Toolstacks

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[started by jacob@ideaflow.io](mailto:jacob@ideaflow.io)

Tool Stacks of Highly Effective Startups and People

[Includes software and non-software tools](#h.2dof38rdf1pp), e.g. workflows, management frameworks. #connectordoc #curatedlist .

[Contribute at the top of “Inbox ” section or Real Startups’ Toolstacks section](#h.gkqpt664ydx)!

Corey Nobile (ODS)

stack

roam research (notes, long form)
neo4j (customer, investor, team, etc database)
notion (company intranet)
superhuman (email)
apify (scraping)
hemingway (copy analysis)
super (notion websites)

- https://synosearch.com/ (AI search for good research literature)

Adam Reis

Rippling for HR/IT management, Carta, loads of GSuite (HIPAA compliant, so we put lots of stuff there that other companies might put in email/slack), Notion (although very redundant with how we use gdocs right now - haven’t quite figured this out), Trello (thinking of switching to Linear or Asana soon), Metabase for BI (just setting up now), going to set up Lever or Ashby as a recruiting ATS/CRM in the coming weeks, HIPAA compliant Zoom, Slack, Nick and I use Superhuman,

That’s the short version; let me know if you have any questions about how we use specific tools!

Brandon T

the company used: definitely notion for org knowledge store (onboarding, design specs (explained from a figma/sketch file), roadmapping, general writings, RFCs, GTM, etc. etc.). we used clubhouse (jira alternative), metabase, slack, carta, amplitude, segment, loom, probably some other tools i'm forgetting about

David Ernst

I use Google Docs/Sheets heavily, don’t use Notion, Carta, or linear.app currently

New parts of Shadi’s stack:

Monday.com for team task management, Atom teletype for pair programming, Pastel for leaving design feedback on live pages.

Anthony (Namebase)

Hey! Sure, we stopped using notion like 18mos ago since the web UI got prohibitively slow when we started to have bigger / more complicated docs. We're forced to port everything to Google docs then, which we still use. Maybe they've fixed their perf issues now but back then it was not tolerable

For code pairing we'll ssh into a server with a tmux session, which achieves this --^, but there are some issues (no multiple cursors) so it doesn't quite solve the problem. High barrier to get started too

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PublicOwned byJacob ColeSource:wikihub.md/@jacobcole/jacobcole/toolstacks· Imported from WikiHub @jacobcole on 2026-05-19.

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https://founderkit.com/

https://capiche.com/

Capiche is a repository of information and discussions about the software we use to get things done. Instead of relying on agenda-driven sales, marketing, and customer success teams, we can rely on each other.

What split inboxes do you use in Superhuman?

capiche.com

#book The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building Kindle Edition

www.amazon.com

Lawyer

Bank account (Mercury recommended by AbstractOps (over Chase, SVB, First Republic, etc.)

Services that are more or less commoditized

Bookkeeper, payroll, designer (Fiverr and Upwork offer great contracted design services)

Landing page not super important early on

Engr

http://codingchallenge.jacobcole.net/

Interview Flow from Binc

docs.google.com

Chief of Staff

#todo #private Interview Guide for Chief of Staff

docs.google.com

Tabs Outliner

1Tab

Quick Tabs (search/switch tabs)

Hunter: Find email addresses in seconds

GSuite Tricks

When to make emails like hiring@ideapad.io users instead of groups on GSuite –  reason if you want to be able to send an email from hiring and it's a group it's not elegant to do that . Similarly want to be able to send emails from:

Support

Sales

Info

[It’s not necessary to make cos@ideapad.io a user because if the chief of staff changes, you can just setup email forwarding or an auto-responder & be sure to cc cosarchive@ideapad.io on anything worth archiving which would forward to jacob+cosarchive@ideapad.io](mailto:jacob+archival@ideapad.io)

Make notifications@ideapad.io a user not a group

Preventing read receipts in Superhuman

Command + K → Image settings → block all tracking pixels

[https://www.insynchq.com](https://www.insynchq.com/error-report?app_ver=3.2.0.40833&os=Mac-x86_64-10.15.5&email=jacob%40ideapad.io&work=AddCloudGDItem&exception=IntegrityError&err_msg=UNIQUE+constraint+failed%3A+fs_items.node_id&path=%2FUsers%2Fjacobjcole%2FLibrary%2FApplication+Support%2FInsync) good tool for syncing/backing up locally personal and work google drive #tool. Also w/e support chat platform they use is slick

Drip campaign tools

https://www.persistiq.com/

https://vocus.io/ <> mike’s friend

https://www.streak.com/ – now fairly expensive

Mailchimp +1 ~JM

#

Slack, Figma+Sketch, G-Suite, Zoom, namecheap.com (not great UI), name.com (slightly better, but still imperfect UI, more expensive)

GetCloudApp.com (gif capture), Screen.so (really good remote collaboration shared mouse), Superhuman for email, Dropbox Paper for some random side tasks (often used big/small, urgent/non-urgent table for task prioritization), 1Password, SimpleNote (for quick plain text knowledge capture/scratchpad synced with phone), InSync for syncing google drive, Otter.ai for incredibly good voice transcription for meeting notes, Speechify - incredibly good text-to-speech for turning articles/books into audio content (can convert from a picture), Voice Record Pro for low-space audio recording, Keyboard Maestro for recording and executing key strokes

Magic Virtual Assistant service (used to send NDAs, pay parking tickets and simple tasks. Only somewhat competent, but cheap & mostly but not perfectly reliable on basic things)

DocuSign for legal document templates, sending out employment contracts, etc. (Hellosign may have better UI)

Gusto (payroll), Zenefits (benefits; fyi Blueshield Platinum Healthcare is good for things like acupuncture). Independent remote accountant (Los Gatos/UKB) , QuickBooks. Silicon Valley Bank (decent interest rate, UX is clunky, recommended First Republic). Brex credit cards (has receipt tracking/good UX), not using Brex cash as of 6/2020 (not great interest rate). WSGR + Gunderson law firm (possibly rec. Gunderson or others over WSGR). GivingTrax for donation matching & tracking

Linear.app for Eng task management, Notion for specs. React, Typescript, VSCode/IntelliJ IDE, Logrocket, Firestore + AWS/MySQL, Github. Vercel for deployments

Medium for blog

Logging

Matomo - for user analytics, moved off of google analytics

Sentry - Errors

Thistle.co for healthy meal delivery. Mealsquares.com, Owyn (Tumeric “Mylk” - protein/meal shakes).

Jarvis standing desk (with FluidStance balance board & Sidekick rolling locking cushioned file cabinet, exercise ball for sitting), Roost portable laptop stand

Tile for finding things (laptop, car keys, backpack)

Accelerators: StartX (Applied/accepted as non-Stanford founder. Turned down YC)

FoundersPledge - supportive community

Leadership/Employee Development: Nonviolent Communications/CLG (Conscious Leadership Group)

First Round Mentors, StartX Mentors. MIT VMS (Venture Mentoring Services) Mentors

Management

- [nvctranslator.com](http://nvctranslator.com/) - Translate Any Text into NVC – Nonviolent Communication

- Learning NVC

- Learning CLG (Conscious Leadership Group) Principles

We're using Notion for our docs, although we used Quip until last month, I forgot why we switched.

We use Carta for stock grants too.

Azure for cloud infrastructure and deployment.

Github for codebase management.

Mailchimp for newsletters.

That's about it for now, but we'll keep adding more as we progress in the startup.

Internal Comms

Slack, GSuite

Customer Support

Zendesk, Intercom (eventually dropped)

Customer/Potential Customer Comms

Mailchimp, Twitter

Ops

Gusto, Metabase

Internal Comms

Slack, GSuite

Ops

Gusto, Segment, Heap, Brex

Customer Comms

Mailchimp, Mailgun, Twitter, Slack

Monday.com for team task management, Atom teletype for pair programming, Pastel for leaving design feedback on live pages.

https://mocharymethod.org/

pocket evernote zoom grammarly adblock lastpass docsend vocus (later:) hubspot.

Carta (also does 409A) – $6k+ / yr

https://captable.io/

https://pulley.com/

[Screen.so](http://screen.so) - Really good remote mouse pairing/double mouse controlling from the screen hero guys

Notion.so - For team wiki (some UX complaints, but is useful to have even if you have G-Suite)

Standard Stuff:

Slack

G-Suite - Google drive, gmail, etc for enterprise

Figma - For design. Lacks certain drawing features, like magic wand, so you still need sketch and/or photoshop on the side

Airtable - FYI, good for dashboard for presentation purposes & visual links between shared tags

Post on http://hiringlist.jacobcole.net/

hiringlist.jacobcole.net

Post on http://angel.co/

angel.co

Small Co

Lever.co – not needed if hiring through your network (#ats applicant tracking system)

Or Greenhouse.io #ats

Triplebyte – was good a few years ago, may suck now

Good for after the first few hires:

[Up and Coming: Dover https://www.dover.io/](https://www.dover.io/) –

[Maybe https://www.turing.com/](https://www.turing.com/) #remote?

Generally don’t recommend retained recruiting services for early stage – really #doubledown on going through your network

ParkerRemick.com (esp. For executive recruiting / later stage but can also do principal engineer. #expensive. $100k for 6 mo search for 1 hire. Less for add-on hires)

https://www.bincsearch.com/ – worked well for some people to find principal engineers. Varies depending on quality of your recruiter there. ~$20k/mo.

As of Jun 2020, Webflow.com is best for no-code or semi-no-code editing

Webpage screen capture #tool: Full Page Screen Capture

chrome.google.com

Google Sheets

Beautiful.ai

[Looka](https://looka.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkpq_luyo6gIVzsDACh2NxgnKEAAYAiAAEgLvrfD_BwE) - Awesome automatic logo generator with AI

Invision App - For sharing moodboards. Google docs also works ok for this

Figma - For design. Lacks certain drawing features, like magic wand, so you still need sketch and/or photoshop on the side

Photopea - browser based graphics editor (strong parity with Photoshop)

Vercel.com (Formerly Zeit) - Allows you to easily make PHP-style webpages with JavaScript and generally fixes a lot of modern issues with frontend development

Retool.com -

Logrocket - Logs the exact state of the application in a user session

Cloud App - Really quickly create and share quick gifs of what’s on your screen and/or screenshots with a link

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Buy 10+ reehut or other yoga blocks for ergonomics (can prop up laptop for video calls, prop up your elbows for using your phone and do many other things)

Roost portable laptop stand

Ergodocs EZ split keyboard on mounted with rubberbands to metal vertical kinesis freestyle keyboard (tent) kit to make it vertical.

Rsiwiki.jacobcole.net

rsiwiki.jacobcole.net

Anker charging brick #t lookup on amazon & donglehub for newer macbook

Danish

My current stack is as follows

Obsidian: super fast note taking / research / “zettelkasten” SideKick (new browser: faster shortcuts / separation between “work apps” and general web browsing… automatic memory-saving/tab-killing. auto ad-block etc… allowing me to get rid of all the electron apps from my desktop )

1. Obsidian

2. SideKick

3. Todoist for fast todos everywhere. 4. Maybe a few times a week: notion for managing blocks related to projects/project management (esp. Timelines!).

Ilya Gulko

“I am so grateful that I am going to bed at the perfect time for me, falling asleep easily, sleeping restfully and comfortably, and waking up at the perfect time for me, refreshed and ready to take on the day.”

“Show me how good it can get, Universe!”

qutebrowser

IntelliJ

Pollyanna Framework, ex: flyerian.com, ilyagulko.com, shitmyself.com (human/human), 26-110.com

Alan Indie Hacker

Web Prototyping / Boilerplates

https://tailwindui.com/components/marketing/page-examples/landing-pages

https://www.fontshare.com/fonts/satoshi

NextJS

Vedant

Startup:

PostHog for user tracking

Ilya M

Streaks - habit tracker

Jack J

Loom.com

Ublock Origin

Allen L

Next.js

shadcn/ui

v0.dev

PostHog

ADHD

https://www.focusmate.com/

[Chiropractic adjustment, esp nonforce](https://www.santacruznonforcechiropractors.com/what-is-dnft-) chiropractic

Software

quickey

Tourettes

Channeling tics as kundalini activation #WIP

[Channel with qigong http://qigong.garden/](http://qigong.garden/)  #WIP

Release with Svaroopa Yoga svaroopa.org

svaroopa.org

Stuttering

Wayne Cooke Posture

www.youtube.com

Aspergers, Introversion

[Algorithm for Real Empathy: Learn NVC (Nonviolent Communication](https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Life-Changing-Relationships/dp/189200528X))

http://nvctranslator.com/

Intro video

www.youtube.com

Bipolar

Meditating with  Lawrence Levy & Segyu Rinpoche

www.juniperpath.org

The Neurodiverse Startup Ecosystem resource list

docs.google.com

Justin Goldman Accelerated Empathy