Startup of a Startup, basic infrastructure

Today, while reading How to launch in 10 steps with less than $2000, I realised I could put to better use all the notes and experiences I have accumulated in the last few months working at Mindquilt. In fact the linked article, while presenting some interesting ideas (like the use of 99designs for logo design), seems to ignore many of the important things/tools you need to get familiar if you are serious about doing business. It turns out that starting a company is something more than choosing a domain and creating a website.

So, without further ado, that's a proven basic infrastructure to "startup your startup". It will add up just a few dollars to the above mentioned $2000, but you won't regret that.

Yes, you will need one or more domains. I can't suggest any particular registrar, just pick one.

Do yourself a favour and sign up at Google Apps for Business; for small businesses it's free, and gives you a lot. The Email service is top-notch (you all know GMail?), and you will use it to create email accounts for all the employees, as well as the usual email alias (sales@.., support@..., feedback@...); also the Calendar service will be useful to share events and meetings.

On the downside, Google Doc is pretty limited, and Google Site (the kind-of-wiki) is definitely bad. But I'll give you alternatives!

The reason I dislike Google Docs is that it's quite difficult to create nice documents with it; the font choice is limited and the functionalities pretty basic. You don't want to present your startup to potential investors using a boring template and Arial font, do you? My suggestion is to use a real word-processor (meaning iWork if you are a Mac user) and use the great Dropbox to share documents among the organization. Dropbox is also free up to 2GB of storage

In an ideal world, you could use all online services (a-la-Google-Apps) for your business. However, it gives you a bit more flexibility to have your own Virtual Private Server; not to mention that it is also very cheap. I have good experiences with Linode and Slicehost, and I'd recommend both.

For setting up and running some basic services (let's say version control, website, collaboration tool, crm) you won't need more than a VPS with 512MB of ram.

If you produce software, you cannot work without a good issue tracker. A free, online solution is Pivotal Tracker. It works reasonably well for small projects and teams, but I find the interface very confusing, especially when the number of issues grows.

My tool of choice at the moment is Redmine; it assumes you are willing and happy to go through an unreasonably complicated setup, but after that it pays off with many features. It also has a wiki: nothing exceptional, but usable (differently from Google Sites, who was clearly designed *without* considering usability).

So, first of all, do you need a CRM? Ideally, if your company employees just you, and you are a very organised person, no. In all other cases, yes.

When you talk to customers or potential investors, you want to remember all the conversations you had. And you want to avoid one of your cofounder to inadvertently contact somebody you have already talked to. Salesforce is the obvious choice here, but an expensive one. My suggestion is to use your new VPS to install SugarCRM; it's free, open source, and it has a nice one-click installer.

On the downside, it's not a simple product, especially if you are not a full-time salesman; but spending some time to learn it can give some more structure to your sales effort.

My suggestion here is to install Wordpress on your VPS, and stick with it. There's nothing you can't do with Wordpress, and it's so popular you will be able to find many professional designer who can customise the template for a few hundred dollars/euros.

What about you? What's your list of fundamental tools for your business?