PSA: Brad Feld has a new book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship, it’s available on kindle and paperback and inspired this post.

I can trace most of my professional journey (and frankly, a good chunk of the last decade of my life) to two things: a startup event with free food/beer and a powerful idea I didn’t know at a time, called Give First.

It started my senior year of college at CU-Boulder. I showed up at a New Tech Boulder event at Silicon Flatirons, mostly because I was a hungry, thirsty college student – I was also hungry for an internship that summer – and they promised free pizza and beer. I figured I’d linger near the food table, maybe meet a few people, and maybe even find a summer internship. What I didn’t know was that I’d walk into a room that would set the entire arc of my professional life in motion.

That’s where I met Julie Penner, who had just started as a program manager for something called Techstars. I nodded like I’d heard of it (I hadn’t), and we connected for coffee shortly after. A few weeks later, I became her first associate for the Techstars Boulder 2014 program. Julie took a change on me and it rippled in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

From there, it snowballed:

• Techstars led me to Foundry Group, working closely with Seth Levine and around Brad Feld
• Foundry led me to community involvement via Pledge1% CO (+ Global), B Corp and B Local Colorado it also led me to Bolster, founded by Foundry Group alumni
• Bolster led me to further startup community work (Colorado Startups) and eventually starting my own fractional consulting practice
• and the Colorado startup community and network has been the throughline the whole way.

But before all that, there was an email.

Junior year of college, I cold-emailed Brad Feld offering a lot if information he didn’t ask for (attaching an itinerary to a startup trip I was taking in Israel) and asked; if I could get a free copy of his new book Startup Life (reminder – hungry, thirsty college kid), if he’d be interested in going on a walk with me. While it may have taken a week or so, Brad replied. No, we didn’t go for a walk, but that was the start to my GiveFirst journey before I even knew the phrase or philosophy.

The way Brad responded (thoughtfully, completely, and with no strings attached) modeled something I’ve now come to see as a core philosophy in the Colorado and startup community: Give First.

I didn’t know it then, but that’s what he was doing. And it stuck. I learned how the business world could work – or at least how I wanted it to work – through Brad, through Seth Levine, through people like Jaclyn Hester, who, funny enough, denied me from Startup Summer that same year I met Julie while she was the Executive director of Startup Summer as part of Startup Colorado. I like to joke that her “rejection” sent me on the path to Techstars instead and eventually to working with her at Foundry.

I now introduce myself in group settings as a community instigator (a term I can also credit to Brad). Whether it’s hosting Startup Ski Days or Hikes, Happy Hours, instigating at Boulder or Denver Startup Week, everything I do to build community comes from this same place: someone (many people) gave first to me, and I want to do the same.

My driving force isn’t to create or host events, but to provide evergreen opportunities and resources (like the Colorado Startups Community Calendar) for the community that can change the trajectory for:

• the next hungry, thirsty college student looking for an internship
• the newcomer who just moved to Colorado or popping their head back out post covid or heads-down time
• the career switcher entering tech from government, nonprofits, or corporate life
• anyone from any background interested in jumping into the Startup world

I have deep topophilia (love of place) for Colorado. I’ve called it home for 15 years and plan to for many more. The connections, serendipity, and generosity I’ve found here changed my trajectory. And I owe so much of that to Give First.

Full circle here (and wrapping up, I promise) – last week, I had the pleasure of hosting a #GiveFirst fireside chat with Brad and Julie at Boulder New Tech (yep, that same event I first met Julie at). Brad talked about his Give First origin story as a teenager being in (board) rooms he didn’t belong in, thoughts about his evolution with the philosophy and the proliferation of it as a mantra through Techstars and beyond. Julie has boomeranged back into leading the event after helping run it a decade+ ago. Brad was out of hibernation, talking about his 9th book, Give First, which I did get a free copy of (thanks to Dave Mayer at Technical Integrity and Ryan St. Pierre at Boulder Codes) and walked him back to his car after the event. Some poetry in that a decade+ later…

If you’re curious about the philosophy that shaped so much of me and this community, I highly recommend Brad’s new book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship. It’s now out and available on kindle and paperback.

It’s not just a slogan – it’s a philosophy and North Star for me, and maybe you too!

#GiveFirst

Pictures from Boulder New Tech & Colorado Startups event ft. Give First Fireside Chat with Brad Feld.
June 12, 2025.

This post was originally published on The Startup Stack.

True to this blog’s name, Micah’s Mashup, this post is a compilation of resources from Bolster and our CEO, Matt Blumberg and his blog StartupCEO.com.

What’s the difference between Advisors, Mentors, Coaches, and Board Members?

When it comes to choosing individuals to offer their advice, it can be easy to put everything into one category, but that’s not a particularly beneficial perspective.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all secret formula for managing your network of advisor, investor, and mentor relationships, here are some patterns and best practices. Below, you’ll find an advisor relationship cheat sheet.

Feel free to download this guide as an easy reference pdf here.

Why do I need a board in the first place?

While boards are helpful in holding CEOs and other leaders accountable, they can also be a strategic tool for your company to take advantage of. There are a few specific roles many boards excel at and might play within your startup. Here are four to consider:

1. To be a forcing function.
2. To help in pattern matching.
3. To help you see both the forest and the trees.
4. To drive intellectually honest discussion and debate.

How many board members do I really need?

This new startup board mantra is simple: 1-1-1. It suggests:

• 1 member of the management team should be on your board.
• Then 1 independent director for every 1 investor
• Simply put, this means you should grow from having 1, to 2, to 3 independent directors as your board grows from 3, to 5, to 7 members.

What should I look for in a new board member?

Here is an in-depth method to help founders formulate their director search criteria and think about board-readiness in a broader way.

1. Prior board or board-equivalent experience.*
2. Advisory needs/gaps.
3. Cultural/experiential attributes.
4. Governance philosophy.

*Often companies are only looking for director candidates who have already served on a board. However, be sure to ask for their perspective on other board-readiness attributes, like regular interaction with a corporate board, experience with an advisory role, or experience serving on a community or nonprofit board. These broader experiences open up the possibility of identifying potential board members who have a wider range of experiences and who are more likely to be from diverse backgrounds themselves. Diverse boards lead to better performance.

Next, now that I know how many and who, how do I recruit and interview directors?

• Take the process seriously.
• Source broadly.
• Interview many people–and by “interview,” I mean have a thoughtful, candid conversation.
• Check references.
• Have finalists “audition” by attending a board meeting
• Have no fear of rejecting potential board members.
• Finally, give the most gracious “dings” of your career when you tell the unsuccessful candidates that you’re going with someone else – shoot for a “blow them away” rejection.

The team dynamic is also critical to keep in mind when you’re adding a board member. This post about choosing board members,makes a good point:

“Select people who will get along with each other. The very best boards I am on are friendly social active groups. Serious business doesn’t have to be stilted and formal. It can and should be fun.”

We’ve covered a lot of ground in this post and you may be asking, “uh – is there a TLDR or cheatsheet?”

Drawing from his personal experience and anecdotes from dozens of client CEOs, Bolster’s CEO Matt Blumberg outlined these tried and true “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Boards.”

• Habit 1: Begin with the board in mind
• Habit 2: Be proactive about board recruiting
• Habit 3: Keep your board balanced using the Rule of 1s
• Habit 4: Cultivate mutual accountability and respect
• Habit 5: Drive intellectually honest discussions
• Habit 6: Lean in on strategy, lean out on tactics
• Habit 7: Think outside the box

At the end of the day, boards are there to support and direct a company. There’s no perfect formula, but by internalizing some of the lessons and tips outlined above, CEOs can cultivate strong, dynamic boards for their companies.

Want even more resources on building and scaling your board?

• Check out Bolster’s free e-book on How to Build Your Board and this infographic about board makeup
• Grab a copy of Startup Boards (see below to get a free copy)
• Sign up for a free Bolster client account to benchmark your board and browse our marketplace, which includes thousands of executives available for executive or board roles. Learn more and signup here and you’ll get a $1,000 credit as well as complimentary copies of Startup Boards, Startup CEO, and Startup CXO

Before joining Bolster at the end of 2020, I spent 5+ years building the network and community at Foundry, a venture capital fund based in Boulder, CO that invests in companies as well as other venture funds. My role was to build and strengthen the network and community of CEOs, founders, executives, investing partners and operators at our Partner Funds, as well as represent us in the community and startup ecosystem nationally. As a team of one full time person focused on community, I sought out a network of peers building community at VCs, Accelerators, Nonprofits, and beyond.

I’m lucky that my role at Bolster, leading our partnerships with investors, keeps me connected to this amazing network of community/network/platform building peer groups.

I find myself happily digging into the weeds with these folks on how they manage their community jumping from high-level strategy into the nitty gritty of what platform and tools they are leveraging.

Often, I share resources that I discovered over the years that I wish I had in the early days to help guide and inform my community building strategy. I’ve sent these so many times over email I figured it was time to write them up and share publicly.

Major gratitude and hat tip to the folks that created these resources and communities. Please comment on this post or email/DM me on Twitter/LI if there are other resources you’ve found helpful I’ve missed!

VC Platform/Community/Network:

Here are links to a blog series a VC Platform peer, Cory Bolotsky, wrote laying out different components of platform/community. I highly encourage any current VC platform lead or team member to go through the few question survey to get your honeycomb matrix here to show opportunities/blind spots. He breaks down the components of VC platform strategy in a really digestible and comprehensive (albeit a long form) way. If you’re a VC community builder, you will eat this up.

• A Tool to Build & Benchmark Your VC Platform Strategy
• Ecosystem, Network, and Community. The Strategy Behind Your VC Firm’s Most Important Relationships
• The VC Community Honeycomb: Identifying and Prioritizing Your Firm’s Community
• The Tricks to Building and Engaging Your VC Firm’s Community

The VC Platform Field Guide was created by a group of Platform leaders (largely UK Based) that runs through:

• How VC firms can improve deal flow
• Lead portfolio companies to success
• And contribute to a thriving tech ecosystem

It’s 60 pages filled with insights and strategies contributed by platform leads from VC funds such as Atomico, AngelList, Seedcamp, Entrepreneur First & many others.

Belle Raab from Visible VC wrote a great guide on “VC Portfolio Support Best Practices” you can check out here.

Back in the day, building a tool that sold to just VC firms was not seen as a viable business model. Now VC specific tools are popping up left and right as well as firms using multi-purpose no-code/low-code tools like Airtable, Zapier, and Notion to power their firm on the backend (Will Bricker at Hustle Fund wrote a great piece on their stack here). Check out VC Stack for a directory of tools and resources

VC Platform

A group I highly recommend checking out and joining (if you meet the criteria outlined here) is the VC Platform community (no cost) of 1k+ platform leaders around the globe. This is the VC Platform Megaphone and THE megagroup you should absolutely be part of if you’re doing this kind of work. This community has been solely run by volunteers including Cory Bolotsky mentioned above.

Let’s Talk Ops

If you’re looking for some additional VC Ops community randing from platform to finance and operations at VC firms, Lets Talk Ops led by Kristen Ostro, is for VC Ops leaders and has chapters in SF, Silicon Valley, LA, and NY. It’s a super close knit and awesome community that hosts intimate in-person events, annual summits, mentorship programs, and has an incredibly valuable and active slack group.

General Community Building Resources

David Spinks, CMX, and Business of Belonging Book

Another great follow and leader in the community leader space (not necessarily VC) is David Spinks (also a great follow on twitter) who started CMX (THE community for community builders helping them thrive) and works at Bevy (Community Events Platform). He wrote a book about how to make community your competitive advantage called The Business of Belonging I recently read and have already started recommending to community leaders left and right.

People & Co (acq. by Substack in 2021)

People & Co are the folks behind a book/podcast/company that highlights community leaders and helped me greatly along my commmunity building journey. I found their terminology and framing (Build your community with people, not for them + stages of a community; spark the flame, stoke the fire, pass the torch) as well as their general approach and style spot on!

I’ve enjoyed listening to their podcast, Get Together, and their Get Together book is a community builders bible along with the Business of Belonging I mentioned above. They get into tactical tips of community building after illustrating different communities with short vignettes. Love a good story and they are PRO storytellers

I love this graphic they created that perfectly highlights why Mesh Networks are so powerful and the strong belief in the notion of Metcalfe’s Law – the power of a network increases exponentially with the number of nodes on that network.

As I usually say at the end of my emails sharing some of these above resources “Hope above is helpful and not totally overwhelming. ”

Happy community building, you got this!

Now that Bolster has successfully matched over 100 executives to open roles, we have a lot of data about on-demand executive searches done by the startup and scaleup companies we work with. Below are insights into the market trends and why we think they are here to stay.

As we’ve written previously on the 10 Scenarios Where On-Demand Executives Work Best we look at 4 categories of “on-demand” executive work:

• Interim: Someone fully dedicated to working with a company, but only temporarily
• Fractional: Someone who works a few days a week on a longer-term basis
• Mentoring, Coaching, and Advising: Someone who offers advice or coaching on an ongoing basis
• Project-based Work: Someone who completes a fixed scope of work

#1 The CEO Coach

• CEO Coach is the #1 role we’ve placed to date.
• In a prior post, Bolster CEO, Matt Blumberg, talked about the different types of CEO coaches and the spectrum ranging from “Quasi-Psychiatrist” (type 1) on one end, to “Quasi-Management Consultant” (type 5) on the other end. CEOs are most interested in “type 3” and “type 5” coaches. In other words, tactical coaches to help them scale themselves and their companies.
• Why we think this is here to stay: As more businesses start and continue to scale, CEOs will look to sharpen their skills and be prepared for the next stage of growth and unknowns. More CEOs we work with have a growth mindset, and realize that, in order to scale themselves with their companies, they need a coach and/or mentor to help guide them.

#2 The Independent Board Director

• Independent board seats are being leveraged to build more effective and diverse boards.
• As part of our Board Benchmark Study released earlier this year, we found that 50% of the 200+ CEOs surveyed had an open board seat, many of which were for independents.
• We found that women are three times as likely to hold independent director seats (compared to management or investor seats).
• Only 32% of private company boards we surveyed had independent directors, half of their boards had open independent director seats they expect to fill in the next 12 months.
• Why we think this is here to stay: We found that most private company boards surveyed didn’t have independent directors until the Series C financing round or later. By this point, a company without a diverse board has likely missed out on years’ worth of feedback on decisions relating to product, audience, and employee recruitment. Starting out with a diverse board, even as early as the Seed Stage financing round, can maximize your impact and improve board performance.

#3 The Fractional CMO, CRO and CFO

• Fractional work is the most popular work type searched for by our clients.
• Historically, fractional work has been common in the Finance and Accounting function but is starting to be leveraged across more and more functional areas.
• Within fractional work, companies are most interested in leveraging fractional CMOs, followed by CFOs, then CRO and CHROs.
• CMOs are in high demand and help startups punch above their weight class – clients are leveraging CMOs on a fractional basis most frequently, followed by interim, advisory, then project based.
• We heard this from a CEO when talking about fractional talent “At this stage, we couldn’t afford someone with XYZ’s experience on a full time basis, so we get the benefit of their experience at a lower price and their value to strategic conversations”
• Why we think this is here to stay: As future of work trends have indicated, we’re in the midst of a major talent reshuffling. Employees are considering much more than just compensation for their profession and value things like benefits and flexibility as well as more intangible aspects like fulfillment and belonging that coincide with on-demand work engagements. Employers are becoming more open minded to remote employees as “work from anywhere” has become commonplace.

If you’re a startup or scaleup company that could leverage on-demand executive talent, sign up for a client account to browse our marketplace of 5,000+ executive members, or talk with our client team about current executive talent needs.

-Micah Mador, August 24, 2021

As an on-demand marketplace, we spend a lot of time at Bolster thinking about how CEOs can leverage interim, fractional, and project-based work to augment their teams and achieve scale faster. There are a lot of benefits to working with on-demand talent (and a lot of ways to use it). One model we’ve been using at Bolster is a “try before you buy” approach. When new leaders join the company, we offer the option: How about we start in a fractional capacity before becoming full-time?

Along with my colleagues Micah Mador, who works with me on our portfolio partnerships and community, and Jimmy Davis on our product team, this is the approach we all took when joining Bolster. This was the first time any of us had worked in a fractional capacity, and we learned a lot along the way.

The three of us took a moment to reflect and share the key takeaways from our first fractional jobs. While we all had unique experiences, our lessons demonstrate three critical skills to have as a successful fractional leader: Time management, clarity of role, and communication:

Micah Mador: 10-15 hours a week for one month, then 50% time for one month

• Get really, really good at calendaring (and inbox management).
  Initially I thought I could spend 2-3 days a week on “Bolster time” and pause that work during the rest of the week, but splitting time between two jobs by days of the week didn’t work. I found myself wanting (and needing) to be more responsive. I was trying to minimize context switching but realized it’s inevitable so decided to embrace it with some guardrails. I ended up starting and ending each day in each inbox and worked hard to get them to as close to zero as possible. On the tactical side, I added Bolster work blocks to my calendar as available chunks of time my new colleagues could book internal meetings with me or include me on external ones. I found that a paid Calendly account for $10/mo allows you to sync two calendars (including one in Gmail and one in Outlook) and have the app check for conflicts to avoid double bookings. Gamechanger. I could then just send my calendar link to folks knowing I wouldn’t get double booked.
• Be clear on what you will (and won’t) do.
  Working at any startup can be a bit hectic, chaotic, and ad-hoc. Priorities can change week to week and projects can change or morph over time. As a new fractional member of the team, I wanted to pick up things and add value instantly. To be clear on expectations up front (there are only so many hours in the day/week), I outlined what I thought my role would be in my fractional capacity and shared it with the folks at Bolster to get their feedback and buy-in. It could be helpful to go through this exercise with the company or do your best to distill your conversations into a project and work scope for them to react to. Setting these expectations early on helped to keep me focused and gave me a filter to run requests or ideas through.
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
  I borrowed this one from Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. While it’s natural to want to come into a new company and immediately make an impact, show how you think things should work, implement new systems, etc.; it is usually a good idea to take some time to just get a feel for how things are run and people work. (Of course, in an interim or fractional capacity, the “intake time” may be a lot shorter than if you were starting a full-time role.) Some things that helped me were getting a sense of how internal meetings work (is there a set agenda or structure, shared doc for ideas, cancellation policy if there is nothing new to cover), what software tools the company used (can you “BYOT” – Bring your own tools?), how the team liked to communicate about different things and whether there was a communication hierarchy to tools (slack, email, voxer, zoom, text). I fought my natural inclination to “do” from day one and it allowed me to get a lay of the land before trying to make my mark.

Bethany Crystal: Worked at 50% time for 3 months

• Start every day with a to-do list.
  Back in a luxurious “one job only” world, I used to spend the first hour or so of each workday sort of puttering around my inbox looking for projects to pick up. When juggling two jobs, I just didn’t have the luxury to waste that kind of time. I soon learned that the best thing I could do was to start each day with a very specific list of “what I need to accomplish today” – a sort of “solo standup,” if you will. This immensely helped me to dive right in and maximize my output on a daily basis.
• Schedule time for deep work.
  The trickiest part for me was making sure to give myself time to actually get work done. I learned, without explicitly blocking time on my calendar for focus time and project work, meetings simply popped up from both inboxes all the time. To top it off, I was still breastfeeding my baby at two- or three-hour intervals. I felt like I was constantly getting interrupted! There were some days when I’d go eight hours straight in back-to-back Zoom meetings, then need to end my day right at 5 p.m. to feed the baby and never have time for any follow-ups. Once I realized this was a time blocking problem more than anything else, I started scheduling two-hour time windows at least 3-4 times a week for “Deep Work.” Once I identified the right proportion of time that I needed to be in “meeting work” vs. “deep work,” it was like I’d unlocked a secret bonus level for being fractional. I could finally accomplish my goals.
• Ask yourself: What’s the job to be done? Get that thing done really well.
  Peak performance in a fractional job doesn’t look the same as it might in a full-time world. I had to remind myself more than a few times: “I’m not working two full-time jobs. I’m working two half-time jobs.” This meant fighting against my natural tendency to dive deep into every other project going on at Bolster. When I wasn’t able to direct my limited attention toward a singular focus, I’d end some days feeling frustrated when I felt I made little progress in either role. Eventually I came to realize this important axiom: Being fractional means being able to operate at a high level without needing all of the details. By reminding myself about “the job to be done” – or, the sole focus of my energy in each role – I was able to identify the signal through the noise.

Jimmy Davis: Worked 10 hours a week for 4 months

• Manage others’ expectations regularly (and keep reminding people about it).
  Joining a 6 month old tech startup with no “official” product manager, there was no shortage of product-related work to do. It was important to set expectations and communicate what you will, and won’t, be working on each week. I’d often set goals at the beginning of each week and the 10 hours would fill up pretty quickly. Even attending a one-hour daily standup with the team ate up half of my working hours, so we switched to just three days a week. Whenever new requests would come in, it was important to be transparent about where I was spending my limited time.
• Manage your own expectations regularly (and keep reminding yourself about it).
  There were times when I’d finish a week and feel like I wasn’t accomplishing enough and wanting to do more. I had to keep reminding myself that the amount of time I typically had in a week of work (~40-50 hrs), I was now doing in a month (10 hrs/week * 4 weeks = 40 hrs) – that took me some time to get used to. At the end of the day, I still had a full-time job that was my priority and it was great working fractionally with a team that was extremely flexible, respectful of my time and allowed me to handle meeting schedules that worked best.
• Remember why you’re doing it.
  Prior to joining Bolster, I had been at the same startup for nearly 7 years and had been starting to think about what’s next. Working a fractional role was a perfect opportunity to dip my toes into something else before deciding to dive in (I think this is great for both sides – the fractional worker and the company). Typical fractional workers may take on multiple roles that add up to 100% – I was taking on an additional 20-25% on top of my already 100% full-time job. At times the extra 10 hours a week felt like too much (especially with a 2 year old and 3 month old when I started!) Ultimately, it was a great opportunity for me to take on a “side hustle” while also engaging in a “try before you buy” type model, and gladly it worked out well from both sides and ended in a full-time opportunity.

The three key lessons that flow across all our experience and also across the experience of other fractional executives we’ve interviewed:

• Be intentional about your time
• Get clarity on your role
• Communicate effectively

Whether you’re joining a company as a fractional employee or hiring one for your first time, we hope our lessons learned will make the transition as effective and productive as possible.

– Bethany Crystal, Micah Mador, and Jimmy Davis, February 16 2021

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged here but if there was ever a time to dust off the proverbial keybord and end a 2+ year blog hiatus, now is the time.

I’ll leave this here below and state what should be obvious and self-evident but clearly isn’t based on the happenings the past day/week/month/year/decade(s)/centuries.

Black.Lives.Matter.

Not, All Lives Matter. Not Non-White Lives Matter. Not People of Color Matter. But Black.Lives.Matter.

I am posting this to show my support and that my heart goes out to the black community in the US and around the world that are subjected to racism daily.

While the black community certainly doesn’t need another white male offering his support or problem-solving abilities – my white friends and community might benefit from some resources.

A while back, at the encouragement of my better half, Hannah, I read White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, a book about “Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism“. Criticism of the book acknowledged – I thought it was a good starting point to open my eyes to what is going on around us and why many people (including myself) always jumped to the defensive “but I’m not racist” or took a systemic problem personally (well, we should). It’s not enough to be quietly non-racist.

This weekend, feeling a lot of emotions, I started ‘How To Be An Anti-Rascist’ by Ibram X. Kendi to “arm” myself with some new knowledge and perspectives. The idea in this book is that it’s not enough to just be quietly “non-racist”, but we need to be actively anti-racist.

If you haven’t seen this video of Killer Mike’s Emotional Speech at Atlanta Mayor’s Press Conference or are struggling to put this into words, I recommend watching this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy9io6VEt58&ab_channel=BringingDownTheBand

More info here.

A few weeks ago, my boss, Seth, wrote a post about 2 productivity hacks he’s been using and asked if he could share the list below on his blog. I’ve been putting together a list of tools we’ve been using, experimenting with, or that have been highly recommended by others.

• TextExpander – store frequently types phrases/notes across all devices
• Wunderlist– To Do list on all your devices – supports team collaboration
• Trello – collaborative task list for Teams, works well with Agile/Lean methodologies
• Asana – To-do list that allows for super granular level of detail for todo lists and team collaboration
• Voxer – Walkie talkie/messaging app for instant communication with your closest contacts you want to be more responsive to than email
• Zapier OR IFTTT – connect the tools you use to each other based on triggers/recipes and actions (Ex. Save pocket starred items to Evernote folder)
• Copyclip or Paste – Keep all of your copied/clipboard items in one place so you don’t lose anything
• Charlie App or Accompany* – Easily get a briefing on who you are meeting
• FullContact – a unified address book across accounts, devices and organizations (now supports teams)
• Notability App – Take notes on your ipad and have them sent and OCR to Evernote
• Yoink – Simplify Drag and Drop by using Yoink to move files around your fullscreen apps
• Call please – web/app call list of people to connect with (helps avoid scheduling set times for meetings that don’t need to be scheduled..)
• LastPass or dashlane – Never forget a password or deal with login troubles again!
• F.lux – save your eyes from the eerie blue glow of screens (especially at night)
• Toggl – A simple online timer with a powerful timesheet calculator (see RescueTime to block notifications/programs for work blocks)
• Magnet or spectacle – Mac app to move and resize windows with ease (built into windows)
• Headspace – Although it seems counter-intuitive to use a smart device for meditating, this app will help put you in the right frame of mind
• Blinkist – Book summaries, 1,500+ best-selling nonfiction books, transformed into powerful shorts you can read or listen to in 15 minutes
• Goodreads – Lets users track and rate books and network with other readers
• Pocket – Allows you to easily save webpages for later reading (syncs across devices as well, which is a real bonus)
• Gboard – Android lovers rejoice, iOS now allows 3rd party keyboard, I can’t remember the last time I typed, save effort by swyping!

Chrome/Gmail Extension:

• Full contact or rapporative to see public info on people
• MatterMark – Get info on companies (web & mobile app too)
• Grammarly – Writing-enhancement tool with proofreading capabilities to check for a writer’s adherence to more than 250 grammar rules

Inbox Plugins

• Streak  – Spreadsheet in your inbox, mail merge, email Templates, snooze mail, send later, team collaboration and more.
• MixMax – Awesome for scheduling meetings by sending a live table, avoid the back and forth and double bookings! Also does templates, mail merge and tracks opens, clicks and downloads
• SalesForceIQ – Sales focused CRM
• Unroll.me – Clean’s your inbox – Instantly see a list of all your subscription emails. Unsubscribe easily from whatever you don’t want.

Websites:

• Conspire (recently acquired by FullContact) – see how you are connected to the people you want to reach through your network
• Internet Archive Wayback Machine – See what websites used to look like at a specific point in time
• Power Googling Infograph – Sample search queries to tap into the power of Google Search

Specific Startup tools

• Usepodium.com for pitch feedback
• Docusign OR HelloSign – stop sending PDF’s to sign – streamline the whole process and know when docs are opened, signed, etc.
• Docsend – track, control, send, and present sales materials with real-time document analytics.

Assistant Services

• youcanbook.me or calendly – scheduling made easy, great for sales people, demos or office hours
• Clara ($$)- AI for scheduling (I use Clara for scheduling the majority of my meetings)
• Magic ($) -For simple tasks (schedule oil change, pick up flowers, order food, etc.)
• Pana ($) – Personal travel concierge, book flights by msging Pana where you want to go and when

$ – costs money

* – beta

The high-level goal of this series is to capture tactics and applicable tools, frameworks and strategies to tackle monotonous tasks and free up your time for other things.

Please share any tools you love to use that aren’t listed below in the comments of this post or email me at micah@micahmador.com.

7 Ways to Hack your Inbox

My boss, Seth Levine, recently posted 2 Productivity Hacks That Will Change Your (work) Life, his #2 – Email Isn’t A Good Workflow Tool. I couldn’t agree more, email is an activity that most people have to do and stay up on but it shouldn’t dictate your schedule or be a constant pull 24/7. Below are some frameworks, simple tips and tricks and tactical tools to help you conquer your inbox.

Framework: Pomodoro Technique – use a specific block of time (most use 25-minute blocks) and do email then, give yourself a break if you don’t get through it all in one block. I usually have blocks in the morning (after checking my task list), afternoon and evening to crush through email.

1. TextExpander

This is my most used and shared tool by far! TextExpander saves your fingers and your keyboard, expanding custom keyboard shortcuts into your frequently-used text and pictures. Any text you type and think you might need again, make it into a TextExpander.

• TextExpander syncs across all devices, I recommend setting it up on your computer but having the keyboard on your phone too.

2. Get tasks out of inbox

If an email will take >3 minutes to handle, turn it into a task management system or snooze it (see below)

• Easily make an email actionable by forwarding to your task Management System (I use Asana at work, but trello, wunderlist or others work).

3. Snooze emails

Don’t let anything sit in your inbox, if you don’t have to think about it for a while or you are waiting for a response, snooze it to pop up later and remind you to deal with it or follow-up at a certain date if there is no response.

• Use Yesware, Streak, mixmax or others

4. Scheduling

Avoid the back and forth of offering times, use a scheduling tool! There are a ton out there and three categories I’ve grouped them in.

• The anytime schedulers (best for sales people/founders that want any non-busy time on their calendar to be bookable) – youcanbook.me, calendly, and many others
• Curated schedulers- only offer specific times to a person based on priority and schedule – assistant.to, mixmax, SalesforceIQ, (RIP Sunrise :{ ).
• AI schedulers – while this doesn’t avoid the back and forth all together it takes it off your plate and leaves it to the robots to schedule – Clara Labs, X.ai are a few tackling this. The software isn’t perfect but you can set rules and preferences and they do the heavy lifting.

5. Create filters

Filter out all the noise by sending all your newsletters and known updates out of your inbox and into a folder for when you have time.

• Use Gmail filters, SaneBox or another tool to filter not actionable emails out of your inbox

6. Data enhancement in email

Use a chrome extension to add additional publicly available information on the contacts and companies you email such as links to their social media, recent posts, funding history and other info.

• FullContact, MatterMark, Accompany (Great app to keep track of your network and prep for meetings) and a handful of others.

7. Keyboard shortcuts

Spend less time using your mouse and learn the keyboard shortcuts for your OS (Mac or Windows) and specifically Gmail. If you do have to use your mouse, crank your speed up to navigate faster.

Bonus – Grammarly Chrome Extension

Online proofreading tool that checks text for grammar, punctuation, and style, and features a contextual spelling checker and plagiarism detector.