New Beginnings

One thing they don't tell you about starting something new: You get to be your own IT Director, Finance Director, Ops Manager, Technical Advisor, and BD Director! And yet, you also HAVE to be all of those things.

For example, which CRM platform should you use? Salesforce is too built out for what I need, but there's at least 5-6 others I could use. How do you decide?

Accounting software? Quickbooks, yes? Also an expensive subscription. There are a variety of other free/low cost options depending on what you need, with different tiers and products.

Bank? Local credit union or giant conglomerate. Benefits and downsides to both!

Cloud services? Microsoft? Google? AWS?

Meeting platform? Teams? Google Meet? Zoom?

Invoicing and billing? Wave, Zelle, and Melio are all options with varying fees and structures, especially if you're invoicing small NGOs rather than large government contractors.

Some of these systems integrate with each other. Some don't.

Each of these choices lock you into a particular ecosystem and if they don't talk to each other, now you've made your life harder rather than easier.

So if you ever wonder why every large government contractor just uses whatever terrible thing Oracle developed, I get it now. Path dependency and integration...UX be damned.

Welcome to my Ted Talk. :)