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Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at monday.com. 

Earlier this week, monday.com raised a whopping $150M funding round at a $1.9B valuation. The raise comes after a period of rapid expansion for the company, which now counts over 70K teams as customers. Among those customers: Discovery Channel, Carlsberg Group, WeWork, and Fiverr. 👀

At its core, monday.com is a work management tool designed to help teams collaborate.

What it looks like: monday.com lets you track everything your team is working on with customizable columns to fit your team's workflow. It's like a spreadsheet, but more intuitive and visual in how it tracks progress.

How it works: You can communicate directly in projects to keep conversations centralized and get a high-level overview of metrics with Dashboards. You can also easily communicate with others on your team using @ mentions, or pass projects outside of your organization through shareable boards. 🙌

More features: The platform also integrates with other services like Slack, Trello, Dropbox, and Google Drive, with build-in automations to save your team time on manual processes.

From the Product Hunt community:

"I love Monday, truly. It's beautiful and strikes a great balance between clean and intuitive and deep functionality." - Jason

“Friendly, modern an intuitive UI. Limitless applications. Visual, overview, fantastic support, rapid development of even more features." - Bart

“My definition of an agile tool. Combines all that my team needs in one place.” - John

It appears there’s big business in altering your face. Tel Aviv-based Lightricks, the maker of photo editing app Facetune, just raised $135M at a $1B post-money valuation.

Facetune’s photo editing tool first came out ~ six years ago, and re-launched in 2016 with Facetune 2 (which is free to download but requires users to pay $5.99/month to unlock all of its features). The app was Apple’s most popular paid app of 2017 and reportedly boasts over one million paying subscribers to date.

If you’re not familiar with Facetune, you may have seen it in use on Instagram. People can use it to digitally manipulate their images, whether they want to cover a grey hair, slim down a body part, smooth over their skin or contort their expression.

We dug into the reviews on Product Hunt to see what people think of the app:

“This app is mind blowing and insanely powerful. This is an augmented reality app under the guise of a selfie editor. You can change the shape of you lips, nose, eye width, height, etc in real time (and not to presets like in Snapchat's 'beauty filter'). This is the next, natural evolution of the beautification of our online monikers” - Nick

“A daily use application!” - Dir

A recurrent theme in the comments: It’s only a matter of time before Facetune gets acquired by a big tech company. 🤑

“This is an unbelievable amazing app with an unbelievable amazing team. I won't be surprised to see a 150M+ acquisition from Facebook / Apple / Google etc.” - Rotem

“Obvious candidate for a Snap or Facebook acquisition.” - Bas (on Memoji by Facetune)

But Facetune’s parent company may be doing more of the acquiring. Lightricks plans to use part of the funding to strategically buy other companies.

While it’s been reported that apps like Facetune are making more people feel unhappy with their IRL appearance, we decided to scope out the app’s App Store reviews to see what users had to say. Surprisingly, people expressed more concern over the price of the app rather than its mental health implications.

A sampling:

“Overall, it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with the effects if they’re used correctly. My biggest problem comes from the subscription fees. I use mobile Photoshop constantly with people’s faces and it feels almost insulting to see that the only things available to non-payers to use are the things that are already available in Photoshop.”

“I’m really disappointed that Facetune decided to go with a subscription model. I probably wouldn’t even mind it too much if it wasn’t this expensive! I’m so tempted to buy this app but honestly every time I just have to remind myself it’s not worth it.”

“I love the app so much that I’m still rating it 5 stars, even through my wallet is hurting.”

This may have been our favorite Maker comment ever:

“I’m excited to announce Buttsss, the most daring collection of round and beautiful butt illustrations in the universe. You can use these GIFs on your pitch deck, your product screens, your marketing campaigns, your business presentations, or your motivational speeches. Buttsss is entirely comprehensive, with innovations that enable creativity and collaboration across every dimension of a project. You can create responsive butt grids, rapid butt prototyping, advanced butt animations, mighty butt design systems, and seamless butt collaboration, all in one place” - Buttsss Maker Pablo Stanley.

If you haven’t already gathered, Pablo’s latest launch was a comprehensive collection of butt illustrations, ranging from “Frida Butthlo” to “UX Butt” to “Flexing Butt.” Tell us your favorite here. 🍑

“Thank you, Pablo for making this Monday a butt-er Monday.” - Julie

“The internet is complete now.” - Panagiotis

“This might be my favorite thing I've seen on Product Hunt” - Mackenzie

“I expect at least $5M Series A at $100M pre-money for this b(ea)uttiful product” - Vivek

Beyond Buttsss, Pablo has launched a number of innovative design collections and was a Golden Kitty Award finalist last year. There was Humaaans, a free library to mix and match illustrations of people. There was also Bottts and Avataaars, a similar idea but for robots and avatars, respectively. You may be noticing a theeeme.

Pablo also created Namasketch, a mini yoga session told through doodles. Last September, Pablo launched Latinxs Who Design, a directory of Latinxs in the design industry.

P.S. Buttsss isn’t the first popular butt product to hit Product Hunt.

Everything old is new again, they say. We’re certainly seeing that sentiment echoed in the tech industry, with more and more ~retro~ tech products launching.

On Friday, it was Poolside FM, a summer-y music website inspired by the ‘90s. When you land on the site’s landing page, you’re prompted ’Press Space to Enter the Pool’ and the virtual vacation of upbeat bops. The collection of songs (about 250 tracks) is pulled from SoundCloud, and listeners can watch short video clips of summer in the ‘80s.

“There's a lot of stuff to be sad about in the world at the moment, so we've created a virtual getaway – an healthy dose of serotonin straight to the brain,” Poolside FM Maker Marty Bell wrote on Product Hunt.

And the community loved it.

“This should be used as a case study for every web developer! From the responsiveness to the design to the easter eggs, Poolside FM is a masterpiece.” - Josh

“4 hours later, still playing 😎” - Julie

A sampling of some other inventive retro products if you want to go back in time (especially to the ‘80s):

👀 Retro App Store is the App Store, but in the ‘80s

👂 Retro AirPods are AirPods, if they were invented in the ‘80s

🎮 Playdate is a simple black and white gaming system (with a crank)

👾 Neon Drive is an ‘80s-style arcade game set in the future

🙌 Retro Patents are bespoke prints of keystone inventions

😍 The Internet Arcade houses over 900 classic arcade games

📱 WANLE iPhone Case turns your phone into a Gameboy console

And if you want to go back to today in Product Hunt history, you can always time travel here.

Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Linode.

Happy sweet sixteen, Linode!

For the past 16 years, Linode, the world's largest independent open cloud provider, has been building a platform that is simple to develop, deploy, and scale. 💯

Who it’s for: Anyone from hobbyists to startups to developers to big businesses who need to deploy in environments without worrying about unpredictable pricing or vendor lock in.

To celebrate their birthday, the company is giving the Product Hunt community a $20 credit on new Linode accounts (promo code: LINODEPRODUCTHUNT).

To date, over 800,000 developers and businesses use Linode across its 10 data centers around the world. The company guarantees 99.9% uptime, which includes monitoring things like temperature and humidity, ensuring that you won’t sweat over the cloud computing system behind your next project.

A bit of internet fun: cellphone nostalgia.

Yesterday, Mowned — a combination of “mobiles” and “owned” — launched on Product Hunt. The site is a self-described “little corner for smartphone enthusiasts,” a place to review and browse through popular smartphones and last decade’s dumb phones. 🙌

According to the maker TJ Sergiu, the idea is to help you share the story behind your previously owned phones, because everyone remembers their flip phones fondly.

“With my passion for smartphones, I started this project a few years ago as a free tool used for generating forum signatures with phones owned over time. It's a fun project that brings different memories! I know that I think about all of my phones owned over the time..it's a journey to nostalgia.”

Within these showcases, users can also find most-liked phones, the top phones for a specific time period and the most popular colors phones were/are bought in.

So we ask you — Product Hunt community — are you team iOS or Android? Answers go here. 👈

If you’re feeling superrr nostalgic, you may also enjoy this iPhone with a 1980s retro vibe, a remake of Snake, or browsing old phones on eBay.

Or if you’re looking to live a more minimal lifestyle, get the the phone that has no apps or texting.

Square is pivoting to a robot company. Just kidding. But the company, largely known for its point-of-sale devices that turn iPhones and iPads into cash registers, is expanding into robots.

This week, the company launched Square Photo Studio, which is a robot that shoots professional product photos for store owners. 🤖📸

The details: The robot cost Square over $20,000 and is housed in a warehouse in Industry City, Brooklyn. The idea is to provide e-commerce business owners with an affordable, scalable, and accessible alternative to traditional photography (that’s better than iPhone photos).

How it works: Square will take orders from anyone in the U.S. for photos (with the robot as the photographer). The company will charge ~$10 plus shipping for customers to send a product (weighing less than 20 pounds) to be photographed in Brooklyn, and within two weeks they’ll receive three digital photos of the item. The company is also providing 360-degree product shots for $30.

If this experiment takes off, Square would also open up more studios that specialize around different products. The long-term vision: what Square did for cash registers, it wants to do for product photography — all in the name of helping small businesses close sales. 💸

“Maybe you've tried to take shots with your phone and noticed how difficult it is to get it to look right, or maybe you've spent thousands of dollars to buy a DSLR and struggled with white balance — there should be a better way! Product photos can make or break sales online, and great photography can increase your conversion rate by 30% or more,” Square e-commerce GM David Rusenko wrote on PH.

Notes from the community:

“I've been using Fiverr for my e-commerce photo needs but will try this next time. Although the 14 day turn around is a bit long, the 360-degree photo is a neat feature.” - Michael

“I completely understand the turnaround time, high quality photos take time, not every object photographs the same or even edits the same” - James

For context: Square, the Jack Dorsey-founded company, is also doing pretty well. The company’s stock was up 40% this year, and it hasn’t stopped launching new products throughout its decade-long tenure. Since Square was founded in 2010, it has made credit card machines, monthly payments, a card reader for restaurants, software for invoices, the Cash app, a business debit card, and our favorite, an illustrated children’s book about bitcoin. 🤑

With the advent of platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Tidal and Amazon Music, streaming has become the lifeblood of the music industry. In fact, 75% of industry revenue last year was generated from streaming services.

The rise of these music streaming services also marked a generational shift away from radio, with millennials listening to more audio than any other generation. Spotify, Apple Music, etc. have jockeyed for the attention of this coveted demographic...but what about Gen Z? 🤔

Mubert, a new futuristic music app, may be ahead of the curve. Yesterday, the new Mubert launched on Product Hunt as the “radio for Generation Z.” The app works like a streaming service, but uses algorithms to produce original, electronic music in real-time. You can choose different modes of listening, like “Study,” “Relax” or “Dream,” and Mubert will produce a unique sequence of sounds according to your taste. It’s kind of like listening to a DJ, if the DJ was you. 🎧

What do early adopters think of Mubert?

“App is just dope” - Matasha

“Love love love love it. New design is so cool!” - Vitaly

“Best example of generative music!”- Viktor

According to Mubert CEO Alexey Kochetkov, the app already has 200,000 users. For context, Spotify has 217 million monthly active users, including 100 million paying subscribers. Apple Music has about 60 million subscribers.

Mubert isn’t the only one exploring generative music. Startups like Popgun and Auxuman are creating AI pop stars. Lil Miquela has been producing music since the beginning of her artificial birth (although created by real human beings… old school). As with most things in tech, we’ve already seen this weird future in film. Remember Simone?

FaceApp came back last week with a bang. For a refresher, the app went viral ~ two years ago with its seamless ability to make you look younger or older. An initial note from FaceApp founder and CEO Yaroslav Goncharov in 2017:

“FaceApp uses neural networks to modify a face on any photo while keeping it photorealistic. For example, it can add a smile, change gender and age, or just make you more attractive. It takes only one tap to apply a filter.”

As people once again began posting their old/young photos across the internet last week, FaceApp came under fire for privacy concerns. It was reported that the app’s creators are harvesting metadata from user’s photos, and closer looks suggest that the app’s permissions are similar to those at other tech companies. BuzzFeed even ran tests with the app that indicate that users aren’t giving up more data than the single photo they upload to use the app. The company also said in a statement that it deletes most images from its servers within 48 hours of upload, and doesn’t share data to third parties.

If you’re off the FaceApp train, there are other face-altering apps you can play around with. We went down the Product Hunt rabbit hole to find some:

✍️ Avatoon lets you cartoon yourself

💄 MakeApp uses AI to add or remove makeup from any face

😜 Emoji Me Face Maker turns you into an emoji

😳 Reflect is AI-powered face swap

🙃Facehub is real-time face-to-face swap

Back in January, we penned Notion as one of the startups to keep an eye on in 2019. We also wrote about how our community loves Notion, and reference it as an app that changed their lives. Turns out, they might have been on the nose. Last night, The Information reported that the San Francisco based startup is raising $10M, hitting a wild $800M valuation with its new funding (that it’s referring to as an ‘angel round’).

A little background: Notion is a powerful note-taking app that does it all when it comes to productivity (think the best features of Dropbox, Excel and Google Docs). Notion first launched on Product Hunt three years ago (h/t to Naval for the hunt), and won a Golden Kitty in 2016 for Best Desktop Product.

A note back then from Notion founder Ivan Zhao:

“Notion wants to challenge this status quo of ‘software as silos.’ For the 1.0 release, we are bundling real-time documents, wiki-like organization, and lightweight tasks into a unified tool that can handle pretty much all your team's knowledge needs – and this is just the beginning.”

Clearly.

Some initial reactions from the PH community:

“The thinking that went into designing Notion was clearly a cut above the rest. Nice work on it so far, can't wait to see where you all take it” - Alexander

“It will totally replace all my Google Docs + Trello + Dropbox Paper + bunchofotherstuff craziness. Thank you for the great product” - Kitze

“I must echo the sentiment that so many people here share; Notion is a well-conceived and expertly executed tool for knowledge work. I have used, and considered the merits of so many solutions purporting to solve the problems involved in contemporary knowledge work, and to my mind, none understand the problem quite as well as the team behind Notion.” - Sky

It’s worth noting that this $10M is Notion’s first major funding round, as it has historically given up very little equity in the six years since it was founded. However, the app didn’t launch publicly until 2016, and now has over a million registered users.

Another thing worth noting: Zhao openly shared on Product Hunt that Notion nearly ran out of money at the time of its 1.0 launch, and thanked his mom for financial help.

It seems she should be seeing a positive return on her investment. 😉