Author: wp_archive_user

Zack’s App of the Week: Newsle

Zack’s App of the Week: Newsle

Apr 6, 2014 |

It’s probably no secret that at OurCrowd, it’s a full time job to communicate with all our constituencies. It’s very important for us to stay informed on what’s happening with our investors, our companies, and our partners and communicate important messages to them along the way. One of the tools I habitually use to find out news on my network is called Newsle. I’ve battled using Google Alerts, RSS feeds, and social media for years to stay on top of what’s happening in my network. With alerts, I’m bombarded with too many emails, adding to the problem of email overload. And RSS feeds are too passive to be used to stay abreast of current events. Social media is, well, just a firehouse of frequently useless information. That’s why I like Newsle. It turns down the noise associated with staying in touch by filtering out the less essential stuff about my network. Instead, I get an email when something impactful is happening with my contacts. Maybe, they’ve switched companies, signed a large partnership, or been promoted — if they were,...

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Zack’s App of the Week: Session Buddy

Zack’s App of the Week: Session Buddy

Mar 16, 2014 |

Regardless of whether you’re an Apple fanboy or a loyal Microsoft user, chances are you probably multitask with multiple browser windows open at the same time. I do — I’m not too proud to admit it. Through the course of the day in my community management and marketing work, it’s possible that I’ll have 3-4 browser windows open at the same time and probably close to 10-15 browser tabs open. A recent hire at OurCrowd (welcome, Nate!) told me about Session Buddy, a Chrome plugin.  Apparently, I’m a little late to the game as it’s had over 8109 reviews on the Chrome Store, but the app has quickly worked its way into my daily worklife, boosting my productivity and making my desktop more management. What Session Buddy does is allow you to essentially save sessions — that means save the windows and tabs you have open — to be able to open them again at another time. So, if you get into the office and open up your social media profiles on different tabs, you could create a “Social...

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Zack’s App of the Week: Basecamp

Zack’s App of the Week: Basecamp

Mar 4, 2014 |

When we started working on OurCrowd in 2012, like any early-stage startup, our core team needed to collaborate on projects that spanned the entire company. Whether it was web development or marketing campaigns, we needed a way — and a place — to plan and run our projects. For this, we use Basecamp. Basecamp: Our homebase for projects We create projects in Basecamp when we work collaboratively. We set up a project, invite in the relevant team members and use the simple, easy-to-use tools that Basecamp provides to plan, schedule, and delegate tasks to our teams. Basecamp’s usefulness is in its simplicity. Sure, you could add A LOT more functionality to this project management tool. But its developer, 37 Signals, has resisted calls to add functionality to the software. For us, the task management functionality doesn’t align so well with our internal workflows (and that’s why we use another App of the Week, Asana). But otherwise, we’re comfortable using Basecamp to help us manage our cross-company and cross-functionality projects. [xyz-ihs...

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Zack’s App of The Week: OfficeAutoPilot

Zack’s App of The Week: OfficeAutoPilot

Feb 9, 2014 |

At OurCrowd, most of the communications we do with our investors is over email. Our deal launches, our event notifications, our messaging — is primarily driven by email. So, early on, when it came time to determine which CRM solution we were going to use, we spent a lot of time researching the different options out there. There’s absolutely been a proliferation of great CRM tools, with tons of choices for businesses like ours. We had a few requirements: that the CRM be easy enough to use that non-technical people could set it up and run it it wouldn’t break the bank — we didn’t want to spend $20,000 per year for a CRM that it tied into our website, so we could analyze the efficacy of our messaging and marketing campaigns that it have some basic workflow associated with it (for example, after someone makes an investment, some tracking to ensure we communicate properly with the right documentation) We chose this week’s App of the Week, OfficeAutoPilot (soon to be re-branded, Ontraport). Though no solution is perfect, we’ve been...

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Zack’s App of the Week: StartupDigest

Zack’s App of the Week: StartupDigest

Feb 3, 2014 |

We like to say that investing in startups is a team sport. Truth is, it actually requires an entire support community — lawyers, accountants, investors, universities — to help nurture successful startups. So, a great place for investors to start their search for investment candidates is to begin locally. This week’s app of the week is StartupDigest: a (free) newsletter of all things startup in your local area. Essentially, it’s a great curated event calendar. From networking events to technology hackathons to investor meetings, this newsletter is published in close to 100 cities worldwide (see the Israel edition here). You can also subscribe to events in a specific industry — very useful for entrepreneurs or investors who are very focused in their activities. The newsletter works like this: People sign up to curate local or industry-specific newsletters These curators identify important events or receive submissions for them periodically, these events are rolled together into an email newsletter you can subscribe to What do you use to stay current on local tech events?   [xyz-ihs...

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