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ICYMI, the meme token Shiba Inu (SHIB-USD) surged 51% after Elon Musk tweeted a pic of his new pup last week.

All investments come with risk but the volatility of cryptocurrency — which can rise and fall drastically with one tweet or puppy — has been a barrier to entry for more cautious investors.

The Mudrex Coin Sets launch today offers a new way to diversify your cryptocurrency investments through crypto bundles. Individuals select from bundles like “Web 3.0: Top 6 tokens changing the way internet works” or “VC 6: 6 tokens that VC and hedge funds have invested in.”

“No need to browse through 100s of coins, no need to make multiple orders, no need to manually manage,” maker Edul Patel wrote.

Theme-based bundles of assets isn’t a new idea. In fact, mutual funds and ETFs have been growing in popularity as a way for stock market investors to diversify their portfolios, simplify their work, and even back a space they believe in (like cannabis or sustainability-focused ETFs).

Unlike actively managed ETFs, it’s important to note that Coin Sets don’t offer active trading or actively hedge your position. They’re just there to help you chose what to invest in. Mudrex said it does monitor and change the bundles monthly, and handles rebalancing using “human intelligence + rules.”

The Mudrex launch comes at an interesting time in the U.S. Companies (like the Winklevoss brothers’ crypto exchange, Gemini) have tried launching Bitcoin ETFs for years but have been turned down by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Recently, the SEC did approve a few bitcoin “lite” equity ETFs though. These funds don’t invest in cryptocurrency itself, but in companies that engage in crypto activities like mining, trading, and infrastructure (80%), balanced by traditional stocks (20%).

With crypto ETF applications piling in, some speculate that broader approval from the SEC is on the horizon, which would have a big impact on crypto’s pervasiveness into the mainstream.

Meanwhile, startups like Mudrex look to fill gaps that exist globally for crypto investors.

Might as well face it, you’re addicted to Slack (looks in mirror).

Power users send out more than 1,000 Slack messages per day. That little tidbit comes from productivity analytics startup Time is Ltd. (via Recode), which announced a late-seed funding round of $5.6M in June.

Deep work is hard to do when Slack’s blowing up, but we’ve seen plenty of new tools to help you find peace beneath the pings.

Superpowered is one of them. The makers launched its menu bar calendar app on Product Hunt earlier this year, but alas, “​​we always wanted to be more than a calendar widget,” maker Ibrahim Irfan wrote.

The new Superpowered integration adds Slack to the menubar alongside your calendar. If you’re like many Slack users, one ping turns into half an hour of bouncing around channels. The goal here is to allow you to manage your inbox more easily and keep your focus, as well as make it easier for you to quickly shoot off messages, like when you’re running late for a meeting.

Since context and app switching are known productivity killers, the makers behind Twake approached a similar problem with an entirely new workspace, launched with updates earlier this week. Twake combines team chat, task management, team calendars, and more into one tool that’s 100% open source. You can think of it as an alternative to Slack, Teams, Trello, and Google Drive in one.

Our community loves a good open-source alternative and Twake is filling a nice space for makers seeking a big tech alternative.

“It's open-source, well-designed, easy on the eyes and has plenty of efficiency tools for small businesses like mine - and it won't break the bank.” - Todd Peckham

For a little more help on context switching, take a look at:
Pause: A tool to support team planning when an employee takes time off
Motion: A Slack command tool that finds a meeting time for you
Paco: A Slack assistant that helps you track and compile to-dos

The good news: It’s getting easier to build great mobile apps.

Just look at FlutterFlow, a low-code platform created by two ex-Google engineers. The platform enables makers to build mobile apps with Flutter (the Google-made SDK for cross-platform apps) — visually with a drag and drop UI.

A feature that early adopters in our community have enjoyed most in FlutterFlow is the ability “to export code and fine-tune it without limitations.” Now Flutterfly has launched one-click deploy to the App Store and the ability to add Google maps, search (powered by Algolia), push notifications, and more.

If low-code makes you nervous, co-founder Abel Mengistu explained to one commenter, “You don't need to know programming. There's a learning curve that might be a bit steeper, but most of the apps in the showcase were built by our amazing designer who's not a developer.”

Still, no-code launches you can check out for building apps include Bravo Studio, Adalo, and Glide which enable no-code web app development, too. While you're at it, see no-code testing platform Waldo for creating and automating mobile tests.

And back to the bad news: Once your app is built, you still have to learn how to market it amongst the millions of apps in the Google Play and Apple App Stores.

There are resources to help new makers there, too. There are Udemy courses and SplitMetrics’ AppGrowthLab — even MailChimp has app growth courses. Today, a group of makers from Mobile Action have also launched Mobile Growth University, a nonprofit initiative and free resource for learning about mobile growth. Courses cover topics from app store search ads to monetization, and users can earn a certificate to demonstrate their proficiency in mobile app marketing.

“An awesome overview of what is arguably the hardest part of growing any business,” wrote one commenter.

We’ll leave you with one more applicable resource to help with your app marketing – AppLaunchPad. The design tool helps you create marketing assets for the app stores and launched new features in July.

Now, go and see what kind of apps you can build without much code.

Yes, newsletters are hot right now, but does Gen Z care?

Research from Reuters Institute shows that only 3% of people under 35 prefer email as their primary gateway to consuming the news, compared to the 34% who prefer social media.

“Most publishers are drifting towards newsletters to appeal to our attention deficit. But we're going backward by having to wait until the next day to get 5 articles when we have memes on current news within an hour,” maker Shannon Almeida wrote on Product Hunt.

Volv is a real-time app for consuming the news in 9-second reads (with links to the full piece when you want them). Those bite-sized reads are written to be digestible and non-biased.

Today, Almeida and team launched the app’s second iteration. Since the first launch, Volv has expanded its coverage on topics like crypto and hype trends and added features like timeline view and upvoting. Its biggest update is its writer platform. Recognizing that writers aren’t usually video-first creators, Volv is now hoping to attract new writers who want to increase their discoverability without “having to resort to dancing on TikTok to share their insights.”

The move follows another startup in the bite-sized news business, Listle, which opened its platform to creators last year. YC-backed Listle first launched with short audio news clips before pivoting to video.

Listle and Volv recognize that younger generations are increasingly concerned about misinformation. Articles and podcasts about going “down the rabbit hole” regularly raise red flags about big tech algorithms (in fact, Facebook whistleblower and former product manager, Frances Haugen, just testified before the Senate on the subject yesterday). Early adopters in our community like both new apps for their efforts to combat biases — Listle only uses trusted new sources, and Volv uses AI to flag biased words, opinions, and check for a left or right slant.

Ultimately, news readers already have plenty of news apps to choose from: there’s easily-accessible Apple News and Google News, ultra-customizable RSS-based readers like Feedly, and ML-driven apps like Newsadoo which uses a bundling function to combat biases.

Still, Reuters Institute also found that, among all the younger respondents in its 2019 study, no news app (except Reddit) was within the top 25 of apps used. We’re watching to see if the fun-sized approach hits the mark for these generations.

Did you know that Facebook et al. was down yesterday? Thought so.

We hope you felt prepared. After all, we just told you about apps that aren’t Instagram Kids, introduced you to the Anti-Instagram, and explored ways to make social fun again.

The downtime across Facebook’s apps didn’t just cause boredom though. Some felt the moment was a wake-up call about how much they rely on Facebook’s apps to stay connected. Since businesses and health care providers have started using WhatsApp, going offline for hours at a time may have increasingly more serious consequences in the future, too.

When Facebook went down, millions of users reportedly rushed to privacy-focused messaging apps like Signal (which received a tweet endorsement from Edward Snowden) and Telegram. Telegram even reported slowing of its own app because of the surges.

Outside of Facebook shortages, Telegram users are often swayed to migrate because the company uses multiple data centers distributed worldwide and focuses on message encryption. Telegram’s latest iteration launched last month, bringing with it features like live streams with unlimited viewers, the option to remove captions from media, and the ability to hide sender names when forwarding.

The app has grown to 500 million monthly active users despite regularly receiving bad press, largely due to growth in misinformation on the app and Telegram’s moderation policies (it's sparked respectful debate in our own community, too.)

On the other hand, there are those broadly advocating for decentralized social as a Facebook alternative. We wrote about the concept of decentralized social with the launch of DeSo and Bitclout, but there are other players in this space.

Uhive is a creator-first social network, like Bitclout but with a metaverse layer, too. Similar to Bitclout, Uhive says its mission is to support its users, not a centralized entity (i.e. the company or makers who built it). Two of its features have appealed to users most of all: the ability to mint your user profile and its moderation protocol, which allows any user the opportunity to become a content moderator.

Uhive also uses its own token to enable the economy within Uhive, but unlike Bitclout, tokens are built on the Ethereum blockchain.

Twitter has weighed in. How are you getting ready for another outage?

So you vanquished burnout and survived another week.

Or maybe you didn’t. Microsoft’s 2021 Work Trend report showed that 41% of the global workforce is likely to consider leaving their current job before next spring. It’s been called The Great Resignation or the Big Quit and motivations stem from things like changed priorities, turning side projects into careers, and pursuit of new skills or academics.

If so, we love that for you. Others can’t call it quits as easily or even choose a “work to live” lifestyle while pursuing hobbies in their free time. No matter who you are, stepping up to your desk on Monday can be tough. Even if you’re an entrepreneur, you may regularly need motivation to push yourself to your goals.

Work is a grind — but if it was a game too?

Make Work Fun is a “companion app for Notion” that gamifies your work so you can celebrate your wins in a way that’s trackable and fun. The makers at Co-x3 (a community of co-creators) first launched a tool to help you gamify your life back in July.

“[T]hat was a HUGE success... We knew we were onto something…The combination of adventure and community pushed me to level up faster and help my friends,” maker Conrad Lin wrote.

Now the Make Work Fun app enables you to gamify any Notion database and works with all templates. You can compete with others in the community, embark on quests, and build streaks to earn random rewards and top spots.

Reviews show early adopters are having a great time.

“By far the most elaborate productivity and gamification app I've come across. Most apps I've tried fall short in the aspect of tracking and visualizing progress over time… it never ceases to amaze me how these integrations work seamlessly.” Aaron Chong

“This genuinely takes the multiplayer experience for personal productivity to the next level. The onboarding is so easy & the experience after that is even better.” Nihit Khandelwal

Lin and the other makers have made Make Work Fun available for free. They’re also open-sourcing the code in another week, with a hacking session coming up on Saturday, October 8.

“We believe building ‘Instagram Kids’ is the right thing to do, but we're pausing the work,” Adam Mosseri announced on Instagram’s blog.

According to Instagram, it wanted to give parents an app designed for children with features to help adults supervise and control their experience. The makers stopped their work though after severe backlash caused by media articles citing Facebook’s own research on how social media impacts the mental health of children, in particular teen girls.

“To be clear, I don’t agree with how the [Wall Street] Journal has reported on our research,” (links added by us) Mosseri wrote, standing firmly behind its belief that the project will have value for families.

Instagram is definitely right about one thing (which is one of the reasons they started working on the app) — children are getting their phones at a much earlier age than ever before.

So whether you’re glad Facebook is taking this time to “work with parents, experts, policymakers and regulators, to listen to their concerns,” or disappointed you won’t see “Instagram Kids” anytime soon, we put together a list for you.

Here are 8 tech launches from the last year that are poised to have a positive effect on your child, while still being social and fun.

Primer Rooms - Live, interactive experiences where kids explore interests and solve problems together

Imagi - An app that turns learning how to code into a fun, creative, and social experience

TeenUp - A platform where kids learn new skills (like playing the guitar) from their peers

Whole - A colorful app to build a routine of positive habits and increase happiness

KidHab - An alternative to the above, with a gamified parent-child system for building habits

Kalam Labs - A live game streaming platform for kids to learn their favorite science topics

LoveBox - A device that delivers fun messages to loved ones from a distance

OK Play - In-app activities and real-world play that builds empathy and kindness in pre-schoolers

Or see what else is new for kids...

Yesterday we told you about Astro, Amazon’s new home robot. Behind that calm screen face, some people only see a potential privacy killer. It is, after all, a camera and microphone with wheels in your home.

Amazon says there's no risk, telling Mashable, “We employ best-in-class on-device security techniques, to include data encryption, boot protection, and account access restrictions."

Many people won’t be deterred by concerns, but more people are doing what they can to protect how much of their personal information they allow into the world. Privacy-first browsers and VPNs are often the first line of defense for anyone who wants to protect their privacy, but here are a few more launches for those interested in reducing your digital footprint.

Email Aliases
Yesterday, 1password released a new Masked Emails product which lets you protect your email addresses by creating random emails without leaving the sign up page. Email aliases help protect you if there’s a data breach in the service/tool you’re signing up to. Hackers won’t be able to get your actual information and try to phish scam you — which is where 91% of all cyber attacks start.

Note that Apple, Gmail, and other services do have email alias functions you can use, if you prefer.

Document Encryption
Let’s say you drop your files in a secure file storage. There’s usually still a risk that someone can take a photo of it. LeadsID converts any document to PDF format but enriches it with invisible steganographic marks. That mark enables LeaksID to notify the document creator anytime someone opens a confidential document — including a small fragment or a photograph of it on a smartphone — and determine the identity of the offender.

Note Taking
We each have our own favorite note-taking tool, but if you wrote down a list of the reasons you love it and where it could improve, would privacy even make the list? If it did — or if you thinking it should — the launch of Skiff might pique your interest. It’s a workspace built from the ground up to be privacy first, with end-to-end encryption, expiring links, watermarks, locked documents, and more.

Address Protection
Many creators receive gifts from their supporters regularly. Throne is a wish-list for creators/influencers to get items and gifts without exposing their address.

The phrase “Startup as a Service” has crept up here and there across the interwebs over the last decade. In modern entrepreneurship, founders can buy into resources and accelerated growth via corporate-sponsored hackathons, incubators, and startup studios.

The last on that list has given Startup as a Service the most meaning to date. Startup studios like Betaworks can support founders with anything from validating ideas and building a go-to-market strategy to fundraising preparation.

What about the part that comes next — incorporation, banking, equity management, and the actual fundraising?

Yesterday, AngelList launched a new product for that, and it had startuppy folks buzzing. AngelList Stack, as the name suggests, is really like multiple products in one but built to work seamlessly.

To start, founders use a "friendly UI" with best practices baked-in to incorporate their company. That process traditionally takes weeks of work, and can now be done much simpler according to Sumukh Sridhara, AngelList Head of Product & Engineering. From there, founders get equipped with a bank account and are ready to fundraise with a single link. The company can issue SAFEs (the agreement that gives investors future equity) and create Roll Up Vehicles.

AngelList Stack also automatically sets up an automated cap table — the document that shows who owns what equity in a company — that updates as you grow. The suite also helps to manage equity grants for employees and investor certificates and communications.

If you’re in the startup space, you might already be using individual Carta products for some of these services. Carta originally launched to the startup world with its digital stock certificates, then called eShares, in 2012. It scaled to cap table management and started rolling out features like SAFEs to support easier fundraising. The company has continuually stretched the Startup as a Service space and just last month launched Carta Launch, a fundraising and equity management platform.

While Carta’s been targeting founders from the start, AngelList started its story with a community for investors to connect with and invest in startups. Techie pundits indicate this as a pivot for AngelList to the founder-side of the moon.

Many of you know that AngelList is a sister company to Product Hunt. Working towards our own mission to empower makers, we're thrilled to welcome friendly competition that benefits makers.

Newsletters have done for email what social distancing did for QR codes. Your inbox made a comback from 1990's romcom nostalgia, and is now flexing on Slack and your DMs.

Don’t expect that to change soon. Along with newer tools like the Substacks of the world, Google is the latest big tech player to experiment with newsletters. It's got a new Museletter product in private beta that lets you publish a newsletter or blog from Google Drive (Notion users, try this instead?)

Newsletters aren’t just for niche creators; they’ve changed the way we digest journalism, too. Just look at Morning Brew and Axios, which recently hired 20 new reporters to launch local newsletters in 8 new cities, adding to its 14 existing newsletters.

To be honest, we’re here for it. Newsletters are a great delivery mechanism for the specific information that you care about. They allow for hyper-focus that’s curated by your subscription preferences, which offers a nice alternative to an algorithm.

With that, we bring you these 7 newsletter launches from the last year that our community thinks you should know about:

Unicorner: Up and coming unicorn startups, before they make it big
“Very impressed by the insights and in-depth approach that Unicorner takes”- Audrey Wu

Popcorn: Movie and TV suggestions curated for streaming platforms
“You made a product that can save someone's night!” - Easton Hunter

Munch by Moving: Crypto insights, trends, and analysis
“Robinhood snacks but for crypto, long-awaited!" - Mirza Uddin

Unboxed: Sneakerheads, this is for you
“Amazing newsletter! One of my favorite parts is “best sneakers to buy for retail or less”- Taylor Loren

Every: A writer collective covering productivity, strategy, and more
“Love the writer collective idea… Strength in numbers.”- Nicci Talbot

Tedium: Taking on the questions that “nobody thought to ask”
“It is simply a must-read. The more fascinating bits are his deep dives into the history of things that usually don’t have histories written about them.” - Gregory Bufithis