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Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterday’s top ten launches. That’s it.
You aren’t the only one sick of forms. Autofill and password managers help but forms are so rampant online that they’re still a major pain point for everyone.
We wrote about one-click payments along with Bolt and Fast and even explored using robotic process automation in eCommerce earlier this year, but makers are making headway on form-skipping beyond your shopping cart.
Last week, a new platform for discovering and managing B2B content launched called The Juice. The tool curates and recommends content for marketing and sales professionals and enables users to search and filter by content type (eBooks, reports, podcasts, etc.)
The Juice also gives users the opportunity to speed past gated content, meaning they no longer have to fill out a lead generation form every time want to read an eBook. With a click, they can choose whether or not they want to share their data with the brand, and skip straight ahead to the article or file.
In August, we also saw the launch of Netherlands-based Chiff, a new tool for logging into any website using your phone’s biometric authentication tools. If a user is logging into a website on their desktop, a browser extension can send a notification to their phone, where they can use fingerprint or Face ID to securely log in.
Then there’s Transcend Content Manager. Cookie consent forms may not require much keyboard action but they still often result in a consumer experience nightmare.
Transcend uses a browser-level firewall to convert all tracking info into local, quarantined tracking events. Since data doesn’t leave the users’ devices until they’ve provided consent, Transcend enables makers to ask for consent in a less obtrusive way. They can ask visitors for consent later on in the user journey or embed consent into their existing UI.
Users will still have to click to allow or disallow their data-share somewhere, but that’s one less form to jump through.
“Nothing like this has ever been done before and the outcome is uncertain,” wrote Sam Altman and Alex Blania, explaining a new startup they cofounded called Worldcoin. Lots of founders could say something similar about their own startups, but the premise behind Worldcoin is definitely a bold one.
The idea, in short: Give every person on earth free cryptocurrency, with fair & equal distribution.
That idea and the launch of Worldcoin elicited scoffs across the internet yesterday, including within our own community. To be fair, Altman clearly understands the scope of the mission. Let's unpack it.
Universal basic income
UBI is an ancient concept, but it's gained renewed interest in the last decade. Modern politicians like Andrew Yang have stirred up a lot of support for the concept to no avail, and now some tech leaders (not just Altman) have taken it upon themselves to try. Enter Worldcoin.
Proof of Person
Worldcoin has been conducting field tests where they take a five-pound orb device into the field, and use it to distribute cryptocurrency. The Orb works by taking a picture of someone’s iris, creating/saving a hashcode, and verifying each entry as unique. Users then gain access to a wallet in the app and a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin. The iris images are encrypted, original data is deleted, and there’s no big database of biometric data, Blania explains.
Why the Orb? The trick to universal basic income by way of crypto is to distribute it fairly, which is frankly difficult in a world full of bots and scammers. “The only solution for that problem, we found, was to build an orb,” Altman told CNBC. He calls the model “proof of person.”
So far over 100,000 users have collected Worldcoin across 12 countries — 700 per week.
Power in distribution
We write about innovative blockchain applications all the time, from coins that generate funds for cities to decentralized social networks. However, today only 3% of the global population uses crypto. Small networks are not just a barrier to UBI, but to crypto startups getting their ideas off the ground.
In this case, the makers of Worldcoin have chosen to build on Ethereum because of its developer network. Like other startups, they’re hoping to attract developers who can build atop their system to execute innovative applications of the coin. Unlike other startups, Worldcoin takes a pretty bottoms-up approach to building that network by acquiring users with literal feet on the ground.
Equalization
Worldcoin offers a unique, albeit arduous, approach to equalization, not only for crypto (which has been criticized for marking the rich richer) but for income globally.
What do you think about the approach — Unrealistic? Creepy? The future?
The competition between Apple and Google is giving us whiplash this week.
Yesterday Google launched Google for Creators, a new website that recommends guides, tutorials, and product information for creators based on their goals, niches, and experience level. It’s another product on the increasingly heavy toolbelt for creators.
That followed Google’s drop of the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro earlier this week. The phone ships with Android 12. We talked about the new OS back in May which includes Material You — Android’s new design system and the biggest design change in its history. The OS also publically launched for Pixels 3 and up and will be made more broadly available to Samsung Galaxy phones et al. later this year.
Other than Material You, notable features of the new Pixels are Google’s Tensor chip, the camera, housing, and the price.
Tensor is Google’s first in-house processor, with a custom TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) for AI built right into the chip. The chip was created to allow for more AI processing without sacrificing battery power (Google promises 24-48 hours of battery life). It’s Google’s first foray into SoC (System on a Chip) design.
If you hated the notch on the MacBook Pro, maybe you’ll like the full protruding bar that spans the back width of the phone. Or you'll hate that too, but maybe you’ll think the camera updates are worth it. The new bar holds a new sensor which outputs 12.5-megapixel images and enables it to capture 150 percent more light than the previous model. There’s also a 4x telephoto camera on the Pro and updates to the front-facing cameras. A more fun update is new editing features like a “magic eraser” tool.
The phone’s price tags at $599 and $899 are one of the biggest conversation topics, as this marks Google’s entry into competing with more premium smartphones like iPhone 13 and Samsung Galaxy S21.
Over all this big tech hype?
Hey, you’ve options! If you’re the type to take the road less taken, don’t miss these launches:
Nokia 6310 - The iconic Nokia brick shape is back and reimagined
Fairphone 4 - If ethical buying and sustainability are your utmost priorities
Today's Daily Digest was crafted by us and sponsored by our friends at Flatfile.
Bells ring, gongs bang, high fives all around. Sales and marketing teams celebrate after signing a massive new customer. Then comes onboarding, and implementation teams... they might be less thrilled.
One of the first things they have the pleasure of doing is getting the customers’ data imported into new systems, and it’s often an ugly, painful process for everyone. Messy Excel files need cleaning, weird import scripts have to be coded in Python, all while sensitive data is emailed back and forth.
Flatfile first launched two years ago, innovating the way companies onboard customers by automatically structuring and validating their data. Single-founder startups to enterprise companies became early adopters.
Flatfile’s growth helped underpin its $35M Series A raise (see cofounder Eric Crane’s lessons on fundraising), and now it’s leveraged its funding to launch the latest product: Embeds, which offer a 1-click import experience built for securely validating and exchanging customer data.
The platform prioritizes intuitive features to drive customers to value, faster. In practice, that looks like:
- No more emailing sensitive Excel data back and forth (been there)
- No more saving a CSV for the 4th time and re-uploading (done that)
- No fumbling with FTP uploads (should I really trust this certificate?)
- A platform ready to transform sensitive data (HIPAA compliance out the box)
- Workspaces for collaborating with customers when fixing invalid data
Startups with a few customers importing spreadsheets to companies with major data migration projects (i.e. millions of rows of data moving between legacy systems) can provide an experience that instills confidence, and makes even the most non-technical customer feel like a data onboarding expert.
"This is a monstrous product. I can see flatfile.io becoming a $20bn+ company with a groundswell of developers and enterprises adopting it as the defacto standard. Bravo," wrote one commenter on the launch page.
If you're done with fighting with Excel and spreadsheets, take a peek at Flatfile’s newest Embeds launch. 👇
Apple had another day of drops yesterday from its Unleashed event. Let's get right into the new hardware.
First off, Apple presented two more M1 chips, an M1 Pro and M1 Max. That's fast since it released the M1 just last year. The Pro model CPU is up to 70% faster, with a GPU up to 2x faster, and 32GB of unified memory while the Max has unified memory up to 64GB.
Apple made a new home for the chips in a new MacBook Pro, or what some are already dubbing “Notch Book Pro.” The newly-designed MacBook Pros increase screen size at the cost of a “notch” where the camera lives, not unlike the latest iPhones. Apple also brought back an HDMI port, a headphone jack, an SD card slot, and a MagSafe charger along with three Thunderbolt ports. The MagSafe charger can charge up to 50% in 30 minutes.
The new standard Apple Airpods look like the AirPod Pros, without the interchangeable tips. They’ve got spatial audio support and are sweat and water-resistant.
Those that love color may like that the HomePod mini speaker is now available in yellow, orange, and blue. Or maybe you’ll be bummed there's no purple option.
Before you head for the checkout, check out these new tools from the community that can make you an Apple superuser.
Unplug Alarm: This app sounds an alarm if your Mac is unplugged while you’re away
APEnabler: Add an Airplay button to custom online video players
Pareto Security: A checklist app that helps with basic security hygiene on your Mac
Ditto: Save open tabs, documents, and apps to a workspace; switch with a menubar click
Sensei Monitor: Monitor and optimize your Mac’s performance via widgets from the menubar
Almighty: 50+ superuser Mac tweaks and utilities like keeping Mac awake or converting to plain text
AirBuddy2: See the status of your AirPods right when you open the case + connect with a click
PairPlay Audio Adventures: Split AirPods with a friend for an “immersive audio AR experience”
Alfred 4.5: The Alfred productivity Mac app launched Universal Actions for performing actions on any text, URLs, or files using a hotkey from anywhere within Alfred or your Mac
We’ve written a lot about Edtech's pandemic-spurred growth, but many of us don't just learn skills through courses or apps, but on a daily basis. Knowledge and content produced by experts online helps makes us better at our jobs.
Further has started drawing attention from the community today with its new app, which filters the web for learning new skills and gives badges for progress.
Further users pick skills of interest (e.g. UX design or public speaking), get a daily curated feed of reads, and can earn badges and certificates for content list completion. According to its makers, the AI-backed algorithm in Further can highly personalize your feed in order to help you enhance your daily information learning.
"I love the idea! I can finally show others that what I learn online actually matters and is calculable.” - Mert Akın
"As a developer, I’m loving this. Already started using it! 😄" Kağan Korkmaz
"Time saver app, really help for scatterbrain people like me that go online to learn and end up somewhere unexpected." - Maryann Superlano
With over 1.8 billion websites on the internet most of us rely on curation to help us find the information most meaningful to us. We see these types of products launch regularly — here are a few more from the last six months that offer curated resources for your work.
Good Landing Page - Curation of 300+ best landing pages for design inspiration
Analytics Pack - A curated director of the best startup metrics
LetterHunt - 10,000+ active, curated newsletters to promote your product
Pattern Collect - Curated gallery of patterns by awesome designers
Yes — Product Hunt and this newsletter are curation tools too! We use the community’s contributions to guide which product launches make it to the top of our homepage and into your inbox every single day. So don't forget to contribute with an upvote or comment when you see something you like or have questions about.
India is on track to overtake China as the world’s fastest-growing major economy next year, according to World Bank projections.
So far 33 startups have joined the unicorn club this year — 5 in just the last two weeks. Compare that to 40 Indian unicorns minted in total from 2011-2020. Over $23.5 billion in funding has been collected from Indian startups so far this year, which is nearly double the last two years, per PitchBook data. Analysts credit regulatory reforms that make it easier to do business, rising incomes and consumption, and new habit formation emerging post-pandemic.
It’s a huge bounceback after the Indian economy had contracted 7.3% in 2020. Now it's a much better time and place to be in starting a company. Makers are all-in:
“In 2020, I left the USA for India to build products for the Global Indian Diaspora,” Prateek Swain wrote as he launched last month — his startup Swadesh Capital is a platform for comparing real estate products for investment in Indian real estate.
Here are six more recent and noteworthy VC-backed Indian launches.
👸 Leap.club is a community-led, professional network for women that launched last month. It just raised $810K in seed funding.
✏️Peppertype.ai is a GPT-3-powered content generator. It's got $4.2M in the bag from a Series A earlier this year.
💸 Razorpay became a unicorn last year and recently added Salesforce to its cap table as a “strategic investor.” It launched its Payroll Slack tool in August.
🤝Mint was launched by Cred, which is the youngest Indian startup to be valued at $2 billion+ at two years old. Mint enables CRED users to lend to one another at an interest rate of up to 9% annually.
💼 Relevel is a hiring platform from Unacadmeny, the Edtech startup that just raised $440M. Job-seekers can showcase skills through tests and apply to multiple companies with one score.
₿CoinDCX became India’s first crypto unicorn last month. The makers launched the second iteration of the exchange and global cryptocurrency aggregator a year ago.
And for fun, we’re also highlighting today’s launch of Ramayana Capital.
“Today is the auspicious Hindu festival of Dussehra. It signifies the victory of good over evil. To commemorate, we're launching a fun little game we made,” Swain of Swadesh Capital (mentioned earlier) wrote.
Canva is having a big year. The Australian-based company announced a $40 billion valuation last month after raising $200M. We also found out that two of its three founders — husband and wife team, Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht — gave away more than 30% of their equity (around $13 billion) to charity through the Canva Foundation.
Now it's back to buzz. Canva makers just launched Canva Video Suite, officially entering the video space.
The product is an end-to-end creation tool that includes the ability to re-order scenes, lengthen or split them, and add multiple audio tracks or effects. Creators can also record themselves or their screens within the tool. Similar to Canva's image-based tools, users can choose from customizable templates and a media library to create ready-to-go ads, plus workplace videos or educational tutorials.
Canva’s charge from its start has been to empower anyone with the ability to design. While their tools aren’t exclusive to non-designers, it doesn’t see itself competing with professional design tools like Adobe or Figma.
We’re not sure where that leaves specialized players in this space like Kamua, but if anything, we think more pertinent competitors might be other “democratizing”-focused startups with expansive suites like Squarespace.
Squarespace made a big step in its mission to democratize the web for entrepreneurs and creators when it went public in May. Flying more under the radar this time, it launched eight new updates last month and among them was a new video studio app. The video editor also includes templates and the ability to record voiceover, plus an AI-powered voiceover feature.
Canva is on track for $1B in annualized revenue this year with 60 million monthly active users. It admittedly has a broader audience base than Squarespace with tools like Video Messages, so with Canva eyeing acquisitions with its new funding, we’re interested to see if it extends more into the entrepreneurial, creator, or office tool spaces next.
What do you want to see from Canva's video suite? Let the team know.
You don’t see many companies squaring off to take on Amazon these days, but Bolt has been cooly assuming the position.
The “Amazon-like payments stack for everyone else” first launched on Product Hunt three years ago, after working for almost three years in stealth. Despite entering a very crowded space, it differed from products like Stripe Checkout.
“That's more of a lightweight way of collecting a credit card vs. this which is a robust enterprise-ready platform. Tax/shipping/discounts/platform-integrations… While also built to be super developer-friendly, this is built for retailers / e-comm companies first and foremost,” founder Ryan Breslow wrote back then (to its credit, Stripe has expanded since then).
Then earlier this year, it dropped Bolt One Click, a one-click checkout experience for shoppers, across anywhere where Bolt is used. Shoppers can save their passwords, personal information, and card details and check out instantly if using Bolt — even if they’ve never been to the shop before.
“Bolt One Click gives independent retailers a fighting chance... by enabling them to provide a return-like experience to millions of first-time shoppers. Shoppers get a fast checkout anywhere across the growing Bolt network, and retailers benefit from higher-converting shoppers. Everyone wins!” Breslow wrote on Product Hunt.
While “Buy Now” functionality might duplicate the success of tech goliaths, Breslow has set himself and the company apart from portrayals of Bezos and Amazon. He’s pursued creating a “conscious culture” which drives the way Bolt conducts business (with concepts like “conscious selling”) and manages its team members (Bolt introduced a 4-day workweek last month.)
That might attract burnt-out workers looking for new jobs. Meanwhile, investors note liking Bolt because it's focusing all its efforts on a 10/10 customer experience of the payments solution, rather than trying to do too much at once. The new $393M Series D drives the company's valuation to $6B.
Bolt is planning to use its new funding to expand beyond the US (you can expect to see Bolt debut in Europe in the first half of 2022). It does face competitors, including Fast — a Stripe-backed startup that wants to bring fast login to everything — and UK-based Checkout.com.
Can two apps join forces to upend TikTok? TikTok did just reach 1B monthly active users, so maybe not. But as they say, if you can’t beat them, join them.
We first met Clash on Product Hunt a year ago. The new app took a creator-first approach to social media. The expectation was that the makers understood what creators wanted more than anyone. Co-founder Jesse Leimgruber is a digital marketer and content strategist, and co-founder Brendon McNerney is a creator and former star on Vine, where he had amassed 700K followers.
Meanwhile, Dom Hofman, founder of Vine, was launching byte, another Vine-esque video app and social network. byte had a strong community from the start, with over 1.3 million downloads during the first week of its launch. But TikTok had simply grown too large by that point. Ryan Hoover’s comment on the launch page could have spoken for millions of others:
“Ooh, I've been looking forward to this, although TikTok is already sucking too much of my attention. 😅”
You know where this is going even if you didn't catch the news. At the beginning of the year, Clash acquired byte for an undisclosed amount. Mr. McNerney told the New York Times it was “more of an I.P. acquisition” to take over byte’s community.
Now Clash App has re-launched today with a larger community, $9.1 million in funding from investors like Alexis Ohanian, and a new focus which is to be a sort of supplement to apps like TikTok. McNerney and Leimgruber expect that creators will grow their fanbase across a host of platforms — Clash is meant to be the place where they manage and monetize them.
With the launch, the makers have made good on the promise they made to the Product Hunt community last year and delivered Drops, a feature where fans can send tokens to creators right in the main feed. Tokens are purchased by fans through the App Store and redeemed at 2,500 ($25), similar to Twitch. Another feature called Fanmail lets fans unlock message sending to creators, who can respond back.
Clash may have pivoted from Goliath (TikTok), but it is still entering a crowded space. We’ve seen plenty of competitors with community management tools start to gain traction — Orbit, Geneva, and just-launched, Kommunity, to name a few.
Clash is worth calling out still. For better or worse, the app skirts feelings of being a SaaS-type tool for creators and is built upon short-form video instead, with fingerprints of the makers’ Vine past.

















