Wave Partners With Box, MailChimp, General Assembly And More To Launch One-Stop Shopping Tool For Startups

A new convergence of startups and Internet companies has come together to provide other early-stage companies with the tools required to get up and running quickly, and most importantly, cheaply. It’s sort of like a Humble Indie Bundle, except instead of gaming, GetStartupTools.com offers software from Wave, Box, MailChimp, Zendesk, Uberflip and General Assembly that most brand new internet companies would need or at least appreciate.

Toronto-based Wave operates its free accounting platform, and now also does payroll, as well as invoicing and tracking receipts via mobile apps. As part of the package, they’ll be offering three free months of payroll in the U.S. in Canada, which is normally a paid service on their freemium SaaS model. General Assembly offers online education and courses, with a lot of focus on subjects startups will benefit from. Box is offering 10GB of free storage for current sign-ups, MailChimp is doing an exclusive $50 credit for new sign-ups to its newsletter service, and Zendesk is doing a $1,000 credit with a free year of subscription for its customer support tool. Finally, Uberflip is offering two months of free use for its content marketing platform.

Of course, Get Startup Tools isn’t something that these companies have just put together out of the goodness of their hearts – each enjoys a very healthy influx of customers from startup clients, and early-stage companies, especially those in tech but also beyond, are a key target demographic for each, especially given that most are low-cost alternatives to more traditional and complex enterprise software. Joining forces, especially since no company on the list really steps on the toes of any other in terms of their service areas, makes a lot of sense for each party involved.

Wave and the others might be more or less self-interested in setting this up, but that doesn’t mean it’s not also a convenient resource for startup companies, either. Wave CEO Kirk Simpson said that putting together a bundle is a way of making it easier and cheaper to launch a company, and that’s true in this case, especially given the special discounts some of the participants are offering. Plus it shows a renewed interest in the startup market by each of those companies involved, which is refreshing because often you see businesses go after more established customers as their own company matures.

As Mac software and game creators have long known, a bundle is a good way to shift product. We’ll see if the same applies for startup-focused SaaS providers.