Three NY startups that will help productivity in your startup
Having attended quite a few events in the New York Startup scene at this stage, one that always stands out is New York Tech Meetup and this week’s was no different. It was a full house yet again at the NYU Skirball Centre where 9 startups took to the stage to demo their products. I’ve picked out three which stood out to me as being particularly useful to early stage startups or anyone for that matter!LRNHave a long commute with no service? Why not put that wasted time to good use by learning to code from your phone. LRN is a brilliant app that gives you basic lessons to JavaScript and Ruby. They start from the very start and presume you have no prior experience (Like me). Each lesson has a quiz to ensure you understand a concept before moving to the next one. Founders Nathan Bernard and Chirag Jain have enjoyed a successful launch with LRN voted best new app in over 100 countries on the app store. Regardless of what type of startup you’re in, even knowing the basics of coding is a great asset to have and means you can communicate more effectively with those of the tech persuasion! http://lrn.com/Wonder Sick of wasting your time on boring desk research? Wonder could become your new personal research assistant. It’s a search engine, but instead of giving you back computer generated results, once you submit a question on Wonder, one of their dedicated researchers will carry out the research and send you a full report on the topic. There is a broad appeal for this service, business’s, students and even those just curious about a topic will use it, but given the mountain of research needed in an early stage startup, outsourcing some of it to Wonder could be an option. Searches are $19 each, though you get your first search free, give it a try and save yourself some time so you can focus on strategic decisions. https://askwonder.com/requestPaper by 53Paper is a free app for the iPad and iPhone that lets you capture your thoughts in a faster, more creative way. The possibilities are endless but primarily it is used for note taking. Instead of having to copy and paste text on the screen, you simply rearrange it with your finger or stylus pen. The intuitive platforms makes it possible to edit photos as notes, create process flows, and add captions etc. so quickly that it will change how you work. Being such a visual product, I find words don’t do it justice and you would be better watching this 1 minute video to get the idea! For those in the startup world, it will save you time when creating flow charts, wireframes, note taking or anything else you would normally put on paper. Download it for free and check it out. https://www.fiftythree.com/A bonus one I must point out for everyone whether in the startup space or not is ‘Issue Voter' who got a great reception from the crowd on the night and I also think it’s a great concept. The website provides transparency on your local political representatives; what they vote on, how often they attend parliament, which way they vote on the issues you care about etc. Given that over 90% of candidates who get re-elected, Issue Voter provides the electorate with data to help them better decide which way to vote.Hopefully these startups will help you in your day to day lives and make you more productive! The next New York Tech Meetup is happening on November 3rd. Details available here