Canva, Calm and code: 30 business leaders share the tech they can’t do their jobs without

It’s 2021, the era of remote work and e-commerce, and pretty much no business operates without using some kind of tech, whether that’s behind the scenes or way up front. 

But what is actually useful? What makes people more efficient, more connected and more effective at work?

We reached out to 30 business owners, startup founders, investors and general tech-types, to find out what tech they use most, and what actually works. We asked them to share the tools they can’t run their business, or do their job, without.

And they delivered.

What stood out was the vast range of different tools business owners rely on. But, equally, a few of the same solutions cropped up again and again for use in industries that, on the face of it, would appear to have little in common.

A lot of our business owners highlighted tools like Slack and Zoom, among other communication and collaboration tools, which have become essential since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Others turn to meditation and sleep apps, and other tech to help them manage their mental health.

Productivity tech is also popular, as are tools helping to tame out-of-control inboxes. Even the humble book gets a mention.

And of course, a few of our respondents couldn’t be contained to just one tech product. Some named two or three. Others got considerably more carried away.

We know not all of these tools will work in your business. In fact, some would be considered a little niche. But if you are looking for inspiration, they come tried, tested and recommended.

If not, isn’t it fun to get a little insight into how other people operate?

Here’s the technology Australian small business owners, startup founders, investors and leaders just can’t do their jobs without.

Sam Wong, partner at Blackbird Ventures

Superhuman

Superhuman, the email client.

I struggled with ‘inbox-zero’ and Superhuman was the only thing that worked for me to get my email into a manageable state.

They have just perfected the UX. It is addictive and delightful to get through your email, as well as just way faster.

I spend less time doing email and I get more done, and my job is a lot of emails.

It’s hugely valuable for me, to the point where we got a shared EA resource this year, and I had to move email clients in order to collaborate with her on my email.

I found it harder and slower to get to inbox zero even with her in my inbox.

I just said, ‘forget it, I’m going to go back to Superhuman’, and I was able to free her up for something more valuable.

I can’t live without Superhuman. I talk about it all the time to anyone who will listen; I’m such a fan.

Samantha Wong. Source: Supplied

Flavia Tata Nardini, founder and chief executive of Fleet Space

Golang

No one has ever asked me this question.

My first instinct is to say software. Everything that we have here runs on software based technology. I don’t think the space industry would be where it is today without the software revolution.

We run our hardware with software.

If you look at satellites and space 15 years ago you would have a team of all hardware engineers who just build a case. I think that tells you a lot about how space has changed.

Specifically, we use a software programming language called Golang, which was developed by Google. Now, we’re bringing it to space.

It’s very new, and our entire team uses it. It was created by Google to allow everyone, even if you’re not a developer, to learn some pretty complex language in a really fast way.

We’ve got a lot of people coming in, learning it very, very fast, and it’s great.

That’s such a nerdy answer — I’m sorry! But we’re putting Golang into space, and that’s cool.

Fleet Space co-founder and chief Flavia Tata Nardini. Source: supplied.

Andrew Barnes, founder and chief executive of Go1

Books

A book. One of the things I like to remind our team about is that technology doesn’t necessarily need to be new; it doesn’t need to be digital. Technology can be quite broadly defined.

Books and reading is one of the most incredible ways to grow and learn.

I don’t have a go-to, but it’s always helpful to read from a range of different sources.

I just finished Becoming by Michelle Obama. It’s totally separate to the work that I do, but an absolutely incredible story from an incredible person.

Some of the stories of challenge and adversity and resilience are useful to apply to business, but also to know that that’s just part of life.

There are other business books that I’ve read and enjoyed as well. There are always good opportunities to learn things from different authors’ perspectives.

GO1 co-founder and chief Andrew Barnes. Source: supplied.

Kim Teo, founder and chief executive of Mr Yum

Front

Front! People are passionate about their favourite productivity tools, and I’ve become a convert to this shared inbox tool. My co-founder Kerry Osborn replaced Gmail with Front when we were just a team of 10, so that we could collaborate next to emails in real time. Now 100+ employees use Front to make our internal communications more efficient.

In Front, there is no ‘forwarding’ or ‘mark as read’ — emails stay open until you archive them, and instead of forwarding, you tag colleagues in a chat thread. It means max visibility and efficiency, especially when someone is working through a complex query with one of our partners. Plus, Front’s UI focuses on improving your ‘flow’, so you can use rules and keyboard hacks to keep churning through a busy inbox.

Mr Yum co-founder and chief Kim Teo. Source: supplied.

Simon Griffiths, co-founder and chief executive of Who Gives a Crap

Calm and Oura Ring

When it comes to leading Who Gives A Crap, there are a few pieces of tech that I couldn’t live without. Namely, the Calm app or my Oura Ring for the simple fact that I can’t run the business without sleep.

Using Calm and the Oura Ring has been a sleep breakthrough for me, helping to drive my productivity and focus at work.

Who Gives A Crap co-founder and chief executive Simon Griffiths. Source: Supplied

Dom Price, work futurist at Atlassian

Phone and Whatsapp

Probably my phone. If I was to ask my girlfriend, I think she would say my phone.

Specifically, WhatsApp is my connection to my soccer team here in Australia, it’s my connection to my family back in the UK; it’s the epicentre of GIFs and funny videos and laughter.

In the last 18 months, it’s kept me connected with those people that I can’t physically connect with. At the same time, let’s be honest, it’s a massive distraction. It’s a fun distraction.

At work, we have a huge amount of tech at Atlassian that we use for synchronous and asynchronous conversation, and for work.

Slack we use for instant messaging. But, I’ve got into a habit of, whatever point of the day I’m finishing for the day — and it varies each day — I try not to go onto my Slack after that.

Being in a global business, it’s flashing 24/7. If I look at it at 9pm, and there’s something there that’s urgent, I can still reply to it.

The weird thing is, there are a lot of colleagues’ chat rooms on WhatsApp, but our focus of conversation is a lot more jovial and social, whereas I’m keeping Slack more to the business chat.

Atlassian work futurist, Dom Price. Source: Supplied

Alex Hattingh, chief people officer at Employment Hero

Slack

While we used Slack before COVID-19, it’s only grown in importance since the remote-work revolution.

As this is one piece of tech I rely heavily on to do my job efficiently and effectively, I’m focused on ways to harness Slack properly for asynchronous working and team building.

For example, creating community club channels and encouraging staff to join interest groups has been a nice touch in the new remote-first setup.

Employment Hero chief people officer Alex Hattingh. Source: supplied.

Rachael Neumann, co-founder of Flying Fox Ventures

Notion

Notion has quickly become the digital hub for Flying Fox Ventures. Notion is a low cost, no code platform that is flexible enough to let us do virtually anything we need to do collaboratively as a distributed team, and with over a hundred investors and founders accessing Notion pages dedicated to them.

We use it for internal team project management (think kanban boards) and externally, have created a resources portal for our founders and personal password protected investor pages, and have even built a deal flow dashboard that we’re able to share with all of our investors so they can pop in and check out deals while they’re in flight.

Notion is just getting better and better, adding more integrations every day (a great strategy reminder for startups by the way, don’t build everything: use API layers to let others build above and below you!).

Flying Fox Ventures founders Rachael Neumann and Kylie Frazer. Source: supplied.

Anna Ji, head of product for Clipchamp

Amplitude

Amplitude, our product analytics tool, houses all the behavioural data we rely on everyday to make important decisions.

It gets the team to make data-led decisions, instead of basing these on personal preference. When used in combination with qualitative research, we get to deeply understand how customers behave and why they do the things they do.

Anna Ji, head of product for Clipchamp. Source: supplied.

Prisca Ongonga-Daehn, Founder and chief executive of Baresop

Trello

I love Trello. It’s my go to for project management.

As a startup running multiple projects, it keeps everyone in the loop in real time at various stages of the project.

One of the key reasons our team uses Trello is because of its simplicity.

Baresop Founder and chief executive Prisca Ongonga-Daehn. Source: supplied.

Adam Milgrom, partner at Giant Leap

Applied

A key consideration for all our portfolio companies is building a world class team. One tool that we use often and recommend is Applied. They are a hiring platform that helps companies ensure they aren’t ruling out candidates due to subconscious bias and assist in creating high-performing teams.

In our eyes, team diversity is still an underutilised advantage in business. And Applied has a track record in helping recruit diverse candidates, especially in STEM roles. Of the thousands of jobs that are placed using Applied, more than half have gone to women and over two times the amount of candidates with an ethnic background end up in a role.

We loved them so much that we invested in them, but even if we hadn’t, we would recommend the platform anyway. There are plenty of other VCs — such as Airtree, Folklore and Blackbird — and major Australian organisations who have not only used the platform for their own hiring but recommend it as well.

Giant Leap partners Will Richardson, Adam Milgrom and Rachel Yang, and associate Charlie Macdonald. Source: supplied.

Jodie Imam, co-founder and COO of Tractor Ventures

G-Suite, Xero, Notion and HubSpot (and more)

There is so much tech I can’t run our business without. I spend my days jumping between tech tools. I use G-Suite apps all day long, namely Gmail, calendar, sheets, drive and docs.

I use Xero for our accounting and to dig into the financials of the companies we are assessing and working with. Notion is our knowledge hub, we store lots of our information here in our virtual workspace called ‘The Shed’. Things like meeting agendas and notes, sales assets, goals, and resources for our portfolio companies.

I am a self confessed HubSpot fangirl for CRM (marketing and sales funnel mainly). The pricing scales with you and you get the functionality you need at the start and then as you grow. We use Loom for explaining tools and processes. Meanwhile Slack and WhatsApp sing all day.

Tractor Ventures co-founder Jodie Imam. Source: supplied.

Manuri Gunawardena founder and chief executive of Healthmatch

Slack

Being a tech company, choosing one tech is nearly impossible. However, during the past year with COVID making remote work more prevalent, the importance of communication has come to the fore.

Slack has been our main mode of communication, collaboration and culture-building with colleagues. We have multiple channels which aid teams to make quick decisions and get support where necessary. We also have a few fun channels where we share pictures of our furry friends, our latest sourdough recipes and our scenic walking routes.

Not only have we been able to get our work done efficiently, we’ve also been able to check-in with the team to make sure no one is alone during this challenging time.

Healthmatch founder and chief Manuri Gunawardena. Source: supplied.

Alex Sinickas, co-founder and CEO of Milkdrop

3D Printer

Creating genuinely new products, especially products for the human body, involves a lengthy design process and a lot of risk.

Before 3D printing, you’d either need money (hundreds of thousands), or you’d need to wing it and hope that you hit the perfect design within the first few attempts. In the last decade, 3D printing has become affordable and small enough to fit on the workbench. We can build, test and revise our products with a few clicks, over and over again, until we get it right.

For example, when we started designing our ultra-soft silicone breast pump cushion, we ran 20 different iterations of printing, pouring silicone, testing, and tweaking until we felt we had a product that would help as many women as possible.

Even now, after we have progressed to a full-blown medical-grade production facility, we return to the printer any time we want to prototype a new variation or design.

The 3D printer doesn’t come without frustrations. It jams as much as your regular 2D printer, but it’s also saved us over $500,000 in tooling and production costs and probably a few years of effort had we tried to start Milkdrop in the 80s.

It’s not just that we couldn’t run our business without it — we wouldn’t exist without it.

Milkdrop founder Alex Sinickas. Source: supplied.

Renee Wallace, co-founder of Birch Restaurant

Snapseed

Apart from all things Zoom, Google, Xero and social media-related, there is one app that has become integral to our business.

Snapseed is a free app that has high-level photo editing capabilities that allow us to capture and quickly edit images to ensure these are consistent with branding and quality standards we have established.

For a business reliant on its visual appeal, this little app has been a game-changer in ensuring content can be publish-ready as it’s happening.

Birch Restaurant co-founder Renee Wallace. Source: supplied.

Odette Barry, publicist and PR mentor, Odette & Co

Insight Timer

Honestly this is tough — I live on Zoom (I easily clock three or four hours a day in client meetings and classroom-style workshops).

My iPhone screen time says Instagram is my most heavily utilised app on my phone and for good reason: it’s my essential link to my past, current and future students, but also to my business friends in the community (and my sanity!).

But the tech I couldn’t live without though would probably be the meditation app, Insight Timer. I use it to track my daily meditations, which are transformative to my clarity, patience and performance in business (and anti burnout strategy!).

Odette Barry, publicist and PR mentor at Odette & Co. Source: supplied.

Sten Pittet, co-founder and chief executive of Tability

Email (and more)

I’m not sure I can pick only one! I think the easiest would be to divide my answer into three categories. How we communicate, how we plan and how we build.

How we communicate (Slack, Zoom, Loom, Confluence):

Being a remote team means that we heavily rely on Slack and Zoom for catch ups. Slack for rapid-fire chat and leaving traces, Zoom for team meetings.

Loom also comes in handy when you’re trying to explain something that requires several steps or screens — it’s often easier to record yourself than to try to explain this in a chat. Finally I couldn’t do without Confluence for long-form communication. Slack is great, but you can’t rely on it to capture decisions (or make an argument).

Zoom and Confluence win here because it’s also how we capture chats with our customers: get on a conference call via Zoom, then share the notes with the team via Confluence.

How we plan (Amplitude and Ahrefs):

We start every week by looking at Tability to see how we’re tracking on our OKRs. This is where Amplitude comes in handy as it provides a lot of the metrics that we’re using. There’s a slight learning curve, but it’s an excellent tool to understand our funnel and how people are using our platform.

Another tool that I use weekly is Ahrefs. It’s well known among marketers as an SEO tool, but I use it more to get some inspiration for content. You can put in a few keywords and see how people are thinking about those themes.

How we build (Bitbucket, Heroku, Sentry):

We’re a small team, but we still release new improvements and features every week. That wouldn’t be possible without Bitbucket Pipelines, Heroku and Sentry. The first two help us deliver code continuously without having to stress about our deployments, and Sentry is an awesome monitoring platform that helps us stay relaxed once the code is shipped.

I actually wish people would talk more about their tech stacks! I’d love to know what others rely on to be productive from a build perspective.

OK, now I’ll give you the real answer. What’s the one piece of tech that I couldn’t live without?

The answer is: email.

Tability co-founder Sten Pittet (right). Source: supplied.

David Whittle, co-founder and chief executive of Lexer

Telcos

As a customer data and engagement platform with a customer-first attitude, my thoughts immediately went to Lexer’s product, tools that help brands understand and engage customers at every stage of the customer journey, in every channel.

However, when I thought about it further, we wouldn’t have our product without the apps that power our productivity — Google, Asana, Slack, Github, Xero, Harvest, Expensify and the likes.

But then what about the hardware that’s required to power the apps?! I’m almost exclusively Apple — iPhone, iPad, grunty MacBook Pro and my 10 year old Cinema Display.

And then I thought through where the data is stored and processed to power Lexer’s products, our productivity apps and deliver it to the hardware I’m constantly using — the cloud of course.

But ultimately the answer is clear. The one piece of tech we can’t run our business without is our telco network providers — because without Optus, we couldn’t connect to the cloud, our hardware would become useless, our productivity apps would be mute and our product inaccessible to our customers.

Lexer co-founder and chief executive David Whittle. Source: supplied.

Emily-Jane Shurey, marketing manager for ANZ at GoCardless

Slack, Google Docs and Endel

I can’t live without tech that helps me collaborate (especially during remote working). I can’t live without Slack and love their new Huddle feature that allows you to talk while working. It’s better than stopping and calling someone or setting up a Zoom (as sometimes you don’t want to do video) and you can just keep working while you’re talking something through.

If I get sent a Word doc these days I get a bit grumpy. I just love Google Docs and the collaboration aspects of working in one document. If you took this away I don’t think I could work.

I also can’t work without Endel. I’m not great at working and playing music as I get way too into it — either singing along or raving in my chair. This app offers personalised soundscapes that are backed by neuroscience that help you focus, relax, and sleep. The sounds are different depending on the time of day and the weather! Even my dog finds the sounds soothing.

Emily-Jane Shurey, GoCardless marketing manager for Australia and New Zealand. Source: supplied.

Martin Herbst, chief executive of JobAdder

Slack

We’re a tech company, so our most valuable assets are our people and how effectively we work together.

Our team lives on Slack. It’s a comprehensive connective tissue for all of our teams, like a nervous system for our team body.

Could we live without it? Sure, we’d adapt. But we would be much more disconnected, and being connected is critical, especially these days.

Martin Herbst, chief executive of JobAdder. Source: supplied.

Jo-ann Chung, chief producer officer at WLTH

Cloud apps

The one piece of tech that I can’t do my job without is all my day-to-day cloud applications.

As a mother of two who works full time, being able to be connected at all times is critical to helping me achieve a sense of work life balance.

Whether it’s attending video conferences or being able to access emails or documents, the fact that I can do this seamlessly from both my laptop and my phone gives me the flexibility of being able to work from anywhere.

This has allowed me to convert commuting time into productive time giving me more opportunities to attend family events and be there when it counts!

Jo-ann Chung, chief producer officer at WLTH. Source: supplied.

Allison Marron, product manager at RentBetter

Miro

As the product manager at RentBetter, I spend a lot of my time planning out our roadmap. When it comes to focusing on the product vision, Miro is my go-to tool.

It is an online whiteboard and visual collaboration platform that helps the team collectively brainstorm in real-time. I especially enjoy using it for user research and strategy, where the team can use digital sticky notes and wireframes in order to identify new features for our property self-management platform.

It allows the entire cross-functional team of product, UX design, and developers to have a visual space to add their valuable input toward our product strategy.

Allison Marron, product manager at RentBetter. Source: supplied.

Tim O’Neil, co-founder and chief executive of Summon

Notion

Apart from the tech we’ve built internally for our own use — car valuation tools, marketing automation, contracting — the publicly available tech we use daily, and could not live without is Notion. We use Notion for knowledge management, as a vehicle catalogue and for team collaboration.

Although it’s not perfect, the magical thing about it is the flexibility. We were able to start using it from day one, and it’s flexible enough to have adapted to our needs over the past 18 months. Most useful is the blend of content and database items. We can combine written content with structured data, and use them alongside one another in a way, unlike any other tech we have.

We currently use it in place of a Dealer Management System, with our customers’ car details available for our concierge team at any time. It’s also mobile-friendly for when we’re on the road talking with customers and doing test drives.

Tim O’Neil, co-founder and CEO of Summon. Source: supplied.

Nigel Fellowes-Freeman, co-founder and chief executive of Kanopi

Click Up

One tool that I’d recommend is Click Up. It’s a project management and task management tool that has evolved over time to become the central nervous system of our business. With staff in numerous global locations, asynchronous work is key, and we use it to plan goals, track progress and provide cross-team transparency.

Click Up is the best fit for our business given its flexibility and ability to integrate with a lot of tools out there that are dedicated to individual roles within the company. This means our entire team can use a single platform, allowing everyone across the company to be efficient and productive.

Nigel Fellowes-Freeman, founder and chief of Kanopi. Source: supplied.

Hareta McMullin, people consultant and founder of Third Space

Canva

Canva makes creating my Instagram content, presentations and branding collateral easy. As a self-taught user, it’s incredibly intuitive and easy to use.

The range of templates, design customisation options and ability to share directly to other platforms makes Canva the ultimate time-saver for this one-woman band.

Hareta McMullin, people consultant at Third Space. Source: supplied.

Craig Matthews, founder of Stock Box

Shopify

Without doubt, Shopify is the number one piece of tech I use for my business, along with Canva for content/marketing creation and MailerLite for essential communication.

These three pieces of tech are fundamental to the business because of their ease of use, their ability to integrate with each other, and their responsive customer service and support. Without platforms like these, many e-commerce startups would struggle to get started.

Stock Box founder Craig Matthews. Source: supplied.

Murray Smee, founder and give back coordinator, Give Back Health

Xero and Microsoft Teams

As the director of Give Back Health, I spend a lot of time in our accounting software ensuring that we’re setting achievable targets, projections and making sure our financial ‘i’s are dotted and ‘t’s are crossed.

I love Xero for its ease of use, its user-friendly UI, its simplicity, and the accuracy of its reporting. With a click of a button I can download easy-to-understand reports and relay this information internally to all stakeholders. I definitely couldn’t live without Xero.

Also, as we operate at Give Back Health in a 100% virtual environment with multiple staff across Australia, Microsoft Teams allows us to hold daily standups with ease and share documentation, which facilitates easy collaboration and a seamless meeting experience.

We couldn’t function as effectively as we do with our lean team and achieve our ambitious mission without software like Microsoft Teams.

Murray Smee, founder and give back coordinator of Give Back Health. Source: supplied.

Bec Kenny, SEO strategist and founder of Digital Folk

Dubsado

I recently started using Dubsado for my client management and it has been a game-changer!

The automated workflows allow me to save hours of time on admin work, as well as easily being able to see all of my leads and clients in one place. The result? More time and brain space to work on the things I enjoy.

Bec Kenny, SEO strategist and owner of Digital Folk. Source: supplied.

Amee Triscari, business strategist

Zoom, Calendly, Canva

My entire business is online, serving hundreds of women around Australia, so I’m entirely dependent on video hosting and booking technologies.

I use Zoom daily to connect with clients all around Australia from anywhere.

Calendly is my receptionist! This platform makes it easy for clients to book in with me and has removed the need for any admin. It creates a Zoom link, takes payment and syncs directly into my Google calendar.

Without Canva I’d have a hefty design bill. I use Canva for everything from website graphics, Instagram posts to Facebook ads. I can whip up anything I need in a matter of minutes (even from my phone).

Business strategist Amee Triscari. Source: supplied.

Mel Burgess, founder of Oasis Black

Pinterest

Aside from the obvious smart devices all businesses need in this day and age, Pinterest is the social media platform my business couldn’t do without, as it consistently delivers over three-quarters of my ecommerce sales traffic.

Mel Burgess, founder of Oasis Black. Source: supplied.