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up vote 6 down vote favorite

First of all thank you for checking this question, I wanted to ask another entrepreneurs who have an start-up what are the most common IT services needed by their companies and what they normally look for when outsourcing tasks or projects.

I have an IT support company which is a start-up too and it's main objective is to provide support for another start-ups, we have launched the website recently with some services (LAMP/Ruby platforms administration, PC Support, etc) but want to know your experience in order to provide the support for companies like yours requires.

Thank you very much for your time checking this question.

Have a great day.

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Thank you very much for your input on this question! We truly appreciate it! We are working on an off-site backup solution using AWS/S3 as backend so I think we are on a good direction, the main objective is to backup servers automatically. Do you think that is interesting this service or that we should add backup for simple user PCs too? Thank you very much for your time! All the best, Andres Montalban – Andres Montalban Jun 1 '10 at 17:56
@andreas: +1 for a great question – morpheous Jun 2 '10 at 15:15

10 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Off-site back-ups, properly managed.

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up vote 2 down vote

A complete solutions which includes:

  • Site hosting
  • E-mail
  • Tech support (general through network setup)
  • Backups with offsite storage
  • Corporate knowledge capture infrastructure (like CRM and wiki stuff)
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up vote 1 down vote

Billing and invoicing.

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up vote 1 down vote

Take any of the other suggestions and focus more on creating a service specific for startups. Don't create some "tool" that can be configured any way the user wants, but a service that does it the way it should be done with as little thought, energy, and effort as possible.

Example: If someone already knows how to setup an accounting system or hires an accountant, they can just buy QuickBooks. This isn't going to give the startup a competitive advantage; its just a necessary evil to do business. What is an advantage is having your accounting system already setup for them.

There has to be more in common among startups to setup an accounting system than there are differences. The service should literally lead them through the process of setup with as many decisions made in advance. "But I want to use my personal checking account for the business." Well, you shouldn't. Step #1 Provide the following information and an online checking account will be created at Bank X for Company Y with PayPal, Visa, MasterCard merchant account, etc. Step #2 Employees on payroll? Do this...

Take a LAMP website. Here is the Server Name\Website, Database Server\Database Name. Now do a backup to your offsite datacenter under an appropriate schedule and send the user an email showing them how to do a restore and make them test it. Done.

Again, just do it using the best practices. Why reinvent the wheel? A startup has plenty to worry about. Save them from themselves.

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up vote 1 down vote

Excellent Post and of course, excellent replies too! I've personally worked with several startups right from 5-people company to 100-people company. The need will vary based on what their business is. But, core areas are:

  1. Infrastructure - Servers, Email, Storage
  2. Shared Storage - Secured area for saving files
  3. Billing/Invoicing
  4. Applications - this list could really get long - it all depends on their vision on technology.

Based on my experience and talking to customers, we are developing SAAS based solution specialized for smaller organizations i.e. use it out of the box and price point. Currently it handles CRM, Project Management, Employee Management, Document Management and Customer Support. We are still in beta, but we are open to work with other startups who can participate and help us build the product. As a token of appreciation, we will be giving you free subscription ranging from 3 months to 1 year - totally based on your participation.

Email me at rj at appsoncloud.com if you would like to participate. You can also find more information at www.appsoncloud.com. Again, we are in beta, so you won't find polished tutorials on the website.

Good luck.

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up vote 0 down vote

Here's the sequence of needs I've seen in the start up with which I am working:

1) e-mail

2) domain name purchase

3) off site back up

4) site development and testing

5) hosting during testing

6) hosting LAMP platform with simple DB

7 Hosting LAMPL platform with more complex DB, more robust security, and dramatic scalability designed in and pre-tested.

It strikes me that the most value and most opportunity would be somewhere around steps 6 and then 7.

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up vote 0 down vote

Dependable site hosting with a trustworthy provider prepared to handle rapid growth.

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up vote 0 down vote

www.transMediaSEO.com is my startup that specifically addresses this question.

One of the common UNSERVED IT services needed by startup is Social Media and Website CONTENT synchronization--database or CMS with Analytics software.

Why?

Entrepreneurs are so focused on their products, especially IT entrepreneurs, that they forget that their customers must be able to FIND and UNDERSTAND before they buy.

By the time startups build infrastructure they are very stretched in resources. Then they discover that customers don't quite understand what they do differently or that customers need much more education that they thought. Learning costs are not in their business plan.

See this Twitter post for some detail.

@resonantview http://tinyurl.com/sustainabilityMAP sheds some light on common Sustainability tradeoffs. Hopefully Innovation moves us beyond this view.

Cheers, Nick www.transMediaSEO.com www.neuropersona.com www.speedsynch.com www.scenario2.com

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up vote 0 down vote

We just got interviewed for this really useful article that asked us what web apps our start up can't live without! Check out the full post here, http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/freelancing-tools/10-great-apps-used-by-the-workingpoint-team/

but the list is:

1) WorkingPoint: accounting, bookkeeping & invoicing (www.workingpoint.com)
2) Assistly: Our online Support Center
3) Skype: For all our communications
4) Wordpress: For our Blog
5) Vertical Response: To send out emails
6) SeoMoz: To track our SEO Marketing Efforts
7) Jing: To record screen video of our product
8) SKitch: More screen shots!
9) Github: to share code
10) VmWare Fusion: virtual machine t run windows on our macs

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up vote 0 down vote

We just got interviewed for this really useful article that asked us what web apps our start up can't live without! Check out the full post here, http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/freelancing-tools/10-great-apps-used-by-the-workingpoint-team/

but the list is:

1) WorkingPoint: accounting, bookkeeping & invoicing (www.workingpoint.com)
2) Assistly: Our online Support Center
3) Skype: For all our communications
4) Wordpress: For our Blog
5) Vertical Response: To send out emails
6) SeoMoz: To track our SEO Marketing Efforts
7) Jing: To record screen video of our product
8) SKitch: More screen shots!
9) Github: to share code
10) VmWare Fusion: virtual machine t run windows on our macs

share|improve this answer

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