in non-Swiss ETFs and stocks
- Swissborg: Investment in cryptos
- CB Insights:?keeping updates on the startup’s markets
- Pitchbook: scouting and data analysis
- Angel list:?discovering new founders
- Product hunt:?finding new products
Media
- Youtube: new way to consume media
- New York Times: keeping eyes on the world
- Bilan: keeping eyes on swiss business news
- Google news:?keeping eyes on politics
- Feedly: syndicating the news
- Youtube Music: waking up the neighbours
- Streamyeard: for streaming to the world
Project & Team Management
- Workona: reduce tab loads on chrome
- Google Voice:?international phone lines
- Google Meet: videoconferences and streams
- Mavenlink: project management and time tracking
- Gmail: email management
- Google Calendar: time and tasks management
- Google Drive: digital asset management
- Notion: intranet and brain repository (we are a reseller; reach us for more info)
Business Admin
- Kumo: a file transfer protocol featuring web-torrent technology, protecting your privacy (yes, we have built it, you can use it too)
- Google Workspace:?managing emails and stuff (we are a reseller; reach us for more info)
- Scribe:?managing signatures on emails
- Google Groups:?managing redirections of emails
- Google Keep:?quick notes daily
- Google Contacts:?managing everyone’s phone contacts
- Pandadoc:?contract templates and e-signatures
- ePost:?Swiss post-digital services such as scanning my mail
- Pingen:?sending physical letters all over the world from your desk
- Dext: managing invoicing and expenses and sending them to Xero
- UBS:?our bank, doing the job, loves their e-banking
- Axa:?our insurance company, keeping it simple and super efficient
- Centre patronal:?the social insurance platform… (If you guys need help… contact us)
- Xero:?our accounting tool for invoicing and managing the closing
- Revolut Business:?our online bank for paying for goods and services
- Linkedin: sourcing talents
- Indeed: finding talents
Marketing & Sales
- Mailchimp: advanced HTML email templates because Hubspot sucks on this
- Combin: Instagram automation
- Hopin: online summits & conferences
- Zapier: whatever automation
- Crowdin: translation management
- Eventbrite: events and tickets management
- Madgicx: high-frequency media buying
- Mandrill: reflex marketing campaigns
- Google Adwords: advertising on google
- Google Analytics: understanding the impact of online activities
- Google Locker Studio:?sharing insights
- Miro: brainstorming and workshops
- Hubspot: CRM and marketing ops
- Apollo: lead management
- Chat GPT: answer’s engine
- Linkedin Learning: self-development
- SEMrush:?SEO and more
Creative Corner
- Awwwards: website inspiration
- Behance: branding inspiration and showcase
- Dribbble: sourcing of creative talents
- Pinterest: mood boards and benchmarks
- Envato Elements: repo of graphical design templates
- Canva Pro: replacing graphic designers with this tool
- Unsplash: fresh imagery
- Vimeo: private repo for creative videos
Social Media
- Linkedin: where my pro network is
- Treatmybrand: where my inner network is (you can request access?here
)
- Medium: learning and sharing professional experience, especially for VC stuff
- Substack: self-learning and development
- Instagram: looking at art stuff and cars
- Facebook: following my mum’s chronicles
- Twitter: following Elon Musk chronicles
- Discord: talking to bots such as Mid-journey
- Twitch: watching talk shows of geeks in pyjamas playing games
My chrome extensions
- 1password: simplifying my life with password directly on chrome
- Apollo: augmenting my data around contacts from websites such as LinkedIn
- Hubspot social: posting on social media from anywhere
- Notion helper: saving webpages to Notion
- Grammarly: fixing my English (thank you, French schooling)
- Whatfont: finding font used by websites
- Colorzilla: seeing colours used by websites
- Tag assistant: checking that websites are running the rights google tags
- Wanteeed: adding coupons codes to shops
- Facebook pixel helper: checking if pixels are in place
- Google Optimize: running A/B testing
- VidIQ: extra amount of data around video on Tiktok and Youtube
- Browserstack: selenium testing from the browser
- PhantomBuster: automating my social media life
I hope this post is helpful, not only because I disclose the list of tools used in my organisations but mostly to give you the approach required to reverse engineer these choices and adapt them to yours, wherever you are a startup or a large pharma organisation.
Do you have experience with the same stacks of tools? Did you discover a new one? Do you have alternatives to share with us? Please feel free to comment below.
Remember to visit haideralleg.com
for a more extended version of this article.
