Refresh Denver

In a series of running your own startup, Read/WriteWeb says:

The aim of many entrepreneurs is to take a business idea and convert it into a professional and functioning business on a low budget. This is typically called “bootstrapping” and it is fraught with potential pitfalls and dangers. But when done well it can really help get a company going fast, professionally and without the founders having to give up much (if any) equity - or bankrupting themselves.

Over the next 5-6 posts I’ll outline the process which I’ve now followed at several corporates and which I’ve honed to work with my own startup, Aroxo. I’ll discuss what skills you’ll need, how to write your requirements, how to source developers and designers, how much to budget, how to agree a development contract, how to manage your vendors, how to plan your release, all the documentation you’ll need, and much more.

More at readwriteweb.com : part I and readwriteweb.com : part II

Came across this yesterday and thought it might be useful to share.

Be sure to check out the original article and read the additional comments of other peoples’ suggestions.

Build Your Own Workplace to Go
Posted November 27th, 2007 (2:08pm) by Anne Zelenka

Today 19Marketplace announced its Workplace2go offering, a hosted set of business applications available on a pay-as-you-go basis. The offering includes WebEx Web Office, WebEx Web Conferencing, Microsoft Exchange Email, Blackberry Mobile Service, and more. As I wrote on GigaOM, this may be just the thing for the small business owner who doesn’t want to put together and troubleshoot his or her own (likely cheaper) alternative from Web 2.0 tools.

But what if you do want to build your own workplace to go? What applications would it include? Here’s what I’d use:

* Google Apps for Your Domain for email, calendar, chat, and a web-based office suite
* Mobile email with the Gmail mobile client
* Mozy for backup
* Yugma for web conferencing
* Skype for conference calls
* FreshBooks for invoicing

What tools would make up your “workplace to go”?

So what tools are you using? Any other thoughts?