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"Work smarter, not harder" is the productivity hacker’s adage.

The motto is vague enough to mean anything but we approached it by looking at a few technologies you should be aware of and using, if you're not already.

Text recognition
Text recognition has made great progress over the past few years. Apple’s computer vision software, for example, can now identify objects inside images (like texts on signs) so you can search for things inside your photos on your iPhone. Apple's framework can be used by makers to add text recognition to apps. Flyscreen, for instance, lets you search and organize your screenshots by text (including opening links from them).

Text recognition isn’t limited to your iPhone. BLACKBOX lets you “select and copy text from anything. Ever.” Use cases in the launch last week highlight the ease of copy/pasting code from coding YouTube videos, but you can “copy text from anywhere in your browser. Could be a video, image, pdf, literally anything.”

Autocomplete
A team of makers launched their first app along their quest to make engineers and teams more productive — Fig is "autocomplete for the terminal.” For the non-technicals, the terminal is the black screen programmers use to accomplish and automate tasks. The tool adds visual completions for hundreds of public command-line interface tools. Completions are built by the community via an open-source GitHub repo.

Short Cuts
About that command line. We’ve seen a lot of love for it lately. We recently told you about Omni, a product from Golden Kitty Maker of the Year nominee, Alyssa X. It lets you perform all sorts of actions with a simple command interface on Chrome. We’ve also covered kbar and Raycast in this space. Since then, Raycast has shipped more time-saving features like snippets that will insert frequently used text for you (to circle back to autocomplete).

Fuzzy Search
If you’re ever searching your browsing history, frustrated because you can’t remember the exact word you used before, just know, that’s basically us daily. "Fuzzy search" can also be called approximate string matching. It means searching for text that matches a term closely instead of exactly, and Chikcamichi launched over the weekend with an extension that enables fuzzy search for your Chrome history, bookmarks, and tabs.

The 7th annual Golden Kitty Awards are over. We kicked off this year's celebration when you submitted over 13,800 nominations to tell us what products were your favorites from 2021. You're clearly bullish on web3. It was the category with the most nominations at 11,497, followed by Productivity and Mobile Apps.

From the list of semi-finalists, you chose the products you wanted to see win an iconic Golden Kitty Award. Tens of thousands of votes later, we made it to the ceremony.

We had a blast yesterday — we’re still talking about the winners, magician, and Sahil Bloom’s outfit. You can watch what you missed or relive the highlights here. You’ll find a list of all finalists there too, so make sure to browse through all of the products your peers love.

Thank you to everyone who attended — you made it a truly special event. Without further ado, here the winners are…

🗣 Audio & Voice Tool of the Year: Podcastle

📱 Mobile App of the Year: Obsidian for Mobile

🙅‍♀️ No Code Tool of the Year: Flutterflow

👩‍💻 Productivity Tool of the Year: Cron

⛱ Work from Anywhere Tool of the Year: Sessions

🙀 WTF?! Product of the Year: The Table™️

🤖 AI & Machine Learning Product of the Year: Uizard

💸 Fintech Product of the Year: Carta Launch

🛠 Hardware Product of the Year: Opal C1

🔐 Privacy Tool of the Year: Drata

🥕 SaaS Product of the Year: Lucky Carrot

⛓ Web3 Product of the Year: ConstitutionDAO

👥 Community & Social Tool of the Year: Canva Video Suite

👪 Children & Family Product of the Year: Brickit

✍️ Creator Tool of the Year: Contra

💻 Developer Tool of the Year: DhiWise

🛍 eCommerce Tool of the Year: Mode Magic 2.0

📚 Education Product of the Year: Odyssey

🏋️‍♂️ Health & Fitness Product of the Year: Loóna

🎥Product Video Demo of the Year: tl;dv
Watch all finalist videos here.

👀 Side Project of the Year: Workspaces Newsletter

⚤ Diversity & Inclusion Product of the Year: leap.club

🌳 Social Impact Product of the Year: Crewdle

🎨 Design Tool of the Year: Clover

🌟 Maker of the Year: Savio Martin

🙋‍♂️ Best Community Member: KP

🏆 Product of the Year: Softr 2.0

Finally, thank you to our sponsor, Flatfile — make sure to check out the onboarding platform for importing customer data in as little as 60 seconds.

Let’s take 2022 to the moon!

Today is THE day. We’ll see you soon for the Golden Kitty Awards 2021 ceremony, starting at 9am PST. Sign up to watch here.

You might have heard that Twitter launched NFT profile pictures recently (though it’s still working to enable fully on-chain NFTs). Now Reddit is testing a similar feature.

Updates like this are fodder for those in the right-clicker camp, but the NFT ecosystem grows almost daily.

While celebs and Lamborghinis continue to make headlines, many in this space got into NFTs to share or support art (and sure, maybe that piece will be worth something in the future, too). A new launch today helps art connoisseurs make a bigger impact than profile pics. Letsmint just debuted its NFT crowdfunding platform. Maker Darina Lysachkina explained that the goal is to provide “essential launching conditions” for artists, including finances, an audience, and technical tools.

We’ve also written a lot about how makers are using NFTs to enable member organizations to engage meaningfully with each other and brands. The latest headlines in this space merge real-life experience with blockchain tech.

• Poolsuite launched an NFT collection with exclusives for members, with your membership card integrated into Apple Wallet.
• Steve Aoiki and Manifold just launched A0K1VERSE, a new ecosystem that lets NFT holders and collectors unlock on-chain and physical experiences.
• Moonpay just dropped a plug-and-play service companies can use to give customers a streamlined way to buy and sell NFTs using a credit card.

Then there’s the (not-so-)real estate boom. Metaverses like Decentraland and The Sandbox have linked digital property to NFTs and established fixed quantities of land, opening the doors for people to pay hefty sums of crypto for “a 116-parcel estate in the heart of Decentraland’s Fashion Street district.”

There are so many more entry points into this space than we had even 6 months ago. Even if you’re not that into art, Poolsuite's vibes or Decentraland house parties may be your gateway into web3. But if you are...

A new study from Slack shows that hybrid work is the way.

The global Pulse study comes from a consortium called Future Forum launched by Slack and its founding partners. It found that 58% of knowledge workers are currently working in hybrid work arrangements (up from 46% in May 2021) and 68% of those surveyed cite hybrid as their preferred working model.

There are so many reasons to love hybrid work, but most relate to reduced anxiety and a better work/life balance.

Unfortunately, Slack’s *knock brush* sound has been known to rustle up feelings of anxiety, like when it was heard at the start of an NFL commercial break. The Future Forum survey notes that leaders will need to “intentionally align on principles and guardrails that outline how hybrid work will work at their organizations.”

On that note, we put together 9 tools that might help make the *tsst dukdukduk* noise less scary.

Motion helps you and your colleagues find, agree, and schedule a meeting time
Fastest Fingers is a collection of multiplayer speed-typing games
Bored has games like employee roasts and spot the faker to play with your team
Incognito lets you collect anonymous messages & polls in Slack for honest feedback
Magik creates member directories, engagement resources, and more tools for your Slack community
Sup! helps hybrid teams automate stand-up & follow-ups asynchronously
Floppy Disk lets you save your favorite Slack threads to Notion, Airtable, or Coda — with retro vibes
Whatis can organize your team’s context, like acronyms and metrics, from across Slack (it just launched its Chrome extension, too)
Feedback Friday strives to get your team on a weekly feedback streak with gamified participation

Mark Cuban is known and loved for many things, and this week he’s adding “cheap drugs” to the list.

Cuban just launched an online pharmacy that promises cheaper drugs by cutting out industry middlemen and charging manufacturer prices, plus a flat 15% markup and pharmacist fee.

Let’s get one thing out of the way — yes, this is so American. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that around 3 in 10 Americans say they haven’t taken their medications as prescribed due to concerns about cost. To our global community: You might not benefit from much from the Mark Cuban CostPlus Drug Company (MCCPDC), but you can still join the conversation.

“Amazed that this wasn't already done in the US. It's going to be a lifesaver.” Rohit Agarwal

“It is incredibly sad for Americans that this is even remotely necessary and I'm very glad it's available.” Rob Baker

MCCPDC currently offers 100 generic drugs to treat illnesses like diabetes, asthma, and heart conditions. As an example of savings, Imatinib, a drug used to treat leukemia, retails at other pharmacies for $9,657.40/month or $120/month with a voucher. On MCCPDC it's $47/month.

The company’s approach is different because it's working as both a retailer and a pharmacy benefits manager (PBM). PBMs act as intermediaries that manage drugs on behalf of Medicare drug plans and private insurers. They’re consistently identified as contributors to high drug prices in the U.S. MCCPDC explained: “Because the company refuses to pay spread prices to third-party PBMs in order to be allowed to process insurance claims, the online pharmacy will be a cash pay venture.” I.e. You can only pay out of pocket for now, but MCCPDC says it will still cost you less than what most insurance plans' deductible and copay requirements would total.

MCCPDC will put pressure on other digital pharmacies, including Amazon Pharamacy which just launched a year ago.

"Not everyone sets the goal of being the lowest cost producer and provider," Cuban told Axios. "My goal is to make a profit while maximizing impact."

We have two more Golden Kitty Awards categories to introduce you to before the big day.

Check out the finalists for 2021’s Best Community Member and Maker of the Year.

Unlike the other awards, finalists and winners for these categories are selected using data like comments, upvotes, and product launches from the past year. Winners will be announced very soon…

About that big day:

The Golden Kitty Awards 2021 virtual ceremony is THIS Thursday, January 27th at 9:00am PST. RSVP now or forever hold your FOMO. We’ll enjoy literal magic, live music, a panel with Ryan Hoover, and a couple more surprises. Our hosts Greg Isenberg and Sahil Bloom (who you know from the "Where It Happens" podcast among many other things) will guide us through it all, handing out Golden Kitty statues to the best products of the year along the way. We’ll all end up in the Doge Temple for a legendary afterparty.

From London to Austin, people in the community will be gathering to watch and celebrate one heck of a year in tech. There’s still time to host a meetup in your area, virtually or safely in-person.

Our friends at Flatfile are the champs helping us make it all possible. They’re the makers behind the unified platform that SaaS companies use to import customer data in less than 60 seconds.

Now, let's go!

We’re only 21 days into the new year so if you’re starting to feel anxious about work, it might be time for a productivity check!

You’re not the only one who's confused about how little you’ve accomplished while at your computer all day. These four popular productivity products launched this month are from makers solving their own problems, and maybe yours too:

Shottr is a screenshot tool for people who care about pixels, with features like quick measurements and text recognition.

“I created it as a workhorse for pixel-professionals: designers, UI developers, and the like. Its strong suit is precision and speed, its killer feature is zoom, its target audience – people who prefer hotkeys over buttons and efficiency over fluffiness of the UI.” Max K

Omni is a Chrome extension that offers a command interface, i.e. manage tabs, bookmarks, browser history, and more with a key press.

“I've been thinking about all the time I lose doing menial tasks: finding the right tab in Chrome (I have far too many :P), starting meetings, creating tasks, clearing cookies and cache… So I decided to build Omni as a tool to do it all… ” Alyssa X

Amy collects and analyzes information from all over the web about the people you meet with and puts it in your calendar.

“I spent an awful lot of time researching people before meeting them, making sure I knew everything I needed to… Then it hit me. Instead of spending hours preparing for each meeting, people should focus on actually making each meeting count.” Nim Ron

Iteration X lets you and your team annotate and edit live websites or web apps directly in Chrome.

"While working on many web projects over the years, we were constantly troubled by the inefficiencies in the current product design and development workflows… Our goal with Iteration X is to bring collaboration directly on the product, where it naturally belongs.” Mehdi Djabri

For many of us, search engine optimization is an enigma.

First-time founders and marketing professionals alike dig through blogs and hire experts in the field to tell us about problems we never knew existed and keywords that hit just the right spot. The prizes are more traffic and a coveted spot on the first Google results page.

And the first pages of other search engines, too. Although some experts will tell you that the problem isn’t you, it’s your search engine. But we digress.

The all-seeing Google crawlers want what they want. Fortunately, we’ve seen plenty of new launches in this space, many leveraging AI to take the guess out of your work.

Content AI by Rank Math SEO - An AI assistant for creating SEO friendly content
Growth Bar - A GPT-3 tool for finding keywords and writing SEO-optimized content
People Also Search For - A free tool to find keywords your audience is searching for
YouTube Transcripts 2.0 - A Chrome extension that creates optimized YouTube transcripts — right in YouTube
SEOForLunch 2.0 - A once-a-week email curating only the best content about SEO
Free Article Outline Generator - Another AI-powered generator. It creates ready-to-use, optimized outlines for your content
My SEO Sucks Calculator - A link-building calculator to find the price of links across the web
SEO Glossary - 150+ SEO terms to help you deepen your SEO knowledge

Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by us and sponsored by our friends at Forge.

We surpassed 900 unicorns last year, with a cumulative valuation nearing $3 trillion. Such milestones typically call for celebration, but the occasion can be muddled for employees.

Financial experts warn us: equity is higher risk than typical cash income. Nonetheless, risk-averse and bullish talent is lured to startups by the potential of a huge cash-out when their companies go public. Going further, one survey notes that 92% of startup employees have taken a personal financial risk to own the stock options they were offered. Former Airbnb employee, Gabriel Cole, told the NYT that he had spent his life savings to buy his stock in 2015.

The standard employee stock vesting period is 4 years. So what happens when a company takes even longer to IPO? After all, the median age at which companies make their public debut increased from 4 years to 12 years between 2009 and 2020 as more founders choose to stay private for longer.

In the case of Airbnb, it meant frustration. A staff letter to the founders helped push the company to IPO in 2020, after 12 years private.

All of these trends have led to a boom in secondary markets for private equity. Companies like Forge are making it easy for founders to give their employees the option to sell their shares while the company is still private. That gives employees liquidity, so they can free up some cash to do things like buy a home, and it supports founders who aren’t in a rush to IPO.

It also helps founders attract talent, which is crucial with so many workers looking to jump ship. Those risk-averse people who lean towards a higher salary and liquid stock grants from public tech giants may be more willing to join a scrappy team knowing their assets won’t be locked up for 12 years.

Though pre-IPO liquidity was possible pre-Forge, it was difficult. When Airbnb employees needed liquidity, they took their own path, jumping through legal hoops with the help of brokers to sell off shares. Knowing if they were getting a good price for their stock was tricky with no visibility into demand or current pricing. Forge’s marketplace simplifies the process and is designed around market-based pricing so employees get for their shares what the market is willing to pay.

Today’s launch precedes the company’s own public trading debut early this year. Forge emerged as the largest player in its space, with rival multinational banks trying to play catchup. Companies on the platform include the buzzy neobank, Chime, which announced a $750 million Series G in August and is targeting March for an IPO.

Founders and employees can browse startups on the platform and get started on the site.👇

What do we want? Products.
When do we want them? Now.

That’s why “product-led growth” has been the breakout strategy of the last decade. When companies use PLG as their go-to-market strategy, they work on getting their potential customers to use their products straight away through trials and freemium models. Removing friction from that user experience helps get people using products, integrating them into their workspaces, and paying for them faster.

Arcade wants to help with that. The Chrome extension tool enables companies to quickly and easily create product demo flows that can be shared or embedded. It calls the demos “arcades” to emphasize the concept of playing around with the product.

Makers Caroline Clark and Rich Manalang are former Atlassian colleagues (Charlie McGeorge rounds out the founding team), a company well-recognized as a product-led growth pioneer (see Jira and Trello), along with Slack, Zoom, Hubspot, and Monday.com. It’s good company in an exploding market — one that grew from a $1 billion market cap in 2012 to $687 billion in 2020.

The idea behind Arcade seems so simple, but that is the point. Sometimes even a trial or freemium model isn’t enough to win over a customer. For example, getting full use out of a product might require integrating it into your CRM or uploading sensitive data. You, your engineers, legal teams, and so on, often just want to see how it works first. Arcade could enable a sales or marketing rep show you in minutes.

Navattic is another newcomer and competitor we saw launch last year. Like Arcade, the YC-backed startup lets you build, share, and track product demos. Users make a front-end copy of their app and create interactive demos. Storylane, another recent YC alum, launched last year too. Storylane takes the browser extension approach, letting users capture their domains and add a story through “walk-through widgets.”

We also covered Test-Box last year, which takes a customer-led approach to sales. You can think of it as a sister approach to PLG.

And if you’re a company leader that’s not using either of these models, we suggest checking out Wingman’s launch today, an AI-powered mobile wingman for your sales reps.