When you have a great idea for a startup or a service the first thing you desire to do is create it, talk about it, and see what people think.

In creating a minimum viable product, entrepreneurs choose between experiments that can validate or invalidate their assumptions about a business model. – N. Taylor Thompson

These experiments could be anything from interviews with potential customers, trying to build a client base on the promise of a future product, or building a basic version of your idea and testing it in the market.

That last one is what we’re going to focus on. How can you create software to make a product a reality?

For some people, this means sitting down and writing code. Line after line slowly pieces together the idea and shapes details until a version which works exists.

This is how we make software. It’s how we’ve always made software.

However, you wouldn’t think you needed years of coding experience to create a blog. You could just start a Medium account or a Tumblr, or whichever platform is trendy right now.

Because you’re not the only person who wanted to build a blog, other people with greater technical skill developed tools to help you build blogs without needing to code.

This makes it easier and faster for everyone. But it’s not just blogs which you can build without coding.

In this article, we’ll look at a number of different tools you can use to build a whole range of products by pointing and clicking and dragging and dropping.

If you want to make your product a reality, rapidly building a first working iteration is a very useful option to get started!

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Imagine if you had an invisible robot running around the internet doing all kinds of tasks for you.

That’s a bot. 🤖

Bots live on Twitter, on Wall Street and in factories.

They cut down on pesky repetitive tasks and do things that would take humans much more time and energy.

Bots started out as weak, experimental and expensive, but the rise of SaaS and automation means that you can have your very own family of bots, living exactly where you work: Slack.

Slack isn’t just a place to chat with your team, it can be extended to:

• Check your emails or aggregate your newsletters into a public channel
• Send notifications from Trello, JIRA, or hundreds of other apps
• Stream tweets that match a certain hashtag or keyword
• Update your calendar
• Save your reminders and to-dos
• Store company knowledge and resources (like a chatbot attached to a wiki)
• …and a million more time-saving (and fun) things

Slack is simple, text-based, searchable and allows you to customize it in creative ways. It’s the perfect environment for simple bots that can replace the need for time-consuming or interrupting tasks, and its Slack App directory makes it easy to find and plug a bot right into Slack ready to use.

But, before we get into all of the cool stuff Slack bots can do, let’s get the basics down first and talk about the original: Slackbot!

Most Slack users know Slackbot as the friendly and helpful character that helps them set up their profile. It sits in always-on mode in your direct messages, occasionally popping up to give you notifications. It’s easy to forget, but you’re missing out on a lot of great features if you overlook it.

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A single Bitcoin in 2010 cost less than one cent. Now, one Bitcoin is valued at about $3,500.

You probably already know about Bitcoin, and that massive jump in value is likely why.

But what about Ethereum which has nearly $30 billion worth of coins in circulation? Or emerging coins like Ripple or Litecoin? Joke currencies like Dogecoin or FedoraCoin? The deeper you dig into the blossoming world of cryptocurrencies the weirder it seems to get.

Don’t let the memes fool you, though. Cryptocurrencies are establishing themselves as the real deal. Their use values are appearing and their massive levels of inflation have already made some people a lot of money!

Given the seeming technological complexities of cryptocurrency, many young people are the forming the public body of participants who are bringing these new currencies into the mainstream. As the New York Times put it:

“Grandpa had a pension. This generation has cryptocurrency.”

In this article, the third of our Process Street Future Finance series after Micro-Investing and Equity Crowdfunding, we’ll look at 3 key areas to equip you with the knowledge to jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon before it’s too late:

• What is cryptocurrency and how does it work?
• What currencies are available and how do they differ?
• What are the steps to getting started with cryptocurrencies?

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Are you a wannabe investor, or an aspiring entrepreneur?

There are now more ways than ever to get those valuable connections to make you and others money. The online crowdfunding world is a network of forward thinking companies and people who want to help them succeed.

In the second installment of our Future Finance series, focused on modern investment and millennial-friendly financing, we’re looking at the particular niche of equity crowdfunding.

In 2012, the total global crowdfunding industry estimated fundraising volume was $2.7 billion. In 2015, this had grown to $34 billion. The industry is booming and growing each year, so it’s about time we picked it apart for you.

In this article, we’re going to look at two key areas:

1. How you can become an investor through crowdfunding opportunities including platforms available to help you along your journey.
2. How you can raise investment for your startup through crowdfunding platforms, with expert advice from FlashFunders’s Evan Markiles.

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For a long time, the world of investing was limited to those with access to significant amounts of capital.

If you wanted to invest, you needed large sums of money. If you wanted investment, you needed someone with large sums of money.

The internet is changing this.

$30 million has been put into one micro investing app, $35 million in another, and a whopping $66 million in a further one. Investors see real promise in these micro investing opportunities, and it’s easy to see why.

These apps aim to open up investing to everyone, no matter your budget.

In the first of our Process Street Future Finance series, where we look at modern tech-driven investment options and how the millennial market is shaping the scene, we’re giving the ultimate introduction to micro investing.

We’ll tell you:

• What it is.
• Why it’s hyped.
• Where it’s going.
• How you can get started.

Hold on to your 401(k)s, we’re going in!

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You don’t have to be a consultant to get paid for recommending software. Instead, you can earn money or in-app credits by using a referral program.

In other words, you can earn money for referring products without paying a cent. Yes, I know that sounds like a “I earn $1,537.87 per day from home” clickbait ad, but it’s true.

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According to IDG Enterprise, businesses around the world spent $3.5 billion on video conferencing apps in 2016.

After years of waiting for video calls to take off, we’re finally living in the sci-fi future of face to face calls.

This isn’t new, of course. AT&T developed the earliest form of video call in 1927 and most of us have been using Skype or similar for years.

The difference now is that we have a lot of options on the market for video calling and many of them are geared specifically for video conferencing – making the video call a staple of modern business.

In this article, we’re going to break down the best video conferencing tools on the market and give you the information necessary for you to pick one which suits your business.

We’ll look at 6 key tools and give some special shoutouts to others:

• Zoom
• Join.me
• Skype for Business
• GoToMeeting
• Appear.in
• Google Hangouts

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Evernote is rapidly becoming a staple part of our modern workflows.

From 2009 to 2010, Evernote jumped from 2 million users to 6 million. Impressive, right?

Not compared to its 2017 figures.

Evernote now boasts over 200 million users and over 5 billion notes created. Evernote has become a real player in the world of cloud technologies.  What started off as a simple note-taking app to help you store your thoughts has become a powerful tool with multiple potential use cases.

You can still use Evernote to store your notes, but it is capable of much more than that. The much more is what we’ll be investigating in the course of this article.

If you don’t have an Evernote account already, you can sign up for free here.

There are three key areas we’re going to look at:

• Evernote templates, and how they can expand functionality
• Evernote automation integrations, and the different platforms you can connect with
• Evernote workflows, which have been tried and tested to improve your productivity

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Imagine my pain:

I wanted to pretend I was using the 1998 iteration of Google search, but couldn’t figure out how.

Since I’m a Google search pro, it was easy to find out and fix the situation so I was able to get some sleep that night:

Such search mastery. Do you want to be a pro like that too? 😉

On a more serious note, in this article I’m going to teach you everything you need to know about using Google (not gaming it, like we’re all usually trying to do).

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Over the last 6 chapters of our consultant’s guide to Process Street I’ve gone through the basic and advanced features, example processes, compared process documentation software, documenting client processes and monetizing our partner program (and the app in general).

In other words, you’re almost good to go. The only thing I have left to highlight are some extra small business resources for consultants to help you stay up-to-date on tips and tactics, improve your business practices in general, and to improve your toolkit.

I’ll be focusing on:

• Blogs and websites to widen your knowledge
• Ebooks to tackle complex topics and help you read more
• Podcasts to turn dead air into productive listening
• Posts to give concise insights into practices and principles
• Premade templates which are ready to use in your own organization, or to customize for your clients
• Tools to improve your stack

After all, it pays to be prepared.

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