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Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterday’s top ten launches. That’s it.
“There's a ton of job opportunities constantly being tweeted out there and as much as I tried to retweet them all, they still got lost in the feeds.”
This is the problem that led Maker Dann Petty to create a *different* type of job board. The result is Epic Jobs. 👀
How it's unique: Epic Jobs sets itself apart from other job boards in that its listings feel human. Dann observed how personal tweets about open jobs garnered attention, and replicated that feeling on the platform. Job seekers can browse 90-140 second video clips called “Intros,” where they can learn about the opportunity directly from the hiring manager. The site also features “Office Tours,” which are fun videos that give you a virtual tour of a company's workspace.
Some initial reactions:
“I find the interviews super interesting, many questions I'd ask during the interview process already answered” - Julie
“Adds the human element that is often missing in the hiring process” - Pradip
“I don't think I'd be in my current role if it wasn't for the connections that I made via Twitter. Can't wait to see where all this goes.” - Josh
It's worth noting that Epic didn't come to be overnight. In fact, Dann has been connecting people to jobs via Twitter since 2010, and has been conducting experiments, polls and interviews about hiring along the way.
It's a novel idea in a crowded — albeit difficult to crack — job hunting market. Beyond big tech incumbents like LinkedIn, we've seen more and more niche job boards crop up. And if you're looking for a job at a startup specifically, definitely check out AngelList (but we're biased 😉). If you’re hiring, you can also promote your job to millions of talented makers in the Product Hunt community.
Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Brex.
You may recognize Brex from its subway ads in New York City or giant billboards spread throughout San Francisco. Brex is making a splash.
Brex, a Y Combinator-backed startup that provides corporate credit cards for other startups, raised $100M in debt financing from Barclays last week. The news comes just six months after a $215M equity round, valuing the company at $1.1B. Did we mention that the founders — Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi — are only 22- and 23-years-old?
So how does Brex work? 👀
Through its Rewards program, Brex offers perks that include multipliers like 7x on rideshare, 4x on travel, 3x on restaurants, and 2x on software, plus access to a lounge in San Francisco for Brex card holders. And Brex gives entrepreneurs a credit limit that's 10-20 times higher than other services.
Brex is also shaking things up by giving founders access to high-limit corporate credit cards without requiring a personal guarantee or deposit. For anyone without a credit score (like many immigrant founders), this is game-changing. Brex is also part of Mastercard World Elite, giving early-stage entrepreneurs total fraud protection and travel benefits, like no foreign transaction fees.
The kicker? Founders can secure one of these cards in five minutes. The company offers instant approvals with a virtual card, and then you’ll receive your physical card 3-5 days later. Oh, and it’s worth mentioning — there’s no annual fee. 💸
Want a Brex card?
Luminary officially launched today with a big bet — that you will pay for podcasts.
The paid podcasting app is already backed by $100M in venture funding pre-launch, claiming to bring “Netflix for podcasts” to the public. Starting today, Luminary will offer both a paid and free tier. The free tier will include many publicly available shows. The paid tier will give users access to 40 new exclusive podcasts, including new shows from personalities like How I Built This host Guy Raz, Daily Show host Trevor Noah, Girls creator Lena Dunham, Queer Eye's Karamo Brown and Planet Money's Adam Davidson.
However, Luminary's platform will be missing some of the biggest shows in the industry, including The New York Times' The Daily and Gimlet Media's Reply All.
To be sure, Luminary's model is like Netflix. A paid subscription will run you $8/month and the exclusive content will be ad-free. But what Luminary is really betting on is that you will pay for premium audio content. 💸
It's worth noting that Spotify is also taking a big bet on premium content, having just acquired Gimlet Media and Anchor for high-quality, proprietary shows to level up again Apple. Apple is the current market leader in podcasts.
Will Luminary — a late player in the podcasting world — be competitive with Spotify and Apple? 🤔
Based on existing streaming services, the current market indicates that arriving first gives a big advantage. As of November, Netflix reported 137 million subscribers, far beyond Hulu's reported 20 million subscribers. However, Amazon Prime (which includes Prime Video) has over 100M subscribers from its integrated services, making it somewhat of a close competitor to Netflix.
Something else worth noting: TV streaming services are starting to partner with audio streaming services. Earlier this month, Hulu and Spotify expanded their partnership to offer unlimited access to both services for $12.99/month.
A winning strategy for Luminary could look something like this — especially if it partnered with, say, Netflix.
One more thing: The podcast business in China is 23x more valuable than it is in the U.S. because of paid subscriptions, so Luminary could be onto something.
Happy Earth Day! We hope that you spend sometime offline today with Mother Nature herself.
To celebrate, we're highlighting Makers who are working hard to preserve our planet, especially as climate change is becoming more of an existential threat. We've gathered some of our favorite nuggets of wisdom from these pioneering entrepreneurs:
Loop is a reusable packaging subscription service on a mission to phase out single-use plastics. Global recycling organization TerraCycle is behind Loop, along with big brands like Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever and Danone.
“Every day, more and more disposable material gets put in the ocean and landfills, so no matter how much we clean the ocean or recycle we’re never going to solve the problem. To us, the root cause of waste is not plastic, it’s using things once, and that’s really what Loop tries to change as much as possible” - Tom Szaky, TerraCycle CEO
Blueland is creating everyday cleaning products designed to reduce plastic waste through its creative packaging (or lack thereof). They launched on Product Hunt today.
“I decided two years ago to cut back on my plastic consumption, but then realized that many times I just had no choice as a consumer. So many of our everyday goods such as window cleaner, toothpaste and laundry detergent, all come packaged in just one way - single-use plastic. So I founded Blueland with the belief that you don't have to sacrifice a clean home for a clean planet. And to make the biggest impact possible we've focused on making it easy for people to make the right choice with products that are effective, money-saving and convenient.” - Sarah Paiji, Blueland CEO
Sustain makes tampons, condoms and lubricants that are — you guessed it — sustainable. The company uses organic ingredients for all of its products and works with rubber plantations to keep toxins out of the environment.
"The way I think about 'sustainable' products is not just about ingredients, packaging, or how the product will be used and how much energy that consumes. Instead, I think about it based on the products' 'net impact.' For example, condoms are a 'net positive' product because when you compare the supply chain, manufacturing, shipping, using, and disposing of the product, the costs come nowhere near close to outweighing the benefits of helping prevent climate change (overpopulation is one of the largest drivers), the spread of HIV, and the ability for women to plan their family size." - Meika Hollender, Sustain CEO
GIF credit: John McColgan
Earlier this week, news broke that Facebook is reportedly prototyping horizontally swipeable cards to combine News Feed and Stories into a single feed. Why? It's doubling down on Stories.
Instagram (owned by Facebook) rolled out Stories over two years ago, directly copying the feature (down to the name) from Snapchat Stories. Since then, Stories has supercharged Instagram and Facebook, slowed down Snapchat and grown to 500 million daily active users. A few months ago, Instagram also briefly switched to a horizontal, tap-to-advance feed “by accident.”
Mishap or not, Stories are starting to dominate social media platforms across the board. A few weeks ago, Snapchat announced a new developer kit to integrate Snapchat Stories into other apps like Tinder and Houseparty. This week, Google announced its rolling out AMP Stories — its own answer to Stories — to Google Search, meaning they'll have a dedicated section in search results.
A new startup called Jumprope ($4.5M raised) just launched on Product Hunt to make Stories-like how-to videos. The app lets anyone easily create videos that are shot as casually as Instagram Stories, and it helps people discover how to do everything from yoga poses to oil changes.
The key to Stories is that they're visual — they focus on photos and videos in short snippets of content. As a creator, they're easy to shoot and edit. And as a viewer, you can control the speed at which you consume them.
We've seen a few other startups make inroads in this space as well. There's Supergreat for honest makeup reviews. There's Buffer Stories Creator and Insense Stories Video Editor for editing Stories outside of Instagram's limits. There's Medium Series for Medium and Twitter Moments for Twitter. And of course, there's another product called Stories for watching trending YouTube videos.
Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Pilot.
Phew, tax season is over.
Is it too early to get a jump on bookkeeping for next year's taxes? We're thinking it's not—especially if you run a startup.
That’s where Pilot comes in. Pilot is a bookkeeping company that focuses exclusively on startups. Their secret sauce? People doing what people do best, and software doing what software does best. As a user, you’re paired with a dedicated account manager who’s a full-time Pilot employee, and they do your bookkeeping in QuickBooks using software that Pilot has built. 💯
It’s basically a friendly cyborg army that does your bookkeeping. 💕
And Pilot has some news. Yesterday, Stripe and Index Ventures invested $40M in Pilot’s Series B, valuing the startup at $355M. 💰📈The company also unveiled Pilot Tax, a new corporate tax prep service.
Some thoughts from Pilot customers:
“Pilot integrates with all our systems and they went above and beyond to make sure we had the support we needed” - Josh Green, Karuna
"It’s so nice to have everything in one place. Before Pilot Tax it felt like I was managing a million different tools to get our books, tax filings, and 1099s all handled” - Steve Bartel, Gem
“Pilot took care of our 1099 filings, Delaware Franchise Tax filings, income tax filings, all of it. Everything was handled seamlessly by their team, which enabled us to spend our time running the business rather than stressing over tax preparation” - Grant Lee, ClearBrain
Do you run a startup? The first 100 of you to sign up for Pilot here will get 20 percent off Pilot Core for six months.
Video conferencing service Zoom is set to go public tomorrow, and will list its shares under the ticker “ZM” on the Nasdaq. Yesterday, Zoom raised the top end of its IPO range, pricing shares at $33 - $35 a piece.
Why it matters: Zoom is now positioned to see an initial market cap of $9B, which is 9X the $1B valuation its received after its last funding round in 2017. And another thing — Zoom is profitable, which is rare among tech unicorns hankering to IPO. 👀
A brief history: Zoom was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan, who previously worked for Cisco and built WebEx. Zoom initially gained traction among startups, especially as small, distributed teams started to become more ubiquitous (we use Zoom!). 🤗
We took a trip down memory lane to find out what folks thought when Zoom first launched on Product Hunt five years ago:
“We have a distributed team, and we use Zoom all day every day to stay connected and quickly jump into conversations when needed.” - Thomas
“I don't know how they do it, but the quality and reliability are ridiculously amazing. We use it several times a day for our distributed team. Skype and Hangouts simply don't cut it for team calls” - Eric
“Tried them all. Cursed at the all. This is the best. Hands down.” - Jason
With the rise of distributed teams, demand for video communications is booming.
In addition to Zoom, big players include Google Hangouts, Skype and calls on Slack. There's also BlueJeans for video meetings and Livestorm for webinars.
P.S. In other IPO news: Pinterest is also planning to go public on Thursday.
Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Blockstack.
Last week, blockchain software startup Blockstack announced its SEC filing for a $50M regulated token offering.
Why it matters: If approved by the SEC, the sale would allow Blockstack to raise capital through the U.S. securities markets via its subsidiary, Blockstack Token LLC. This could potentially set a precedent for other token offerings.
New York-based Blockstack got its start in 2013 with a mission to enable developers to build secure, privacy-focused apps. Fun fact: They were in the same Y Combinator batch as us at Product Hunt. Today, more than 80 such applications exist on Blockstack. Some include:
Lander is your personal home page on the decentralized internet 🏠
MyWhereAbouts is your location history, without the targeted ads 🌎
Scannie lets you securely scan and store your documents 🔒
Radicle is a safe, verified art marketplace and auction site 🎨
Travelstack is a decentralized Instagram 📸
Afari is decentralized and fast group messaging 💬
How to use Blockstack: Users can sign up once and “Sign in with Blockstack” just like you would on Facebook, Twitter, or any other website. If you want to make your own dApp, $100,000 is up for grabs every month. dApp developers can sign up for App Mining to earn for their traction. Blockstack will then divvy up $100k across (or ‘to’) registered Blockstack dApps based on their overall ranking each month.
Check out the full list of top dApps from March and register here for App Mining to be eligible for next month’s payouts. 👏
Amazon is reportedly in talks to launch a free, ad-supported music service, which would directly compete with Spotify, Pandora and YouTube (owned by Google).
But Amazon may be taking a different approach to “free” listening — and it will involve asking Alexa. Reports suggest that you'll only able to listen to Amazon's music service through Echo-connect speakers.
For clarity, Amazon already has a music steaming service — Amazon Music — which it launched way back in 2007. Launching a free music service that exclusively plays through Echo speakers would really be more of a retail play, in that you'd have to own an Echo device to use it.
Spotify is currently the only major streaming music subscription service with a free tier, and YouTube has always been free to use. As such, this new format from Amazon might appeal to folks who currently listen to music on YouTube — it would be a similar listening experience (one with ads) but without a screen.
It's rumored that Amazon could launch this service as early as this week. In the meantime, here's a few other products to shake up your music listening:
AirBuddy makes it easy to listen to music with your AirPods on the Mac 👂
Playlist Shuffle creates Amazing playlists with an AI bot 🎵
Tidal for Amazon Echo is...exactly what you think it is 🔊
Roadtrip is kind of like running your own radio station 📻
Generative.fm is endlessly ambient music 😌
Flow State is two hours of free music for working, every day 🙌
And of course there's a whole slew of apps that help you find new music.
Google+ is back!
Google shut down down the failed social network earlier this month, but has decided to let Google+ live on as Google Currents — a reborn product that's still going to compete with Facebook.
Google Currents will focus on enterprise, giving employees a place to share knowledge and discuss things internally. It's primary competitors are Facebook's “Workplace” and Microsoft's “Yammer.”
For the most part, Currents looks exactly like Google+ and is now Google's second big enterprise communication tool. Google also has Google Hangout Chat, its Slack competitor.
Google+ came on the scene in 2011 as a competitive answer to Facebook proper, but it never really took off with users. A 2018 data leak that affected 5K users was the nail in the coffin for Google+.
Funny enough, this is not even the first time Google has named a product “Currents.” Currents was previously used for a magazine app that came before Google Play Newsstand, which was eventually replaced by Google News.
Google Currents also joins a long list of social enterprise tools. There's Zoho Connect, Basecamp, Monday, Winio and ActiveCollab for syncing on ongoing projects (to name a few). There's LumApps for a social 'intranet.' There's Front for sharing your inbox. There's Roadmap for planning sprints. And many, many more.
















