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25+ Tools to Build Your Inner Entrepreneur

Here is list of 25+ tools to build your inner entrepreneur.That’s it. Just a compilation of lectures, publications, blogs, news, learning tools, and more; in no particular order.Whether you were born an entrepreneur or are called to be one, one or more of these tools might help you hone your skills and sharpen your instincts.

productivity tools

So, peruse, learn, and then flex your inner entrepreneur in whatever setting you find yourself in.

Don’t find a tool you love? Just add it in the comments and we can incorporate to the list.

A special thanks to my fellow participants of StartUp Weekend Next SF (Oct 2012) for contributing their favorite tools to the list!

  1. StartUp Weekend — find out what’s it’s like to have an idea, work on it non-stop for a weekend, get customer feedback, and build a prototype
  2. StartUp Weekend Next — take your StartUp Weekend experience further and work on your idea in a guided setting for another 3 weeks
  3. Udacity — learn about about how to map out your startup strategy including this class from Steve Blank author of “Owner’s Guide to StartUps”
  4. Tools for StartUp Weekend — list of nearly 30 more tools for startup success by TokBox Developer Song Zheng
  5. PitchCrawl — informal events organized by DishCrawl where startups can pitch to VC’s in a ‘speed dating’ setting
  6. Steve Jobs — book by Walter Isaacson based on 100+ interviews of those who knew the Apple Co-Founder and CEO, and 40 interviews with Jobs himself. Candid, honest account of an innovation & entrepreneurship luminary.
  7. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose — book by Zappos! CEO Tony Hsieh, an insightful narrative (he reads the audio book version himself)
  8. Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives — book on entrepreneurial leadership by Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek, founders of Mountain Ventures.
  9. Founder Dating — an online network to help you meet your next co-founder
  10. LaunchPad Central — online tool to help you manage, track, and analyze your startup and business canvas
  11. Coursera — take online classes on what you don’t know from top schools across the country
  12. Codeacademy — learn how to code through these online, interactive classes.
  13. 24 Must-Read Blogs For Entrepreneurs — article by Alyson Shontell of Business Insider. Links to blogs by entrepreneurial thinkers such as Guy Kawaski, Penelope Trunk, Seth Godin and more.
  14. Meetup — search “entrepreneurship” to find meetup groups for start-ups, bootstrappers, and entrepreneurs, possibly just like you.
  15. DeskWanted — find a coworking space near you, or list one
  16. Animoto — make a totally unique, creative animated slideshow explaining your site or blog
  17. Dezquare — find a web or print designer who vibes with your design sensibilities and get a quote on a project
  18. Apple One to One — a one-year pass for in-store trainings with Apple trainers to learn the ins and outs of Apple software that can can make your presentations, videos, and slideshows sparkle
  19. MorningStar Financials — take a look at the financials of other players in the space
  20. AngelList — online platform where startups and investors can meet
  21. 10 Legal StartUps to Keep You Out of Trouble — blog post by Natasha Murashev, of StartUp Stats, re: new legal startups on the scene, including those that have forms available for startups.
  22. Privacy Icons for Privacy Policies — initiative by Disconnect to categorize privacy policies–a way to find privacy policies aligned with your startup’s goals. Read more here
  23. Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist — book by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
  24. Instagram — it’s more than a photo-sharing app—its the way millennials and their successors are building communities–around images and experiences
  25. Pinterest — expand your reach by finding ways to integrate this way of sharing content
  26. Facebook Groups — These private groups can be a way to manage internal communication on Facebook. Besides, you’re probably on FB all the time anyway—might as well get your startup updates here too!
  27. HootSuite — manage your startup’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. accounts from one place and schedule posts too.
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Learning Adaptive Persistence from ‘Life Entrepreneurs’

The new year is swiftly underway and with its first month nearly behind us, an interesting theme seems to be taking hold at the Innov8Social headquarters.
Adaptive persistence. The concept, described by entrepreneurs and leadership experts Christopher Gergen and Gregg Vanourek in their book Life Entrepreneurs, describes a trait social innovators can develop in the face of adversity.
growing through concrete
What is adaptive persistence?
Adaptive persistence is applying flexibility and ingenuity to situations of resistance, rejection, and refusal—all common ends a new social innovator is likely to face.  Specifically Gergen and Vanourek describe it as “hanging in through adversity while creatively tailoring one’s approach the circumstances.”
How does adaptive persistence apply to social innovation?
Social innovation, at its essence, is about finding new connections between existing disciplines, subjects, and concepts. It’s about look at how business can create social impact. Or how a triple bottom line can be integrated in a company’s bookkeeping. It focuses on the entrepreneurial potential of maximizing impact of a non-profit beyond maximizing funding.
It looks at existing societal issues, environmental concerns, and proven solutions with fresh eyes and innovative intention.
All of that, however, is to say that social innovation is about trying, testing, and calculating leaps of faith to achieve new success. And along the way, a social innovator is nearly guaranteed to face some form of resistance–internal, external, and everything in between.
In those situations, the concept of adaptive persistence can provide a respite. It can be a recharging station. The choices are not only to keep doing or stop doing—adaptive persistence creates the option to refine, reframe, and recalibrate efforts continually and consistently so that small failures can be written off and released, making way for new incremental successes.
A new year of Innov8Social
2012 is shaping up to be a bold and interesting year for Innov8Social. While we have spent the past months dipping a toe in the social innovation sea, the new year brings new opportunities for furthering understanding, being able to discern grey areas of the field, and beginning to discriminate nuances of its practice.
You may notice sporadic posting in the early part of the year—the exploration is very much alive and occurring in offline avenues which will be reported on in due time.
As we use concepts like adaptive persistence to navigate the waters, we hope it can provide clarity and support to you in your social innovation exploration.
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