The Leaderboard

Two years ago Product Hunt joined AngelList’s family of companies to extend its mission to support startups and makers. Today we’re sharing some big milestones.

In 2018, we reached over $1 billion in assets under management (with 23 unicorns in the portfolio 🦄), 2 million active job-seekers, and 20,000 new products launched. Over 75% of startups that announced seed funding from leading U.S. investors in the last two years have raised, recruited or launched on AngelList or Product Hunt. Within that group:

💸 28% took money from a venture fund or syndicate run on AngelList
👥 59% used AngelList to hire
🚀 36% launched a product on Product Hunt

Over 100,000 startups of all sizes used AngelList to discover talent. Among U.S. job-seekers, six industries stood out in terms of where they want to work next: machine learning and AI, data and analytics, consumer, health,
blockchain and crypto, and social good.

Then there's you — the Product Hunt community. This past year makers and startups big and small launched the 120,000th product on the platform. 9K of you used our startup toolkit to attract and communicate with over 2.7M beta users. And well over 2M upvotes were cast from around the globe. 🌏

And we're building something brand new, too. Curious? Sign up, and we'll share a sneak peek shortly. 😉

What's the next Instagram? Or Twitter? Or even Facebook? 🤔

These major networks (which also includes LinkedIn, Snapchat and Pinterest) have long defined the social media category, making it hard for any newcomer to snag market share. Like really, really hard. Space in our smartphones is precious real estate, which means we're less inclined to download new apps. Especially when all our friends are already spread across six huge social networks.

Case and point: RIP Vine. And Secret. And Yik Yak. And Peach. 💀

The next big thing

TikTok has recently emerged as a new — and successful — social app, at least from a usage point of view. In 2017, ByteDance (TikTok's China-based owner) acquired teen social app Musical.ly for ~$1B as a way to enter the U.S. market. Unfortunately Mindie, a very similar app that predated Musical.ly from a French-based team, didn’t find the same level of traction.

In November, the app reportedly surpassed Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube in monthly downloads in the U.S. Yesterday, ByteDance announced that TikTok has reached 250 million daily active users, and then launched Duoshan, an app that is veryyy similar to Snapchat . 😱

If you're not familiar with TikTok, it's sort of like a social network for amateur music videos. Dancing, gymnastics, comedy, cheerleading and parkour are also popular on the app. TikTok is built to constantly grab your attention, and as a result its user base skews pretty young.

If YouTube, Snapchat and BuzzFeed had a baby, this would be it.

TikTok's long-term survival

TikTok is undoubtedly blowing up, which means the big six will try to own it or clone it. In fact, Facebook already (quietly) launched its own TikTok competitor called Lasso.

While cynics might claim consumer social is dead, TikTok illustrates that mainstream consumers remain eager to play with new toys. Here are 5 other social consumer apps that we’re watching:

October is a semi-anonymous Twitter 🐦

Blind lets you chat anonymously at work 💬

Islands is like Slack but for college students 🎓

Dialog lets you create your own radio show in the internet 🎙

Horsealot is a social network for horse riders 🐴

Yesterday, Wordpress's parent company Automattic launched Newspack, a new publishing platform tailor-made for local newsrooms. And its backed by $2.4M in funding led by Google.

How it works: Newspack will operate as a secure, inexpensive toolkit for small to medium-sized newsrooms that will make their technical decisions easier. It will definitely support existing Wordpress plugins and *maybe* include website design, commerce options or CMS configuration.

“Sounds, essentially, like a sponsored/subsidized, hosted, distribution of WordPress” - Chris Messina

Interestingly, Facebook had a similar announcement this morning. 🤔

Today the tech giant announced a $300M (!) investment in local news over the next three years. For context, Google committed $300M to news products and initiatives last March — with Newspack now being one of the beneficiaries. 💸

It's worth noting that Facebook and Google control the online ad market, and digital publishers have traditionally tried (but struggled) to make money from online ads. Regardless, money is money and the survival of local media is good news for all.

In other news (how many news puns is too many?), we've been playing with some new writing tools: Write Together is a new spin on blogging and 200 Words a Day is a dead-simple tool that helps you write a little every single day.

Last week we asked our Twitter community a simple question — “What's an app that has changed your life recently?”

We weren't prepared for the response. 👀👀👀

But we're not surprised that people care (a lot) about the apps they use. Apps account for up to 90% of the time you spend on your phone, and that's usually concentrated to a handful of favorites.

The other thing we noticed among the many, many answers we received: the same apps kept cropping up. Here are a few of them:

Todoist is a to-do list app (that over 13 million people use). Its biggest advantage over other to-do list competitors is that it works across everyyy platform. ✅

Notion is an “all-in-one workspace.” It's really an organizational app that's Google Docs meets Excel meets DropBox. 🙌

Headspace, a meditation app, was mentioned a lot. Folks also gave shout outs to competitors Calm and Primed Mind. 🧠

Grammarly is an editing app that helps you write without mistakes. It automatically checks your spelling, grammar and punctuation, and will give you synonyms for words to grow your vocabulary. 📝

Airtable is a spreadsheet app that makes it so easy to build custom apps. 👏

Bear is a writing app that you can really make your own. It's sort of like Evernote, but more simple. ✍️

Monzo is an app-based bank to manage day-to-day spending. 💸

Gyroscope brands itself as an “OS for the human body.” It will give you an overview about yourself — like how much time you spend online. 👤

Telegram is a messaging app that's superrrr fast (and secure). 🔒

Despite CES already rescinding an award for a mico-robotic sex toy made for women — by a woman — we're optimistic about the future for women in tech.

That's why one of our fav weekly reads is Femstreet, a newsletter on women in tech, diversity and venture capital that hits your inbox every Sunday. The maker of Femstreet is Sarah Noeckel, an early-stage investor by day, who founded Femstreet to bring great visibility to the growing community of young women in venture and tech. We asked Sarah about her favorite products made by female founders. 👩

---

The most common question I get is: “Who’s the most inspiring female founder that you have met?”

Investments into female healthcare exploded in 2018 and, as a result, women built some fantastic products for other women. And as more young adults delay parenthood — and the number of same-sex couples starting families climbs — demand for these products has never been higher. Here are a few companies I like in the space:

👶 Modern fertility made a fertility test that women can take at home to better understand their fertility hormones.

What to watch: There's no dominant brand in the fertility category, but it's also a space where customers are willing to pay. Modern Fertility provides people with information that was previously very expensive and often inaccessible in a value-driven way at a cheaper price point.

🤰Carrot Fertility works closely with employers to offer affordable, custom fertility care benefit programs that include IVF, surgery and egg freezing.

What to watch: I really hope that the future of fertility is entwined with the future of work. Many people don’t have insurance to cover these types of treatments through their employers’ health plans. Carrot addresses cost by taking aim at the larger system and processes all reimbursements internally, validating claim details by the company’s own standards.

⚕️Tia is a “one-stop-shop” for female health.

What to watch: Tia is designed to feel more like Snapchat than a traditional healthcare experience. You can finally chat with your doctor like you chat with your mom, and it solves the problem of waiting months to see a gynecologist as a new patient.

P.S. It's opening it's first NYC location soon, expanding beyond its digital health assistant, AskTia.

📚 O.School is a sex-ed platform that's a non-judgmental resource for all things sexuality, dating and relationships.

What to watch: With pornography on one end of the spectrum and sex-negative abstinence programs on the other, there are very few online resources that promote body positivity, inclusivity and how to handle sexual trauma. Serial entrepreneur Andrea Barrica founded O.School to fill that void. O.School is a safe space for users to engage with sex educators via live streams, chats and on-demand content.

🚨 Golden Kitty News 🚨

Over the past week you all nominated your favorite products of 2018 across 22 CATegories. We tallied up over 12,000 nominations. Here are the finalists:

🌟 Product of the Year
📱 Mobile App
🛠 Hardware
😎 Augmented Reality
🌚 Side Project
👀 Lifehack
🖋 Design Tool
🖥 Dev Tool
🙀 WTF
🗣 Audio and Voice
🌈 Diversity and Inclusion
👾 AI and Machine Learning
💪 Health and Fitness App
🏠 Smart Home
📚 Founder Books
💰 Fintech
🔐 Privacy-Focused
🐈 Made with Product Hunt API
🌍 Social Impact
💻 Maker of the Year
🤗 Community Member of the Year

To pick our finalists for ‘Community Member of the Year’ and ‘Maker of the Year’ we pulled data from all of 2018 and created a model to compare individuals against a number of metrics including (but not limited to) their Maker goals, comments, upvotes and product launches.

Check out the complete list and upvote your favorites 😻🏆

Voting starts today and closes Tuesday January 15th at 6pm PT. The winners will be revealed on Thursday January 17th!

Note: We host these awards every year to throw the spotlight on unique projects and people. That said, we’re very grateful to the entire Product Hunt community and all makers around the world who are launching projects every day. Here’s to makers everywhere — we salute you. 🙌

On the surface, it seems like the ride-sharing market is oversaturated. 🚘

There's already category leaders Uber and Lyft, as well as countless others — Gett, Grab, Via, Didi, etc., etc.

The problem: These ride-sharing companies have the potential to create a monopoly, and ultimate raise the price of how much it costs to get you from point A to point B. 🤔

Yesterday, a new app called SoMo launched to combat this — and ultimately give riders some freedom when it comes to getting around.

How it works: SoMo is a “social transport” app that combines all modes of transport that are not a ride-hailing service. It allows people to create free rides (yes, free) through “social circles” around a specific destinations — from sporting events to concerts to the daily commute. It's kind of like Uber meets Google Maps meets your neighborhood carpool.

Some responses from the community today:

“I love the idea of sharing rides with a network that I know” - Tal

“One of those things where you say 'why didn’t anyone think of this sooner?' Great App, great concept and a great solution. I’m hooked.” - Gabby

“My 12-year-old was SUPER excited about this app. And going to tell her friends about it. Which means that me and other moms are going to use it a lot.” - Inna

SoMo will be available in 15 cities to start, including London, Athens, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Brussels, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Nice, Los Angeles, Helsinki, Piraeus, Thessaloniki, Almere Stad, Haarlem, and the Hague. If you don't live in one of those places, don't worry. The app's makers (Here Technologies) plan to launch in 10 new cities every month.

We'll be watching where this goes — but you have to try it out for yourself.

Yesterday, GitHub gave free users the ability to create unlimited private repositories.

Before the announcement, GitHub limited private repositories to paying users, but unlimited private repos were reportedly the top-requested feature from the community.

The news also marks GitHub’s first change since Microsoft bought the company last October. 👀

While this might seem like a small change, this and their recent acquisition of Spectrum illustrates a shift in GitHub’s strategy, optimizing for user growth and engagement over revenue. Prediction: GitHub will acquire another developer focused startup within 2019.

“We often think of coding as a solitary activity, but in fact it’s the world’s largest team sport. All the software we write builds on the work of others, and our job at GitHub is to make that easier for everyone.” - GitHub CEO Nat Friedman

In light of the news, we rounded up a few more GitHub-y projects we think you'll like:

The GitHub + Slack Integration does what you think — it brings your GitHub projects right inside Slack 🙌

Refined GitHub is a browser extension that makes GitHub more powerful 👊

RepoHunt helps you find trending repositories on GitHub 📈

Commit Together lets you add co-authors to your commits 👫

Stellar Tip lets you tip other developers on GitHub with cryptocurrency 🤑

Devo displays GitHub Trending, Hacker News and Product Hunt on every new tab 👍

GitHub Gardener is a tool that makes daily, automated commits that turn your GitHub green ✅

Board for GitHub is a webview-based GitHub project app 👀

Gitweet will tweet from your commit description 🐦

GitHub User Rank is a Chrome extension for ranking GitHub user profiles 🔝

We recently asked the Twitter-verse what their favorite productivity hacks are and got some....creative responses:

“Leave the charger at home” - Adrian

“Sleep after lunchtime for 30 mins” - Sasha

“Mushrooms” - Alex

Many of us spend a lot of time trying to hack, well, time. So might as well be unconventional.

We went down the Product Hunt rabbit hole and rounded up 10 of our favorite products to hack productivity:

Progress Bar OSX shows you the exact percentage of how much the day, month, year and your life has progressed in your OSX menu bar ⏳

“All technology is a time machine. Get your life back by treating it so.” - Chris

Taskr is a dead-simple task manager app that's perfect for small lists (and it's free) 📝

“I really love this app for planning all my work related tasks. It makes my daily planning in the morning so easy, since I can just grab my tasks from the backlog and start working. I think it sliced the time for the daily planning at least by 50%.” - Marius

Focuster ditches the to-list model and schedules your top priorities in your calendar 📆

“Focuster connects to your Google Calendar and helps you easily visualize how much free time you have and make the most of it. It flows around your existing events and is always updating so your most important work always stays top of mind.” - Jordan

Rooster is a Chrome extension that gives you insights on your browsing habits via push-notification when you lose focus 🙇‍

“Great app if you want to introspect your time and become more productive” - Kushagra

Social Pomodoro pairs you with an accountability buddy to keep you working for 25 minutes at a time 👫

“I had no idea having an accountability buddy in a pomodoro timer could be so amazing! I got done with tasks that usually talk me 2 hours withing 2 sessions- ie, 50 minutes” - Ayushi

7 Minute Workout is a scientific workout app from The New York Times that helps you get a realllly fast workout in 💪

“I love this workout. It's a great way to squeeze in exercise even on those busy days.” - Robleh

Thought Train is a menu bar app that keeps a list of your thoughts and tasks 🧠

“If anyone is like me and has a lot of balls flying in the air most days, it's super useful to when the 'wait, what was I working on again' thought pops up in my brain (like all the time) to do a quick glance at the top menu bar and go 'ah, there it was'” - Hrefna

The Most Dangerous Writing App loses your writing if you stop typing 😳

“Pretty good way to start your day. This is good for 'morning pages', without the pressure of writing something that can be 'saved for later'. “ - Sagar

Gone is like the Snapchat of to-do lists: all tasks will disappear 24 hours after adding them ⏰

“One big problem with to-do list apps is that to-dos tend to pile up. I specifically wanted something ephemeral - just for the day. This solves it perfectly.” - Dominic

Play (for Medium) lets you listen to Medium articles as podcasts to save time on reading articles 🎧

“If you write on Medium ... this should interest you.” - Arnie

What would you add to this list? Share it with us on Twitter and we'll RT the most useful, creative, or ridiculous recommendations. 😉

The Swift Life, Taylor’s Swift’s social media app for her fans, is making a swift exit. 🧟

The app is shutting down in February — just one year after it launched. The shutdown may be due to a general over-saturation of social networks. Or the fact that the app didn’t start off on a great note. A week after it launched, the app was only at #793 in the App Store’s overall app rankings. And politics seeped into it’s early days, where fans took to the app to argue about Trump. 😳

But do other celebrity-branded apps have legs? We took a look to see where they are now:

In December, the Kardashian-Jenner sisters announced that they’d also be shutting down their paid apps in 2019. Similarly, 'Katy Perry: Pop' shut down after a year and 'Britney Spears: American Dream' hasn't been updated in two years. 💀

Ellen Degeneres' 'Heads Up!' was (and is) a hit. It launched back in 2013 and remained among Apple's top-paid apps three years after launch. Today, 'Heads Up!' is still relevant — you can play it on Alexa. 🔊

In August, Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams launched Daisie, a social app for connecting creatives. According to Apptopia, the app saw 4,816 downloads in the last 30 days, with monthly download growth down by ~ 51%.

Three-year-old Tidal, the music streaming app co-owned by Jay Z, Beyoncé, Kanye West and a slew of other musicians, has had trouble competing with services like Spotify and Apple Music. It's subscriber growth has reportedly stalled, and it may have to sell if it wants to continue long-term. 🎧

And let's not forget Hanx Writer, Tom Hanks' app that turns your iPad into a typewriter. It was wonderful and weird, but it also hasn't been updated since 2017. 😢