Secret Tech stack – Fundraising? Cap table tech? Legal tech? Inventory Management? Here are some of the tools that some of the most productive companies use.

And finally on to some specialist applications.

If you’re in fundraise mode, I highly recommend Crunchbase for some really good insightful research, that allows you to research, not only investors, but also potentially other companies, companies like yourself, maybe competitors, you’re having a look at all the different funding rounds, that those companies have been through, what they’ve raised, who’s invested in them and really having a detailed look at some of the potential investors that you may want to be in contact with.

Another tool that’s maybe a bit pricier, but extremely good to help you through a fundraise is Pitchbook. They charge in US dollars, they also have only an annual subscription, which does make it probably, or certainly a lot more costly than Crunchbase. But if you looking for detailed knowledge and research for a particular fundraise, there is nothing better in the market than Pitchbook.

If you are looking to run an equity cap table, certainly a complex cap table, then you definitely want to be looking at Carta.

If you’ve only got one or two shelters, then certainly Excel’s fine and can certainly do the job. But if you’ve got a complex structure, where you’ve got shares, common stock, you might have a simple agreement for future equity convertible notes, you might have warrants when the valuation complexity and the range of different shelters grows, then you definitely are going to look forward to Carta.

Carta handles all of that complexity, it allows your investors to even have a portal to log in themselves and it also gives you a nice view of what the waterfall valuations could be at every step of their cap table, highly recommend something like Carta.

Another area that you might need some help with is just general contractual and legal guidance, and there’s a nice website called ‘Business in a Box’ that can give you legal agreements and contracts for virtually any application needed.

You might want to have an agency agreement or you looking to onboard and some sales commission structures. Pretty much anything you can think of, those agreement templates are available for you in ‘Business in a Box’.

If you do have a very complex group structure, you might be in high growth mode, and you looking to automate a lot of the complexity that comes with group structures there also number of tools that help to do just that really modern corporate performance management, tools like One Stream is the excellent for managing group, consolidations and reporting can also do budget planning and forecasting.

We’ve also got intercompany tools like Black Line. They’re really great for intercompany eliminations and solve a lot of the complexity at that level and finally, a specialist application that you might need for inventory management.

There are a number that do have app related integration with your accounting tool that we mentioned earlier, but go and have a look at tools like Dear, Katana, Unleashed. These are three really, really good tools for  managing a factory and for managing inventory, building stock, there are a number out there as well.

But I’ve personally researched those ones and those are really really good options.

And they often have native integration directly with other Xero or even QuickBooks Online.

Brian is a seasoned finance expert who has experience spanning both the corporate world as a SVP in various finance and sales roles, as well as the consulting space, helping a variety of business to grow and prosper.