Tools we use at ownpath!

When we started off 3.5 years ago building the ownpath platform, it was a landscape of haze with us trying to figure out our way through the dark! We knew what we wanted to do, but how of doing it was a bit of a challenge.

Today, we are running 7 cohorts simultaneously with 50+ Fellows spread across the country & abroad. And it took us a (few) village(s)! I can honestly say it definitely takes more than the occasional spreadsheets & emails.

As an infant start-up, choosing the right tools to build our brand was imperative. We won’t say we knew for sure what worked & what didn’t, but after a few iterations we landed on tools we thought would be best to help us do our work.

So, what are the tools we used to build the ownpath community?

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Discord

We use Discord primarily to communicate with the learners, create communities for different cohorts and enable ease of communication. And the small (but dedicated) team at ownpath uses Discord voice channels to run their meetings, or sometimes just chat. Great communities have been built on this platform. So we figured it would be a great place to start!

Zoom

We won’t waste time introducing Zoom. You know it, our Fellows know it, even my uncle living under a rock knows it. It’s simple, easy-to-use & accessible for all. We use it to schedule our masterclass & sessions, with the links being shared via Google Calendar hits. Zoom is also where we meet every Thursday for our all-hands-meetings and every Friday for hang-out sessions. (We most often just end up playing codenames.)

Notion

This is one of the core tools we use. TBH, Notion is something that’s not really used in older companies where Google Docs is still the reigning champion for office work. At ownpath however, we found ourselves in desperate need of a platform that helps us streamline all our stuff - content planning & publishing, reading material for Fellows, onboarding kits for mentors & Fellows, user research, etc. Cue: Notion. The best part is, we’ve been able to customise it as we want!

Basecamp

Recently started using Basecamp at ownpath because it’s a great product management tool. Basecamp makes collaboration seem like child’s play. It gives us a clear idea of how different cohorts are running simultaneously while enabling us to streamline reminders, updates & emails for each Fellow. We also use it to help our Fellows access resources such as recorded masterclasses & sessions.

Vimeo

No ads! Need we say more? Aside from that, we find that we can create & manage high-quality videos through Vimeo with a lot of ease. In terms of features & flexibility, Vimeo has a few advantages that serve us well: replacing existing video while keeping URL intact, password-enabled videos, web-player branding that can be customised with our logo & advanced analytics tracking.

FigJam

We use FigJam for - you guessed it - brainstorming sessions. ‘Product planning’, ‘Growth planning’, and ‘Community brainstorming’ are just some of the many files you will find on the ownpath Figma channel. The collaboration tool is extremely effective for exploring new ideas & organising them. Even our comms team (without a thorough idea of design tools) finds it easy to use. Our favourite features? The ticker, the stickers & the animated emoticons.

Here are a few special mentions of other tools that make life easier for us.

a) Google Workspace: Sheets, presentations & docs.

b) Airtable: a low-code platform for building collaborative apps. Helps us customise our workflow & maintain our databases.

c) Plausible: for tracking website analytics.

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