Starting from Scratch
Launching a new business can feel overwhelming. Naturally, you’ll think about things like choosing a company name, finding business partners, and setting up an LLC. But one of the trickiest parts tends to be technology: computer configurations, email, and file storage, to name a few. We hope our insights will help you make these decisions with greater confidence and peace of mind.
I suppose I need a computer?
Since you’re reading a Foundation post, we’ll assume you’ve already decided to go with a Mac. The question now becomes desktop or laptop. Unless you’re doing high-end video editing or manning the reception area, we recommend a laptop. The power and portability of Apple’s current devices are unmatched. It’s just a question of line and size. The adage you get what you pay for has never been truer.
MacBook Airs, while cheaper and lighter, come equipped with less powerful processors and have fewer ports than their Pro counterparts. If you’re doing more than writing up proposals, sending emails, video calls and browsing the web, the MacBook Pro is the better choice. It offers more of everything: more storage, memory, faster processors, and a better display. The battery life is also longer. One important thing to remember: when going through the configuration, you are stuck with what you initially order. There is no way to upgrade the internal storage or memory after the device ships from the factory. Paying a bit more now can extend the device's life by an additional 2-3 years.
What about emails and “the cloud” for storage?
These two categories are being lumped together because there are just two leading players in town if you want an “all-inclusive” approach: Microsoft & Google. Yes, there are other providers for the services individually, but most of our clients are split between the two. Every tech has their personal favorite, but there are distinct benefits that each service has over the other:
Microsoft 365
Its desktop apps and Exchange products have been the go-to for businesses for years. The siren call of Excel, Outlook, Teams, and Word is hard to deny. Thankfully, the Business Standard license comes with the desktop version of the entire Office Suite. Each user gets 50GB of email space and 1TB of personal storage with OneDrive. Plus, the company receives 1 TB of SharePoint/OneDrive storage, with an additional 10GB per licensed account. If you need additional storage, Microsoft does offer upgrades, though its relatively expensive.
Google Workspace
Google Workspace is a well-known and was one of the first to support cloud storage. There’s no desktop app licensing. To get the best experience, you’ll want to access your email and its apps through a web browser, ideally Chrome. While you can add email to Apple Mail, it’s not as smooth as it could be and can sometimes cause problems. Its storage setup is a bit different: each user gets 2TB for everything (i.e., mail, photos, docs). While your personal items stay private, the storage is shared with everyone else in the company. So, if you have 3 employees, you’ll get 6 TB for the company. Like Microsoft, additional storage is available.
Since we’re on the topic of Cloud storage, it’s worth mentioning the following:
There are other storage providers available, such as Box and Dropbox, we won’t do a deep dive on those here. However if you are building your business on Microsoft 365, you may need to consider a third party service because Microsoft’s cloud storage is more expensive than Google’s. Switching cloud storage providers later on will involve transition costs.
If you opt to leverage cloud storage as your business’s file server, you’ll want to consider that when building out your computers. Since the files you’re working on get downloaded to your device, it’s a good idea to make sure you have plenty of space on your local computer. 500GB is the bare minimum we would recommend. If it’s a Creative’s machine, you should seriously consider 1TB.
If you want to go old school and use a centralized server, we recommend a Synology NAS. It’s a fantastic product that offers plenty of flexibility across product lines and configurations. It handles file permissions for both Mac and Windows clients much more gracefully than either macOS file sharing or a Windows Server. It can also easily integrate with cloud storage solutions such as Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive for Business etc, allowing you to keep a local copy of everything you have online.
But now I need to make stuff
For the creatives out there, you’re well aware of Adobe Creative Cloud. What you may not be too familiar with is the Affinity Suite. It combines the functionality of Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop into one app. The basic version is free and mature enough for basic design work. All that’s required to activate the license is creating a Cava account. The AI features, such as generative fill, do require a Cava Pro subscription.
While Affinity can get the job done, it does not have the feature set you may have come to rely on in Creative Cloud. There is a reason why Adobe is the industry standard. If you do decide to make the switch, please keep in mind the following:
Compatibility will be an issue. None of the Adobe apps can open native Affinity files nor can Affinity open Adobe’s proprietary file formats. Documents will need to be saved in standard file formats such as TIFF, PDF, EPS or JPG.
Proprietary features may not play nice in either direction.
Frustrations when working within a new platform. Muscle memory is real and takes time to unlearn.
Affinity does not have anything similar to Adobe’s Typekit. If you work with a lot of fonts, licensing costs will be an additional expense to consider.
Cloud Libraries, as they’re used in Adobe, do not currently exist in Affinity.
But wait there’s more
There’s plenty of other topics we didn’t cover. From accounting packages, to security software. We’re just scratching the surface for now. With all of these decisions, we know it can be a daunting decision. That’s why we’re here to help. If you want a few less things to worry about on your proverbial checklist to get going, please feel free to reach out. Our team can help consult and advise with what might make your workflow work.