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When Ryan Hoover introduced me, Josh Buckley, as Product Hunt’s new CEO a few months ago, he teased a big vision for the future. I’m incredibly excited to finally be able to share some of that vision with you today.

Say hello to Hyper, a new kind of early-stage venture firm inspired by the awesome community of makers and early adopters at Product Hunt. Hyper’s investments are about a lot more than just money — we provide startups with the things they need most in today’s tech ecosystem: a great mentorship program, a helpful community, and unique distribution partnerships, among other things we’ll announce later this year. And what makes Hyper really interesting is how we plan to reinvest our fund profits back into the ecosystem.

We’re going to invest in a small number of startups four times per year, with the first group starting our 8-week founder program on September 10th. Applications for Hyper’s Fall season are open as of today, so if you’re a startup founder, or if you’re thinking of starting a company, you should apply now.

Read more about the Hyper team and how it works, and let us know what you think. We're excited to see what the tech community (like TechCrunch) and Product Hunt community are saying about our launch so far:

"Congrats! Brilliant move for the Product Hunt community 🙌" - Ben Lang

"Congrats to you Josh & whole PH team. Excited to see this one. Applying it right away :)" - Dheeraj Mehndiratta

Stay tuned for more announcements in the coming weeks. We have some exciting news that I can’t wait to share with you.

“You want your 6-year old to learn about Mars — let’s take a spaceship to Mars then!”

That’s how founder Ahmad Faraaz introduced Kalam Labs to the community today. The new live game streaming platform offers a way for kids to learn about science topics, like black holes and aliens, without stuffy materials like PowerPoint presentations.

Kalam Labs hosts live streams daily and Faraaz noted that, on average, kids are completing 45 minutes of the 60-minute streams — a 5x higher completion rate over YouTube.

Aliens don’t usually make it into many children's curriculum, but then neither do a lot of topics — like starting a business. A startup called Mighty is enabling children to gain real-life experience in entrepreneurship with its eCommerce platform for kids.

Mighty made its way onto Product Hunt after closing $6.5 million in seed funding this month. The LA-based startup works like a Shopify platform, but made-easier for children. Kids launch a website, design a logo and brand, customize products made by other CEOs, and earn real money. Mighty takes care of things like shipping and product development (kids can’t currently sell their own handmade items but the founders told TechCrunch they’re working to change that).

There are a few concerns around the idea for a modern-day lemonade stand. As a community of makers, many can understand that entrepreneurship comes with a significant level of stress and dedication. Plus, kids are spending so much time online these days.

KidX Classbox just launched to alleviate the screen time issue, at least partially, by combining online learning with real-world play. KidX combines pre-recorded videos of math, logic, and brain games that are made interactive with correlating toys.

Parents are under a lot of pressure when it comes to figuring out how to provide the best education and experiences for their children. Since every child is unique, we love to see new approaches.

Data from CB Insights revealed that $1 out of every $5 raised globally last quarter went to Fintech. 😮 This quarter is shaping up to be a big one too — neobank (read: digital-only bank) Revolut just became the UK's biggest private company ever at a $33 billion valuation.

So what else are we seeing in this space lately? Mostly that people love when they don’t have to lift a finger. Here are recent launches that automate your finances:

Checking: Lance is a business bank account for freelancers that puts your checking account on autopilot, auto-budgeting your income every time you get paid. It even calculates, withholds, and pays your quarterly taxes (U.S. only for now).

Expenses: Volopay is automation for your business expenses. The new reimbursements feature takes care of reporting, receipt upload, approval flows, claims processing, and accounting automation. Isn’t that what Expensify does? Yes. Founder Rajith Shaji explained in the comments that what makes the product worth noticing is that it’s 1) forever-free and 2) one part of the company's ecosystem of offerings which includes corporate cards and money transfers.

eCommerce: Synder provides a single source of truth for online sellers who have various payment methods or subscriptions to manage. It automates your accounting and records fees to give you an instant overview of your multi-channel cash flow, and inventory too.

Commissions: Calculating sales commissions is not only cumbersome for accounting teams, it often leaves sales reps double-checking that their commissions were accurately calculated and fiddling with spreadsheets. PaletteHQ is a SaaS platform that connects to CRMs and accounting softwares to calculate commissions automatically.

Crypto: We wrote about Coinrule last month but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention it here especially as it’s also a UK-based startup. Coinrule automates crypto trading across platforms by enabling their users to set up rules without code or bots.

We don't know about you, but saving money doesn't really come to mind when thinking about gaming. These recent launches can set you up nicely.

Rewards
Mythia is a debit card that gives gaming rewards. If rewards cards turn you off, we get it. The founders do too. Derek Pankaew shared:

"When I was 22, I started “travel hacking”, i.e. using airline miles to fly all over the world for free. As I did, I realized just how convoluted and confusing airline miles are, and thought there had to be a better and more fun way to do card rewards.”

Mythia was designed to feel like a video game itself, with weekly challenges (e.g. save $50 this week) and randomized rewards — no transfering points or searching for qualifying rewards flights. The name may sound oddly familiar since the startup first launched 8 months ago. It's re-emerged with a new approach (it's a debit card now, for starters) and name post Y-Combinator.

Hardware Hacks
Eyeware Beam turns your iPhone into a head and eye tracker for your Windows PC. With your app open while you play, the technology uses computer vision, AI, and 3D cameras (on your iOS device) for tracking. Cofounder Kenneth Funes said:

“We believe this is a game-changer (literally), as you can take advantage of a device that is in your pocket, instead of buying extra hardware.”

Funes notes a few uses for Eyeware Beam that range from improving your gameplay to better influencer content for streamers.

Buy/Sell/Trade
GamerPay launched yesterday for people to trade gaming skins and assets safely via an integration with Steam. Cofounder Martin Lykke Suhr started working on the product after seeing gamers scammed regularly. He shared:

“We are gamers ourselves or parents to minors who game. So our biggest motivation is to be the safe destination for young and old gamers to trade - safe enough that the parents of young gamers even encourage it.”

Let the savings begin.

Most of us have struggled with our hormones, in some form or another. Yet keeping them in check has become a taboo topic.

According to Hone, 30 million men over 35 struggle with low testosterone. Co-founder Saad Alam shared his story in yesterday’s launch:

“I started to lose my energy, my stamina, my sleep became worse, my sex drive was completely gone, I felt sad, and I started to gain weight... and it took me 6 months and countless specialists to diagnose my condition. I went on hormone optimization therapy and...it changed my life.”

Hone offers at-home blood tests, 30-minute telehealth visits, and treatments shipped to your home. The launch fits into a growing group of makers and investors pushing digital health forward globally, while trying to crack through social stigmas and taboos (women’s health is full of them too.)

Also here to tackle taboos today is BlockerX, a judgment-free app that helps in overcoming compulsive watching of porn. Porn consumption is a potential problem for all genders and ages, but founder Tejas Balasubramanya specifically calls out 18 to 30-year-olds — a segment that’s more likely to struggle with this issue.

“Watching porn compulsively is one of the most embarrassing problems that a young guy could face. Because this is a taboo topic, there's very little support available to get out of this problem.”

Despite the simple name, the app isn’t just a blocker. It offers an online community and a buddy system so you and a friend/partner can help keep each other accountable towards your goals.

Taboos, by definition, take work to break. Users who are still too nervous to ask a friend for help can “find a buddy” through BlockerX's forum as well.

Gumroad founder and Hone investor, Sahil Lavingia, was one of the first to open up on Twitter by sharing his own experience with low testosterone, which encouraged others to follow suit. We’re here for it.

If there’s one thing millennials and younger generations love more than exotic travel, it’s staying local.

Love for local products continues to rise steadily. The pandemic and still-growing sharing economy have given localization an extra boost too. Here's a handful of new tools for supporting your neighbors.

Food

Local: Locale connects fresh foods from local businesses together so it reaches you in one box.

“Food delivery is a really crowded space. However, small ticket items don't fit the instantaneous delivery model… Locale customers... get it all delivered in one box with a $5 delivery fee.” - Jonathan Friedland

Hyperlocal: Galora connects you with your neighbors to find homegrown goods — from eggs to cannabis.

“My backyard in LA produces a couple hundred pounds of fruit each year, and most of it spoiled... Finding a way to sell or trade this amazing food in my community was the inspiration for Galora.” - Ryan Xavier

Art

Ever eyed that art on the wall at your local cafe?

Lonely Walls lets you discover and buy work from local artists. In turn, it connects those artists with local businesses to help them create unique art exhibitions on site.

Experiences

WKND creates personalized, local weekend adventure packages for you and your friends. It starts with a Myers-Briggs-inspired personality test and ends with a “ready-to-live-and-share local weekend.”

“The car-free, workaholic and social media-driven generation find it difficult to recharge, reboot, and re-energize every weekend… We’ve been working hard over the past year to build a unique and powerful local travel platform.”- Brian Friedman

We’ve covered Auditorium before so we’ll keep it short: hyper-local, live audio performances. Boom.

It’s worth saying — we know many of these products are unique the U.S. If you’ve got an alternative (like this UK one), do the community a favor and post it!

The tech world is seeing rainbows over the news of a unicorn frenzy — 136 new unicorn startups in Q2 2021 (for comparison: all of 2020 birthed 128 unicorns 🤯, via Crunchbase). We’re thrilled too, but we’re just as giddy about… launches and cats!

Q3 started off with a bang. First, that tl;dv video cracked us up. Then InAppStory came to play with a launch that included a Product Hunt-themed game.

InAppStory first impressed us with a cold pitch tweet that got our attention.

Beyond excellent personalization in the video, InAppStory has a solid offering. The platform enables makers to integrate Stories, including interactive ones, directly into their apps ("like on Instagram, but better"). Maker Vladmir Lastovsky wrote:

“When I found that there were around 5 million mobile apps in 2020, I was shocked. They struggle with low retention, in-app engagement, and don't give the audience what it loves – good content.”

The official launch video goes on to explain that 62% of apps don’t get used every month. InAppStory is working to fix this by making it easy to add great content, widgets, and games into apps to increase engagement and conversion.

They created Cat Hunt to give us all a peek at the kind of interactivity you can accomplish within InAppStory’s framework. It was enough to convince many in the community that Product Hunt should add stories to our mobile app.

Will we do it? We shall see. In the meantime, waste a bit of time with a game of Cat Hunt.

Big, quiet Zoom classrooms are so 2020.

That’s an exaggeration but LearnTech really is evolving fast. Like MarTech or FinTech, LearnTech is a purposefully broad term so there’s a lot to look at.

One trend we’re seeing is personalization. Large class sizes have always been a topic of debate, remote and in-person. They are a strain on teachers, and one-size-fits-all doesn't work when it comes to learning. SparkStudio.co is approaching extracurricular learning with smaller cohorts. The company launched today with 1:4 live and online extracurricular classes for children.

Growic recently introduced its Customized Learning Platform, where maker Alina Bushlyakova explained the company’s personalized approach — “Growic is a completely new approach to education, where each student can learn exactly what they want, when they want and how they want.”

In LatAm, Filadd is helping students prepare for their entrance exams with 24/7 access to teachers. “We give a personalized experience… by partnering (sharing revenue) with experienced teachers and making them owners of the course, thus generating a high grade of commitment with the contents,” CEO Joaquín Olmedo explained.

Startups are also taking their shot on alternative learning from unconventional teachers. Previously mentioned SparkStudio’s extracurricular courses have curriculum designed by experts/artists. Gura allows anyone to be the teacher. It’s an all-in-one platform for running a live e-learning business. Whether you’re an expert in cryptocurrency or personal development, you can set up a course in minutes.

Learners is leveraging shared knowledge as well with its community of mentors, and today’s launch of Greenwork introduces free online courses for job seekers interested in clean energy positions.

All of these are only launches are just from the past month, and we haven’t even gotten to workspaces yet, like mmhmm (with its recent $100M raise) and Lessonspace, so we’ll leave you with those links.

It may not be tax season where you live but governments globally are asking for something from you all year long — your data.

Today, Kodex launched on Product Hunt. It’s a portal enabling companies to easily process, and respond to, information requests from governments and law enforcement all around the world.

How big is this issue? It’s a lot to dig into globally, but we’ll throw a few stats your way. According to a ProtonMail report, the U.S. government has made more than 163,000 user data requests in 2019 alone. Germany — 38,000 times the same year. ProtonMail itself reported a 510% increase in requests since 2010. Same for big tech, with Facebook receiving 8,241 requests from the UK government in the second half of 2020, according to data from Statista.

Big companies have scaled to deal with the requests. Kodex is working to make it all less of a nightmare for the rest.

“Tech giants like Facebook and Google have spent years and millions of dollars building secure online portals to easily comply with government requests – we built a secure online portal for everyone else. No more manually tracking emails & faxes in spreadsheets!”

Co-founder Matt Donahue was formerly doing Counterterrorism Intelligence for the FBI before he started Kodex. He explained:

“It was very surprising to see how even multi-billion dollar companies often struggled to comply with these legal orders. Currently, companies are forced to rely on manually tracking a complex web of emails, faxes, and spreadsheets.”

Co-founder Danny Mendoza, formerly at LendingClub working on fraud analysis, added that the company end-to-end encrypts each company's sensitive data whenever you send it to government agencies.

If these government requests are news to you, it’s worth noting that many companies already have processes in place for how they will protect your data securely when governments ask for it. Kodex’s goal is to make the process easier for more companies.

If you’ve ever felt remorse looking at racks of new clothing, you might already know — about 20% of apparel each year gets shredded or burned without ever being sold.

In the fashion industry, the most thorough sustainable production includes strategy on both what materials are used, and what process is used to produce. Terms like “made to order” and “circular production” roughly translate to better for the environment.

We were reminded of this with the launch of Rothy’s men’s line (targeting circularity), and Autumn Adeigbo (made-to-order), one of a16z’s TxO accelerator startups. Denim brand unspun counts itself among such highly sustainable brands and has just launched its new mobile app to elevate its experience.

Based in San Francisco and Hong Kong, unspun is a robotics and digital apparel company building custom jeans for each consumer, on-demand. The new app, officially in public beta, lets you 3D scan yourself for a custom-made pair of jeans, which unspun touts will be the perfect fit.

“No two customers ever get the same pants; these are built to your actual waist, hips, thighs, calf, ankles… all unique to you.” — Kevin Martin, cofounder

unspun counts H&M Foundation as one its investors. While that may confuse at first glance, Martin touches on the company’s bigger vision.

“We use our small brand as the concept car… and that sends the big brands... knocking on our door. We then power the same zero-inventory process for them (yes we're a fashion company with a SaaS product lol), which adds some commas to the tons of waste they can divert, their ultimate profits, and, yes— also our revenue.”

Something we’ve heard from makers in this space, including Martin, is that fashion is always at the forefront. unspun has set out to prove that by luring talent from companies like Levi’s. While the production method may be techie, a made-to-order product typically provides a higher quality product. So go ahead and...