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Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterday’s top ten launches. That’s it.
Tonight in New York City we're gathering (safely) IRL for the first time in over a year!
Bummed, you’re not here? Don’t be — it’s a hybrid event! Join us in our virtual world, complete with lounge rooms for chatting, poolside views, and kitties at every turn.
Tons of fun will be had — we’ll meet the people behind our Product Hunt avatars, talk about the products we’re obsessing over, and you’ll hear from Product Hunt’s CEO Ashley Higgins and HYPER’s Shahed Khan.
The party kicks off at 6:30pm EST. Can’t wait to see you there!
The tech community got the big news we were waiting for on Friday — a U.S. judge issued a ruling in the Epic v. Apple case. Starting December 9, developers can skirt the 30% commission Apple usually takes on in-app purchases by using links and buttons to direct customers outside of Apple’s ecosystem.
Apple plans to appeal, but a settlement between Apple and Japan’s Fair Trade Commission also recently allowed developers of “reader” apps to link externally, so we’re not sure Apple can stop this tide from shifting. In yet another recent case (a class action suit), Apple settled on a $100M payout for small developers.
There has been a lot at stake in these cases, with losses and wins on both sides. At Product Hunt, we’re often happy to see changes that help app developers with distribution and sales.
On that note, we’re highlighting 9 of the newest trending iOS apps you might find handy:
Omnicourse - Grow your skills with audio courses; Lecturers get paid by the minute
Playsit - Organize your game library, mark what you’ve played, and share with friends
Candlewaster - Improve your reading habit with tracking and visualization of your stats
Loggo - Log fevers, meds, liquids and symptoms while you care for a sick loved ones
Jaadoo - Search and manage your mobile screenshots
Holly Health 2.0 - An adaptive burnout-prevention coach with evidenced psychology
Chiff - Login to any website with your face or fingerprint
RPGen - Hand-crafted content for quick hooks and stories in RPG games like D&D
Documents X - Super app for file actions like editing PDFs, unique formats, and sharing
Bartering is the comeback kid of twenty-first-century commerce, even without too much help from technology beyond the internet and its forums.
The continuous growth of sharing economy startups has helped re-familiarize people with the idea of not buying new stuff, but trading without money is still largely left to Craigslist, Facebook Groups, Nextdoor comments, and the desert city of Burning Man.
Now that social distancing and tough times have given people extra incentive to swop stuff, there could be enough demand for better tech.
Enter Swop.it, a new app for exchanging items based on location and interest. Is an app dedicated to bartering enough to take people away from the familiarity of apps like Facebook?
Here’s what makes Swop.it interesting. Along with baked-in shipping, audio, and video calls, Swop.it can create a chain of exchanges where the initiator doesn’t have to negotiate along the way.
“We engineered a mechanism in which [the] user chooses desired item, but if he doesn't have a same-value trade for it or interests simply don't match — we find people with goods that can be placed in-between to complete the deal,” maker Julie Bonbina shared.
We’ve all read those articles — the ones where someone swops a bobby pin for bigger and bigger items until they end up with a house. They’re fun, but gimmicky too. Swop.it doesn’t seem to be too interested in gimmicks. Bonbina explained that the service is designed for individuals, not resellers. Also...
"The morale [of those stories] is the exact reason why we engineered our product in a way where not only one person can get something valuable from the deal and enjoy it, but many."
“The lack of women in the tech industry has been referred to as a leaky pipeline problem. From high school to college to early careers — women are dropping out,” maker Dora Palfi explained during a talk she gave online at the tech conference UPPSTART last year.
So Palfi did research on where she could have the greatest impact. She found that up until ages 11 and 12, girls and boys have a similar interest in technology and science before they start to drop off (at age 11, 86% of girls express interest in such topics, but by age 16, only 36% do).
Taking a user-centered design approach, Palfi and her co-founders worked with girls in this age group to understand what they like, and then they built imagi.
imagi is an app that helps kids learn to code with games and social experiences on their phones. The company is targeting 300 million pre-teen girls worldwide with the goal of encouraging them to start coding but boys, nonbinary kids, and adults can also enjoy the app.
imagi’s mobile-first approach to learning how to code is also of note, too. Phone use is a hard line to tow for parents, but simply put, more pre-teen kids have phones now. Global usage varies but to throw a couple of stats at you, estimates show more than half of kids in the US have a phone by age 11. In South Korea, the number is 72% by age 11 or 12. imagi may just be hitting where it matters most.
Today’s Product Hunt launch is an iteration following imagi’s initial launch two years ago. Palfi explained:
“Our imagi iOS app has recently gone through a major makeover, and now introduces Python through a visual and gamified learning journey, where colorful pixel art can be both created and shared.”
On the flip side, yesterday a second iteration of Tappity launched, too. Tappity is a library of hundreds of interactive science videos to inspire kids age 4-10. Among it’s updates, Tappity’s makers have released a web version, explaining:
“Realizing not all kids have Apple devices, we’re excited to make Tappity available to the other millions of kids out there.”
"But what about my baby, you say?" The community’s got you covered there too with the Computer Engineering for Babies book.
Among hard forks and nodes, “on-ramp” may be the most friendly term in the cryptosphere. It’s the exchange of government-issued currency for cryptocurrency.
Creating accessible, user-friendly ramps is one of the biggest hurdles to crypto becoming more mainstream. Imagine a non-technical person on an NFT marketplace, credit card in hand, confused about how to buy in ETH (you're not alone).
MoonPay launched today on Product Hunt, a product that enables both easy on/off-ramping for individual users, and a B2B integration for makers to incorporate the same functionality into their products. Dapper Labs (NBA Topshot) and OpenSea are two NFT marketplaces we’ve covered that partner with MoonPay, so the confused user we imagined above can buy a Lebron dunk shot with a simple exchange to crypto starting with their credit/debit card.
MoonPay first began enabling the purchase of Bitcoin in the UK and EU in 2019. Now its users can buy or sell over 80 cryptocurrencies in 160 countries. The makers are working on recurring purchases and an NFT direct purchase widget, among other new features. Co-founder Victor Faramond shared:
“At MoonPay, we’re obsessed by User Experience (we’re always running dozen of experiments on our widget) but also Developer Experience (any developer can set up our buy widget in a few minutes...)”
Many in the Product Hunt community are giving that experience a thumbs up so far:
“I was pretty nervous about buying my first cryptocurrency, I didn't even know where to start as there is a lot of specific terminology... I have to say MoonPay are true to their word…” - Lauren Borodajko
“Not every company has the resources... [to build] their crypto-payments stack. Empowering any product to offer.. the buying & selling of crypto with just a few lines of code is simply amazing.” - Aveem Alvi
Four years ago, Brian Armstrong, co-founder of Coinbase (which makes competitor products), made a prediction on a Product Hunt AMA using back-of-the-napkin math. He guessed between 270M and 2.5B people would have or use digital currency in 3-5 years. TripleA estimates there are 300M crypto users worldwide today (not bad, Armstrong).
MoonPay wants a piece of the next 1B: "Our mission is to give the next billion people access to cryptocurrency."
We wouldn’t be surprised to hear stories about the Tooth Fairy paying by Venmo or in Dogecoin these days.
Dental, like the rest of the world, has been moving towards digital and at-home care. Mostly we’ve seen D2C orthodontics and subscription products, like Quip which just raised $100M.
Today’s launch of Adent Health goes a step further with an app for scanning your teeth and tracking your dental health. Adent uses your smartphone’s camera and AI computer vision to give you a free dental checkup, spotting signs of more than 10 oral conditions (so far).
If it makes you a little weary to leave dental health to an app, that’s understandable. The makers explain that Adent is a certified medical device, and they’ve worked with dental professionals for over 40k hours to build and test its algorithms and clinical outcomes.
Dentists from the team are also chiming in to answer questions from the community. When asked about spotting hidden caries or cavities deep in the mouth, maker Leila Samadi explained that an X-Ray would likely be needed, but the app often detects signs from users who report pain or sensitivity.
“We are not in this world to replace dentists — a dentist will always be the gold standard… we are strong believers in prevention and early intervention... You scan your teeth and get a 95% accurate answer... And because you can do it every one or two weeks, we see that our users are tracking their health.”
Co-founder Richard Bundsgaard shared that he was inspired to start Adent Health after receiving an incorrect diagnosis from a dentist himself, all but highlighting another point: IRL misdiagnoses do happen. Maybe another way to think of Adent is as your first opinion, if the dentist is your second (after all, you'll still need to go to one for treatment).
Adent is offering an exclusive for the Product Hunt community: a free scan and consultation in exchange for feedback.
A small investment, like $10K, is enough for a solo founder to fund their own salary for six months while they build their product.
That’s the premise behind Micro Invest from maker Mohd Danish, which launched on Product Hunt after a positive response to a tweet about connecting founders to investors, one-to-one.
To the outside world, tech fundraising is often portrayed as meetings with eccentric personalities in cutthroat VC firms, like Silicon Valley’s Russ and Laurie. That won’t stop any time soon since venture capital continues to set records. Crunchbase shows "funding was up by more than $100 billion for the first half of 2021 compared to the previous half-year peak [of] global funding in the second half of 2020."
Founders have more options these days though, like crowdfunding. Platforms like Republic offer makers access to a large pool of individual investors, including people they don’t have existing relationships with.
However, Danish believes that single relationships might help makers skip headaches related to fundraising and get straight to conversations with passionate backers who are also focused on building the product.
A focus on execution is one reason makers cite choosing to bootstrap their company rather than fundraise at all. Bootstrappers often see their decision as one between focusing on users of their product and pleasing investors.
Resources for bootstrappers are growing, too. A year ago, Andrew Gazdecki launched MicroAcquire, a marketplace that helps bootstrapped startups start conversations that lead to an acquisition. MicroAcquire has now surpassed $800K in annual recurring revenue from premium buyer subscriptions. Last week, Gazdecki deepened his dedication to this space by launching Bootstrappers, a publication dedicated to covering bootstrapped makers and their products.
Whether makers choose to fund their own projects or fundraise is a decision they have to make based on personal and product needs. If you’re a maker that’s considering fundraising, in addition to Micro Invest you can check out a couple of resources from others in the Product Hunt community: Max Fleitmann has put together 6 Lessons From Raising Millions from Investors and Eric Crane shared his 6 lessons after raising a $35M Series A for Flatfile in March.
We’re all content creators. Whether you’re a student writing a research paper, Redditor, or marketing professional, you most likely spend a good chunk of your time organizing your thoughts or research to put something back into the world.
We’ve covered a lot of tools that help with production: video editors, podcast tools, community management — but there’s a big space between having an idea and putting pen to paper, metaphorically speaking. In fact, maybe you don’t even have an idea yet and your content is just a to-do on your checklist.
Here are 4 of the latest tools for stimulating or organizing your thoughts.
Genei - A research tool that pulls together your content (webpages, PDFs, etc.) so you can search, summarize, and keyword it. Genei topped TechCrunch’s list of its “Favorite Startups from YC’s Summer 21 Demo Day.”
DataHerald - A self-service software that lets you leverage the world’s data by creating interactive data visualizations from live data feeds, without coding. “Think Tableau with thousands of pre-populated data sources.”
Research AI - A tool to help students get rid of writer’s block by providing title ideas, paraphrasing, and helping to write paragraphs with text completion.
Heights - These “smart supplements for the brain” are made to help sharpen focus, support deep sleep, and balance mood to soothe stress and anxiety. Cofounder Dan Murray-Serter, explains that unlike other Nootropics (supplements that improve cognitive function), Heights isn’t focused on a quick-fix, but long-term “brain care.” The founding team is supported by advisor Dr. Tara Swart, an Oxford-trained doctor and neuroscientist.
Though it's unrelated to today's topic, the second startup on TC's list was Playhouse. We covered the "Zillow meets TikTok" app here.
We’re giving away $1,895 cash for new Work(out) From Home equipment! Enter here now.
We planned this giveaway with a few of our friends — like 1440, the Sportsletter, Man of Many, and TheFutureParty — before Peloton announced it was cutting the cost of its standard bike by 20%. That means there’s extra cash at stake.
Of course, you can put cash towards any equipment you want.
Rowing machines are picking up steam. Aviron, a YC-backed startup that launched earlier this year, just raised $4.5M. Unlike Peloton, Aviron's angle is to use gaming to motivate your workouts (pictured below). There's also Ergatta, a competitor that closed $30M fundraising round last month.
Tonal and Tempo’s smart home gyms surged during lockdowns. Tonal became a unicorn in March with a $1.6 billion valuation. Tempo, another YC alumn, closed a $220 million fundraising round in April.
If you’re a skeptic on at-home fitness, you might have seen Peloton’s latest numbers and scoffed. The company posted a $312M loss in its fourth fiscal quarter and fell short of its expected earnings for the new year.
As a member of the Cody Rigsby #BooCrew, yours truly is biased, optimistic, or looking at the whole picture (all of the above). Peloton’s Q1 may have fallen short, but revenue also increased 232% year over year. Pandemic-powered shipping delays triggered 1.1K complaints to the Better Business Bureau, but others in this space (Tonal and Tempo) reported supply chain issues too. Peloton’s now expanding its manufacturing capacity and expects to make 2M fitness units this year.
Peloton ultimately seeks to earn a profit on subscription revenue, not hardware so the new bike price is not necessarily a cause for concern. The company uses a slim gross profit on its bikes to offset its acquisition costs for new subscribers.
And that’s where it thrives. The cultish aspects of the Peloton community may be the butt of jokes, but the flexibility of a digital cult is you can participate (or laugh with it) as little or much as you want.
As Rick says,"good music comes from people who are relaxed."
Historically, it's been hard to do that in an industry that's slow to change and even glamorizes a tough grind. Fortunately, music artists are finally getting their fair share of recognition with the creator renaissance, and new self-service tools are empowering a new generation of independent artists. Here are a few of the latest.
The makers behind Musixmatch have been launching on Product Hunt for the last seven years. You might use the Musixmatch app for playing music with lyric visualizations. Or, you may be using Musixmatch on Spotify without knowing it — the company started powering Spotify’s real-time lyrics globally last year.
Now, the company has entered into distribution. Musixmatch Pro is a one-stop, self-service shop for artists where they can verify music credits, claim and administrate copyrights, distribute music, and get paid.
There are two parts to music discovery – when the fans discover it, and when the industry professionals do. The second one usually requires secure file sharing. The problem Byta solves might not seem tough — sending, receiving, and listening to music files. Turns out, it’s not that simple (enter: costly music leaks).
Byta enables secure and efficient file sharing, claiming it's “the only [file sharing] platform which takes advantage of audio files' unique properties” like embedded metadata. Those aspects are as crucial for bedroom artists as they are for big labels when sharing. (You can also read more about Byta’s journey from a bootstrapped to VC-backed company on our blog).
If you’ve ever had to dig through tons of audio stock files to find music for projects like videos or a website, you know it's a time-consuming process to find the perfect fit. Mubert Render launched today with a new tool that makes music tracks with the exact length, mood, and genre you need with the help of AI.
That sounds like a double whammy for music artists and creators who need audio for their projects.
