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Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterday’s top ten launches. That’s it.

Where's the beef?
Sorry, carnivores. No meat here.

In honor of Meatless Monday and some new launches, we’re serving up some plant-based products.

🌱 Veganzone launched recently to foster a community of plant-based users. Find like-minded eaters nearby or across the world, chat, and attend or post events.

🥤 Smoothly is an app with tasty and healthy smoothie recipes for vegans and those with food intolerances.

👫 TofuTogether is an advert-free app to chat, date, and make friends with other vegan and vegetarian singles.

🌎 5 Vegan is a tool that lets you calculate the impact you’ve had on the environment by going vegan.

🐮 No Meat Today is a non-judgemental app to help you track and change your diet.

🥦 Kuri helps you cook with what’s in season to reduce your carbon footprint (Although not strictly vegan, Kuri notes that 92% of the recipes cooked by users were meat-free.)

Having someone in your circle who’s plant-based has become the norm. According to Veganzone, every year the population of vegans increases by 20% and vegetarians by 10%. Among the early adopters, many people noted that they shared a product with a friend.

Kick off your Meatless Monday with a new community or share with a plant-based bud.
The Robinhood of sports card trading
Non-fungible tokens have been receiving a lot of attention, like yesterday when the artist Beeple sold his compilation piece, ”The First 5,000 Days,” for over $69M.

Sports cards may sound old-school next to NFTs, but they're booming recently too. It’s all tied to a larger interest in alternative investments.

Yesterday, the sports card trading platform Alt launched on Product Hunt while announcing having raised $31 million. Founder Leore Avidar explained to the community that there hasn’t been a lot of infrastructure in this space.

“We want to make it as easy to invest in sports cards and other alts as it is with stocks.

On Alt, you can track the current market value of your assets with our proprietary Alt Value, buy and sell pre-authenticated cards on our exchange, and securely store your collection in our custody solution, Vault.”


He also compared Alt to Coinbase, which brought structure to buying and selling cryptocurrency. Others have compared Alt to Robinhood for making trading more accessible. Alt's transaction fees are 1.5% — a key part of the company's strategy since auction houses often start at 12.5%.

Alt plans to expand to other alternative investments eventually (watches, etc.), based on what its customers want next.

For those looking to diversify your portfolio with alternative assets, Alt can be a great place to start.
A new marketplace for makers
Today’s newsletter was crafted by us and sponsored by our friends at AppSumo Marketplace.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of launching a product.

The Product Hunt community is always on the lookout for additional channels to increase their users, subscribers, and downloads. AppSumo recently launched Marketplace, a community where creators can sell their products to help fellow entrepreneurs succeed.

Noah Kagan (aka Chief Sumo) explained AppSumo Marketplace in the launch:

“This year, millions of individuals are starting their own businesses. The Marketplace helps those creators expand their audience of potential customers and get valuable user feedback from a trusted network of fellow business owners.”

Some early adopters from the community had this to say on launch day:

“I love Marketplace—it gives me time to create things and not to market them for sales [all day and night.]” - Martin Tonev

“It introduced me to [a] few great courses and apps already! At the same time, AppSumo Marketplace is a great space for creators and business owners to expand, get serious feedback from a great community, and gain new customers as well.” - Rami Amin

“There's a community of power users who'll give you instant feedback, and they're used to working with early startups. Many of our recent features came directly from AppSumo users who ended up purchasing after the updates.” - Rohan Arun

According to Noah and team, here’s what you can expect:

🔍 Get discovered by entrepreneurs in Marketplace
🗣️ Get feedback and discover what features customers want
💸 Quickly boost your income
🏃 Fast track your growth goals
➕ Gain some extra clout by listing your product

As a thanks to the Product Hunt community, AppSumo is giving a $500 bonus to makers who have sold their product to 10 new buyers by June 30th, 2021. Just submit your product by 11:59 p.m. CST on March 31st, 2021 and you’ll be set up to take advantage of the deal.
Around is back
It was a year ago that Around launched, right when WFH was just becoming the norm for office-goers.

Since the start, this nex-gen video call tool grabbed attention with a better video UI. Its slick, AI-based framing feature keeps video minimal and floats to free up your screen — like smart profile photos versus Brady Bunch boxes.

Now the company has raised a $10M Series A and launched Around 2.0 with its newest feature: The EchoTerminator.

The EchoTerminator eliminates echo and also the wince we all make when multiple devices in one space start to screech. Combined with previously released features like background noise filtering and voice proximity detection, Around is working to replace traditional conference room hardware. That would be a big benefit to the "new normal" post-pandemic, where many of us will continue working remotely.

For the audio experts, maker Dominik Zane explains: “Around’s EchoTerminator engine completely solves the hybrid-remote challenge: sophisticated ultrasonic signaling, complex DSP algorithms, and real-time audio synchronization ensures that all microphones and speakers are enabled concurrently, meaning everyone is heard perfectly.”

The stack of WFH tools is still growing, with recent pro-collaboration additions including Sims-esque virtual offices, asynchronous recording tools and slack standups, video call networking, and automated team building.

Let us know what products have become your WFH essentials.

Now, come with me if you want to get rid of that mic echo.
And the $5K grants go to... 💸
Don your best hoodie. It’s time to announce and congratulate our February Makers Grant recipients! 🤩

These makers brought a lot to the Product Hunt community table, whether it was perseverance through solo entrepreneurship, cranking out products that delight, or being a cheerleader and product evangelist alongside their own builds.

Here are their acceptance words:

Aashni Shah of HypeDocs

“I thought the best thing about launching on Product Hunt was that I could finally say I launched on Product Hunt, but I was wrong - the support from the Product Hunt community is easily the best thing. I'm so honored to receive this grant and can't wait to build even more with it!”

Neil Sardesai of Battery Buddy

“I’m thrilled and absolutely honored to receive a Maker Grant! This is such a fantastic initiative to encourage people to make wonderful products and share them with the world.”

Sharath Kuruganty of Shoutout

“I have launched 8 products on PH in the last 2.5 years, and this news beats all of my PH accomplishments! This is such a cool initiative that will empower makers, and that's why I love PH. Thanks, guys.”

Sharath told us about his first steps in creating Shoutout — a tool that lets you tap into your social proof to create a "Wall of Love" in minutes.

Get some inspiration and advice from him here 👇.
The latest in femtech ♀️
It’s International Women’s Day! We’re celebrating the achievements of women by doing what we do best – surfacing products.

One of the most important movements in the pursuit of women’s equality is bringing visibility and solutions to women’s health issues, especially since they affect huge portions of the population. These products are helping to set the foundation for a female-strong future. 💪

Pollie, which launched just last week, was created to simplify hormonal health. It matches women with a health provider based on a short quiz, to take the pain out of Googling for a professional who vibes with your style and can help with your issue.

With the launch of Oova, maker Amy Divaraniya talked about her fertility journey. She explained that the fertility tools she was using were “hardwired for a woman that had a 'normal' 28-day cycle,” making it difficult to know where she was in her cycle. That's why she created Oova, a contraception tool that measures two key fertility hormones and creates a picture of your fertility to help you get pregnant.

Leela also just arrived — an app giving women welcoming spaces to discuss all things health and wellness with other women who have similar experiences.

And let’s talk about sex.

Female-founded Coral just launched Coral 2.0, your personal sex and desire coach (note that Coral is for everyone, not just women!). Coral helps people achieve better intimacy through stories, science-based recommendations, and practical exercises that are curated to each person.

Women’s issues are human issues. 👏

To see more in this space. 👇
$60M for your new CFO
Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by us and sponsored by our friends at Pilot.

Founders and makers wear so many hats—sometimes all of them. Back-office work like bookkeeping can be the most dreaded one.

The founders of Pilot felt it when they started their first two startups, too. So they dreamt up the tech-enabled, back-office solution they would have wanted to use themselves. Fast-forward four years, Pilot has 1,000+ clients, manages over $3B in transactions a year, and recently raised a $60M Series C from Sequoia.

If you’re a pre-revenue startup, a high growth company, or anywhere in between, Pilot can step in to manage your bookkeeping, taxes, budgets, R&D tax credits, and more—leaving you time for those other hats. 🧢

And they’ll use both human expertise and intelligent software to do it.

🤵‍♀️ On the human side, Pilot pairs you with a dedicated finance expert (a full-time, US-based Pilot employee). Their sole mission is to take care of your books and taxes, and give you advice and best practices for growth.

🤖 On the software side, Pilot’s powerful tech helps check the work so you know it’s error-free, giving crucial financial insights to help you run your business effectively.

These combined turn Pilot into an important partner for all things finance as you grow, whether you’re a founder in a garage or the CEO of a Series C company. Airtable, Scale.ai, CodePen, Bolt.io, and OpenAI have all taken advantage of Pilot.

“It’s been incredible working with Pilot to uplevel our financial models and analysis. I have been waiting years for a service like this!” - Dave, CFO, Bolt.io

With tax day 📅 around the corner, maybe the green visor is one of the hats you should give up. Pilot is offering the Product Hunt community 20% off your first six months.
Upwork meets LinkedIn
Freelancers have the opportunity to put their fingerprint on many great projects. But finding rewarding work and clients that click can feel like dating, with constant profile adjustments in the hopes of finding a match.

Looks like Contra gets the dance and is harnessing the power of the freelancer community. This professional network feels kind of like a cross between LinkedIn and Upwork, with a layer of Adobe Portfolio. In other words, Contra lets freelancers pull together a collaborative, aesthetically pleasing portfolio, support fellow freelancers with referrals, offer services, and get paid.

On the other hand, matchmaking works too, and that’s where Huddle comes in. On Huddle, the hirer defines what they need and Huddle matches the project with a pop-up team, which means less sweat from freelancers trying to perfect their image because Huddle knows the value they bring to the team.

For makers, they have a Founder Community in beta. Since many founders aren’t ready to hire a team, each month they accept a few ambitious founders into their community to get support from their builders-in-residence for a small membership fee.

Other tools for freelancers and hiring managers:

Storetasker 2.0 matches you to a trusted Shopify Expert within a few hours for projects big and small.

Side Hustle Stack is a database of platform-based work opportunities — helpful for developers looking to add to their income.

Notion Pack gives freelancers out-of-the-box templates for working with clients.

FloTask and Borawork are project management platforms specifically designed for freelancers.

The Self-Employment Tax Hub provides free resources that help freelancers sort through the confusion around financials like taxes.

LaborX Gigs lets you create fixed-price gigs and get paid in cryptocurrency (NFT shopping, anyone?)

Zaprite is an invoicing platform enabling you to be paid in bitcoin.

May the stars align between more founders and freelancers.
Would you pay $600K for a meme?
This week musician and artist Grimes raked in almost $6m on 10 pieces of digital artwork in a 48-hour auction.

The recent craze around NFTs continues to make for jaw-dropping headlines.

If you need a refresher, an NFT (non-fungible token) is a digital collectible. A beloved piece of digital art — say a cat with a Pop-Tart for a torso — that was merely an internet meme can now be sold for 300 Ether (ETH), or about $590,000, thanks to a record on a blockchain. This blockchain record means that the true owner (or owners) can be verified and that the artwork cannot be reproduced, unlike regular memes or GIFs on the internet. Think of it like owning an original piece of art versus just taking a photo of one.

So are NFTs another step towards the democratization of art? Sort of. 30 minutes into the auction, one of Grimes’ works had jumped from $111 to $123,456. Investors are quickly gobbling up buzzworthy NFTs and reselling them for profit.

But it’s getting there and product makers are leading the charge as much as artists or crypto owners themselves with NFT marketplaces.

Rarible is like a Christies for NFT collectibles. A community-owned marketplace, Rarible lets artists mint their work with the option to sell with single or split ownership, and in an auction or at a flat price. Ilya Komolkin at Rarible confirmed to the Product Hunt community that you can track the value and history of your art over time.

SuperRare, Foundation, OpenSea, and Portion are four more NFT marketplaces to check out. SuperRare prioritizes the collectors just as much as the artists by letting you showcase your collections and highlighting top collectors.

Whether you intend to buy, window shop, or just want to gawk at bidding wars, exploring the artwork for sale is a rabbit hole of fun.
Deepfake Grandma
Deepfakes are no longer just for Gen Z and millennials perfecting their Tom Cruise impressions. They’re for your great-nana, too!

Your family’s old black and white photos are the latest to undergo deepfake transformation thanks to a partnership by MyHeritage, a family ancestry service, and D-ID, a company specializing in video reenactment with deep learning. Deep Nostalgia™ uses several drivers that consist of a fixed sequence of movements and gestures. When you upload your photo (for free), it applies those drivers to a face (one per photo) in your still to create a short video that you can share with your friends and family. In the words of MyHeritage, you can “experience your family history like never before.” You got that right.

As always, deepfake tech isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. The word “creepy” got its fair share of use from a handful of PH commenters. But for other audiences, Deep Nostalgia hit that sweet spot, which we expect is exactly what MyHeritage and D-ID were looking for:

“Great feature! It also helps to "connect" with late relatives, that we never had the chance to meet. Great thumb up!” – Anna Costalonga

“AWESOME - was able to reanimate my dead mom and grandma :)” – Bibi Lauri Raven

“Wow, talk about hitting an emotional chord with this one. Off to search for some photos now!” – Harry Duran

If you’re thinking “It’s just like Hogwarts!” there are plenty of those comments too, and if you really want to go full in on this fantasy (“You’re a wizard, Harry!”), consider pairing your new animated bw photo with a Meural Canvas. 👻

Once you’ve brought your ancestors into 2021 with Deep Nostalgia you can have more fun with deepfakes with these (use responsibly):

Impressions – An app that lets you create your own celebrity deepfakes in minutes.

Parodist – Send your loved ones a funny and unique video congratulations.

Deepfakes web – Deepfakes as a service.

And for those of you anti deepfake warriors (the world needs you):

Sensity – A deepfake detection platform.

Amber Video – Video authentication to combat deepfakes.