Every startup has a bag of go-to tricks and tools, and the new “What’s in your Bag” series is dedicated to unveiling some of PIE community’s favorites. This series is a compilation of essential tools for team communication, analytics, engineering, and—in general—successful startup life.
Here’s a look at the top two favorite tools for communication.
Kato is a team chat service used for real-time internal communication by companies large and small. It can be used for group communication via forums, private messaging and file sharing, so it significantly reduces the number of emails teams send back and forth each day. It’s also a great platform to share very relevant, funny (and/or) distracting .gifs with the team.
.gif pick of the week:
Kat from StandIn spoke about using the platform in more ways. “Kato also has ad hoc rooms that you can spin up per user and embed in your site, which is really appealing for us.” They’re currently thinking about integrating that into their My Account sections for support.
“One of the most important pieces… err parts of PIE is the collaboration among the companies in the space,” said Rick Turoczy, cofounder and general manager. “And for our staff, it’s a great way to have multiple conversations open without having to swap windows or rooms. We’ve found that Kato provides us with a way to interact with both current startups and alums without a great deal of friction. And with an awful lot of gifs. ”
Learn more about Kato here.
Slack is another favorite among some of the companies here at PIE. Companies like AppThwack, Fleck, and StandIn mostly boast about its clean interface and polished UI.
“You can put code in it and have it formatted, and it’s better for displaying content from pasted links.” – Asa, StandIn
“We have been using Slack and it’s just so darn polished. iOS, Android and Mac clients, better design, great features. It’s really awesome.” -Rory, Fleck
Not only does Slack have great design, but it allows for custom emojis—that’s Kyle from Stublisher’s favorite part.
While both Kato and Slack are great tools, they both still have room for improvement. “One thing Kato has that Slack has been saying is coming for a few months and has yet to deliver is public support channels so you can use Slack with customers/potential customers.” – Trent, AppThwack
Check out Slack for yourself here, and stay tuned for more startup essentials next week!
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