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2022 has been a challenging year, to say the least. This, in part, played a role in derailing climate progress. A recent UN climate report found we’re “on a pathway to global warming of more than double the 1.5-degree (C, or 2.7-degrees F) limit that was agreed in Paris in 2015.”

We like to be cautiously optimistic about the future, but when things are not looking too bright, it’s important to reflect, assess what went wrong, and consider how the world is working towards a solution. Earth Day is an opportunity to highlight makers who are building paths to a greener future.

Last week we spoke about Stripe’s new initiative, Frontier, to purchase $925M worth of carbon removal, and Climeworks, which uses direct air capture technology to capture carbon dioxide on a filter.

The Pledge to Fix is working to grow the Circular Economy, asking individuals and companies to make a pledge to fix a product the next time it breaks instead of throwing it away, as well as opt for refurbished items. While there’s no doubt we need governmental agencies and large corporations to step up, initiatives like this offer us a way to work together towards reducing our footprint.

If you want to do more, also in the circular shopping space, Changing Room recently launched Eco-Index so users can evaluate the environmental and social impact of the products they’re shopping for. The browser extension shows real-time, lower-impact alternatives.

Verdoo is a browser extension that allows online buyers to offset their carbon footprint for free. Every time you make an online purchase, the Verdoo team plants at least one tree.

Do you know any GreenTech products you’d like to share with the community?

You may have heard tales of start-ups being sold on eBay (see: Justin Kan’s first start-up, Kiko), but a big part of the coverage in today’s tech news tends to be focused on large acquisitions. The world of M&A goes beyond tech giants acquiring smaller companies though.

EarlyAcquire is launching today as a marketplace for buying and selling side projects. What makes this different is that the team aims “to provide the best curated deals under $10k before anyone else can get them on other networks,” as well as allow anonymous acquisitions. Once you submit your project, the EarlyAcquire team reviews and publishes it for others to see. When someone is interested in buying, you can start negotiating using its internal messaging system.

EarlyAcquire is not the first of its kind. MicroAcquire made a splash when it launched a couple of years ago, with almost 7,000 of you upvoting it. The product has seen 500+ acquisitions since its debut and over $300M in closed deals. Yesterday, MicroAquire’s founder announced the first $10M deal. Some called it a MassiveAcquire.

Golden Kitty Award winner, Tiny Acquisitions, also recently launched its second iteration. While the platform started with the premise of strictly allowing deals under $5k, it recently announced it’s expanding to accommodate listings of projects up to $100k.

If you’re a micro-SaaS founder and considering making an exit one day but need a little help growing, SaaSmate.co launched today to help makers find product partnerships, reduce customer acquisition costs, and mutually expand customer bases.

There was a time when crafting a logo or designing a landing page was strictly reserved for those who either owned expensive software or had years of design experience. If successful Internet stories have taught us anything, it’s that makers turning outdated technology into mainstream tools is something to bet on. Especially when those can be used by anyone willing to explore the abundant resources and tips.

Canva and Figma are two of those success stories. While they don’t guarantee you’ll be the next Jony Ive, they’ve been an inspiration to others building tools that address design needs through different approaches. Here are some recent launches that caught our attention:

Kittl recently launched its graphic design platform that aims to bridge the gap between traditional design tools like Photoshop and Illustrator (which tend to have a steeper learning curve), and Canva. The makers describe the comparison as “Kittl is more an easy-to-use version of Illustrator whereas Canva is more a version of InDesign.”

The tool also provides a community-built library with thousands of ready-to-use templates, fonts, and graphic elements.

Spline Beta, which scored a whopping 1200 upvotes on its launch day, makes 3D design more accessible through real-time collaboration, animation, and 3D modeling. You can enable interactivity on your objects and control their textures.

Overflow 2.0 lets you create collaborative and interactive user flow diagrams. Its new version allows you to save designs in the Overflow cloud, access a full version history of any document with rollback, and integrate apps like Adobe XD, Figma, Sketch, and Photoshop.

Stage positions itself as a prototyping tool for non-designers. The app allows you to create mobile UX/UI designs using its pre-existing smart components and template screens.

And finally, Golden Kitty Award winner Uizard is a beginner-friendly, AI-powered design tool to help you create web and mobile app prototypes.

“I’ll think about this later,” you tell yourself as you read yet another Slack message or email that you very well know will forget to reply to. Until it’s time to switch off for the night and the mental note you made randomly creeps in.

The task management space is an attractive one (albeit, rather crowded) for both makers and consumers as it seems like each launch is targeted at different types of users and needs. While, generally speaking, most of these apps help you accomplish the same thing – organize and remember to do stuff – the way they do that can look different.

Mindmesh, which is launching today after three months in closed beta, integrates with all of your apps through a browser extension. What this means is that if you receive an email you need to act on but don’t have the time right away, you can send it to your “virtual desk.” The same goes for apps like Github, Slack, or Figma. Once your tasks, notes, or events are there, you can choose if you want to act upon them or hit snooze.

The makers interviewed over 300 product people to figure out what’s blocking their productivity, to which they’ve noticed a recurring pain point of having to context switch and jump from one task to another. Mindmesh aims to solve this by allowing you to set aside what’s not urgent and focus on the task at hand.

While some may choose traditional note-taking apps like Supernotes or Reflect to create a backlog of their to-dos, here are some other approaches:

🍱 Bento helps you do less by structuring your tasks into a “packing box” with only three compartments. Much like a bento box, this forces you to only focus on the essential.

➡️ Schedulist lets you add anything as a task, including images and files, which you then swipe once completed.

⏳ Taskable 2.0 and Llama Life use time-blocking to give more context to how much of your to-do list you can complete.

🎨 For the creative folks, you might want to check out these visual knowledge bases.

Finally, if you’re more of a “pen and paper” person and only need to remember tasks every once in a while, Time and Again can help remind you to water your plants, clean your room, or replace your toothbrush.

About two weeks ago, back when Twitter wasn’t the current thing being discussed on, well, Twitter, you may have seen these threads floating around of vivid, somewhat strange images. At first glance, you might think surrealism is bouncing back a century after its birth. You wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, but there’s a bit more to the story.

Images range from teddy bears working on new AI research on the moon in the 1980s, depictions of what life will look like on Mars, and probably one of our favorites – a wise cat meditating in the Himalayas searching for enlightenment.

The tool in question is the successor of DALL-E, which OpenAI introduced in early 2021. In short, DALL-E is an AI system that generates images from text, using a process called diffusion, a model that learns to create images by gradually noising and denoising its training data. You simply write down what you’d like to see and DALL-E creates an image based on that description. DALL-E 2 takes this technology and research further, adding higher accuracy and resolution, as well as the ability to create new versions of already generated images.

OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, called the new project “the most delightful thing to play with we’ve created so far… and fun in a way I haven’t felt from technology in a while.” While that’s certainly true and its abilities are impressive, the OpenAI team is purposefully not releasing DALL-E publicly until it’s able to mitigate and better understand its risks and limitations, which is said to be this summer.

It remains to be seen how those working on Generative AI will be able to address its challenges (think deep fakes, reinforcement of stereotypes, overall bias), but there’s certainly something exciting about seeing the foundations of artificial general intelligence being put in place and what makers will build with releases like OpenAI’s project.

Until we can get our hands on DALL-E 2, here are a few other recently launched tools using AI:

Quicklines automatically creates personalized ice breakers to add to your cold outreach. You upload a CSV, wait three minutes, and receive the sheet of phrases to use in the first sentence of cold emails.

Cartoonize generates a cartoon based on your selfie.

Elai.io helps you create educational and marketing video content with AI-generated humans from plain text.

If you scroll Instagram or TikTok for 20 minutes, you'll probably come across a post or two pitting generation against generation. In the workplace, stereotypical differences between Gen Z and Millennials present Gen Zers as… let’s say experts in setting work-life boundaries, while Millennials (and older generations) are more in the “call me anytime” camp.

But younger professionals probably have more in common than they think, and one of those similarities is a love for digital audio. Last year a Spotify study showed that 69% of millennials and 61% of Gen Zs think audio formats are one of the greatest ways to tell stories.

Though Slack Huddles and audio rooms have made it easier to chat with colleagues and network, Giide’s launch reminded us that audio hasn’t totally infiltrated our work communications — yet. The tool offers a new way to present to your team using images, video, questions, and interactive audio.

“I knew that businesses needed to learn to communicate with Millennials and Gen Z the way they've learned to consume information. Fifty-page PDFs, whitepapers, hours of video, reports, or long presentations weren't going to cut it,” wrote Giide co-founder Allison Kent-Smith.

Inserting audio on Giide's no-code platform offers flexibility. If you want a polished sound you can upload existing audio (maybe using a tool like Podcastle to clean up your sound first), or you can simply speak into your phone or desktop mic and start recording. One commenter surfaced that Giide’s audio capabilities could also offer a better way to communicate with those who have visual impairments.

The competition over who gets to power your pitch deck has really heated up over the last few years. Pitch has grown to serve tens of thousands of teams, while Canva and Adobe took bigger steps into the space last year. Newcomer Tome made a splash on its launch day last month, too.

Do you think audio is the secret to keeping your co-workers' attention? Here’s one way to find out.

gm, friends.

Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of our Web3 feed – a place where you can discover the latest Web3 projects and learn the ins and outs of this new era of the Internet.

Nearly 6,000 Web3 projects have launched on Product Hunt, 35,000 of you are already following the crypto topic, and Web3-related keyword searches make up over 32% of the top 8 most searched terms — we took the hint.

The idea for the feed came about during one of our annual internal hackathons, when Web3 engineer, Tim Carambat, proposed building a central hub for Web3 enthusiasts that not only allows them to discover new projects but also gives makers a way to reach new audiences.

In its current format, the feed allows you to browse through projects, filtering by the category they fit in – DAO, DApp, DeFi, or by the blockchain they’ve been built on. We designed the feed while keeping in mind the particularities of Web3 projects. The embedded Twitter follower count may, for instance, help you better understand the hype and community behind a launch.

The Web3 space can be confusing and it’s hard to know where to start. We get that and we’re with you. That’s why we’ve also partnered with experts, like David Phelps and Linda Xie, to help shed some light on Web3 concepts. Whether you still don't understand NFTs or you’re ready to dive into more advanced topics, we’ve curated a collection of resources ranging from understanding the uses cases of NFTs to deeper dives into the economics of them.

We’ve still got a lot planned and we hope this initiative encourages more of you to launch. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so make sure to drop us your feedback!

We probably don’t need to remind you of the importance of reducing carbon emissions, but you might be less familiar with progress around removing the gigatons of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere and ocean.

A new initiative led by Stripe called Frontier, in partnership with Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey, is putting the topic in the spotlight. The plan is to purchase $925M worth of carbon removal from companies developing carbon removal technologies. The model is called an AMC (advance market commitment), a term borrowed from NGOs working on vaccine development and distribution. It works like a binding contract that guarantees a viable market for a product once it’s successfully developed. Frontier intends to encourage researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors to accelerate the development of carbon removal technologies by guaranteeing future demand for them.

Stripe is using Stripe Climate, a tool that allows businesses to direct a fraction of their revenue towards carbon dioxide removal, to provide some customers to Frontier.

Frontier is one of many global and corporate initiatives in the carbon removal space. Climeworks just raised $600M for its direct air capture technology. Governments are trying to do their part too. The UK and EU have committed to capture 6 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

While some may celebrate the news, if you’re feeling skeptical, we don’t blame you. So far, fewer than 10K tons of carbon dioxide have been captured to date, and it’s believed 6 billion tons need to be removed by 2050 to achieve net-zero carbon emissions and limit global warming.

So is Frontier just a marketing stunt from some of big tech’s most controversial players? There’s no doubt such a partnership will make a big PR splash and executives be early to pat themselves on the back. But the reality of our meager progress against carbon removal reveals that we all need to be doing more to support such technologies and we’re hopeful that Stripe’s solution may kickstart more progress.

Are you optimistic about Frontier? Join the conversation.

Here’s hoping that today’s edition of the daily newsletter won’t put you to sleep the way this product aims to.

Berlin-based company Endel first launched in late 2018 as a sound wellness product that helps you relax, focus, and sleep through different sound environments. After raising $22M in capital over the past two years and working with artists like Grimes, the app is now collaborating with Grammy- and Mercury Prize-winning English singer, James Blake, to launch Endel × James Blake: Wind Down.

Endel’s approach to generative music is an interesting one. Its proprietary patented technology takes immediate inputs such as time of day, weather, user movements, and GPS location to create soundscapes. This also means that each track that you hear is uniquely composed for you, in real-time.

The app is available across iOS, macOS, Android, Amazon Alexa, and most recently, Apple TV. After Endel was awarded The Apple Watch App of The Year award in 2021, Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, called Endel co-founder and CEO Oleg Stavitsky. At the time, Stavitsky “thought it would be a quick call, where Cook says congratulations and doesn’t really know who we are,” Stavitsky shared in a recent Forbes interview. Turns out, the conversation kickstarted Endel’s latest expansion.

The Wind Down soundscape launch focuses primarily on improving sleep and is “scientifically designed to flow perfectly into a good night’s rest.” Endel’s Community Lead recommends turning it on two hours before bedtime and goes on to explain that this particular soundscape “utilizes specific tones to encourage relaxation in the body’s parasympathetic nervous system and prepare it for rest.”

What’s your take on generative music? Let the Endel team know in the comments.

There’s only a handful of things that gets productivity junkies more fired up than new calendars and time-management tools. One of them is note-taking apps.

Today, Alex MacCaw, who you might know as the founder of Clearbit, is launching Reflect, an app designed to mirror the way your brain works and act as your daily journal, whether that’s for work or personal use. The app allows back-linking topics to help you connect thoughts and ideas. It also integrates with your Google Calendar and Contacts, which means you can use it as a personal CRM.

The small team of three engineers started working on Reflect a year ago with a clear goal of building a lifestyle business that focuses on listening to users and iterating. “We don't have meetings or any corporate fluff that gets in the way,” the maker adds.

There’s a lot of competition in the space and among the interest that Reflect is getting on its launch today, some of you wanted to know: “how is this different?”

The way Alex describes what makes Reflect special is through the values they enforce. That’s speed (everything is client-side), security (the app uses end-to-end encryption to ensure privacy), and reliability. He goes on to say that while some note-taking apps out there “prioritize growth over sustainability,” their goal is to keep the project bootstrapped, as a “modest sustainable business.”

If that still doesn’t clarify how Reflect compares to other existing solutions, one Reflect user also added: “it has the polished interface of Bear, the tagging and comprehensiveness of Roam, the cross-platform capabilities and polish of Evernote, and security-first position of Obsidian but with remote sync on top.”