Can millennials learn the spirit of entrepreneurship? These 7 apps help
We have reached an interesting point in the journey of entrepreneurship as a concept. What started as something you could do if you had a really cool brainwave and the support of an investor has evolved to an almost romanticised yet intimidating aspiration. There is no guarantee of success but there is often more uncertainty and accountability than a regular corporate job. Becoming an entrepreneur is rightly considered a leap of faith.
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The journey of an entrepreneur usually starts with accepting that it is a way of life in the shared economy and is no longer limited to the elite club of startup founders. If company values and brand principles are anything to go by, a 21st-century star employee is now as much of an entrepreneur as a successful startup founder. It is a talisman for success. But if the entrepreneurial spirit does not always come naturally to you, you can always find help in the app store.
We found seven apps that promise to kick-start your entrepreneurial journey, whether your endgame is a corporate C-suite or building a winning startup.
Set and track goals with GoalsOnTrack
The journey of entrepreneurship starts with setting achievable goals. GoalsOnTrack uses psychology and personal development best practices to help users set and achieve professional and personal goals. It allows users to track goals, develop customised plans and timelines to achieve them, checkmark completed tasks, and more. The app also has an inbuilt journal which allows you to record progress in a visual format.
Available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store
Record thoughts and idea on the go with Evernote
The best thing since your pre-teen journal of thoughts and ideas, Evernote is a freemium suite of software designed for note-taking and archiving. It lets you record your inspiration and ideas, to-do lists, and more on the go and syncs seamlessly across devices. You can also use Evernote to present notes in full screen and scan PDFs and images.
Available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store
Cultivate and nurture the creative instinct with Brainsparker
This app is a powerhouse of exercises, images, and quotes to nurture your creativity. It helps users keep their thinking hats on and overcome creative blocks with impromptu ideas and mini-projects. You can also schedule the app to send you “brainsparkers” at a certain time every day or every week – a time you can set aside as “gym for your brains.”
Available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store
“Save inspiration for later” with Pocket
With Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, Outlook, and more at your fingertips, inspiration can strike anytime, anywhere. But the click-and-move-on culture our busy lives have brought upon us also means that you sometimes miss the most inspiring stories because your WhatsApp group buzzed with a new joke or you got a client call you could not put off. Pocket is a handy bookmarking app that allows readers to manage reading lists for later reference. It comes integrated with over 500 applications including Twitter, Flipboard, Pulse, and Zite. It can save several formats including text, pictures, and video, making it even more functional for the new wave of information distribution and consumption.
Available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store
Save time everywhere you can with Workflow
Winner of the Apple Design Award and Best of App Store in 2015, Workflow is a powerful and increasingly popular personal automation and time-management tool rolled into one. It allows users to customise their phone to bypass tasks that are a waste of time. It can get you a taxi just in time for your next meeting, post travel pictures on Instagram, update your blog, and even call your parents in the middle of a busy day. Download and customise Workflow to stop wasting time on the mundane, using it for doing bigger, better things instead.
Available on Apple App Store
Manage your money with MVelopes
Saving up for a bigger goal is important for anyone who lives and breathes entrepreneurship. MVelopes, a personal finance and budget-tracker app, makes the process easier with its UI and design. The app allows you to break down monthly budgets (based on income) into smaller categories like food, phone, entertainment, travel, and savings. Once a user exhausts a spending envelope, they can either wait till the next month to use money from that category or transfer money from another category. This real-time interface ensures that users know how they are faring against their monthly budget plan. The free version of MVelopes allows up to 25 categories. It also syncs up to four accounts, helping users track online transactions and expenses as well.
Available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store
Get inspired with TED
TED has inspired a whole generation of millennials, first with offline talks and then with YouTube videos and more. The TED app now allows users to browse, watch, and save millions of inspiring TED Talks. Whether it is to have thought-leading conversations at your fingertips or to learn the art of presentations and conversations, TED is one of your best bets for inspiration in real time.
Available on Google Play Store and Apple App Store
Ultimately, the spirit of entrepreneurship focuses on creativity, innovation, and the ability to sustain networks — anywhere. It rewards self-starters and is a common trait in those who believe in doing. Whether you are a university student with aspirations to contribute to the economy and community, a professional who aspires to a fast-track career, or a budding startup founder, the key to success lies in finding ways to innovate in the everyday situations that usually go unnoticed. Learning these life skills on an app is just a starting point. Entrepreneurship is a way of life, possibly the only one that will survive the rat race we 21st-century millennials have ahead of us.