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Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterday’s top ten launches. That’s it.
Us too (and millions of others celebrating Thanksgiving in the U.S.). But — holiday cookies aside — there's a lot of tech out there that wants to make you healthier, even if it's simply saving your eyes from your computer's LCD. We dug through a lot of the apps to help with those premature New Year's resolutions:
😱 Steps helps you beat social anxiety with small challenges
🙀 Comper Smarkin is a smart skincare device that improves your skin
💻 F.lux adjusts your screen to the time of day, with 5K+ upvotes (!!!)
🏃 7 Minute Workout is a scientific workout app from the New York Times
💪 Sweatcoin is an app that pays you to get fit
👀 Curie is a personal posture trainer you can use at work
💦Freeletics gives you high-intensity training plans
😴 Circadia is an app and therapy lamp that helps you sleep better
🏋 Zova is a personal trainer in an app
🏅 Striive awards you for reaching your fitness goals
Oklahoma just announced Tulsa Remote, offering remote workers $10K in cash, free coworking space, and discounted housing to move to the city. While $10K isn’t enough for most people to uproot to a new town, we expect more cities outside traditional tech hubs like Silicon Valley to experiment with this model.
This movement is made possible because of the rise of remote working. 🌍
We’re seeing remote-specific job boards like Remote OK and We Work Remotely emerge.
Tools like NomadList, Nomad Flights, and this community for remote makers make nomad living easier.
And platforms like Unsettled, Remote Year, and Selina are offering a turnkey solution to live and work in exotic places like Bali (or perhaps Hollywood).
The company also released their SDK a few weeks ago, which has already generated several million dollars in revenue.
The details
With the new app, users create Genie clones of themselves via "Wheels" to select from over a million different combinations of skin tone, eye color, hair style, clothing and accessories. Unlike other emoji apps — where avatars all virtually look the same — Genies are all unique in both physical appearance and personality.
Here's where it gets super interesting: Your Genies can communicate with each other. 😯
Scientists and engineers at Genies studied hundreds of millions of user chats to develop an algorithm that detects over 180 small mood changes. Using keyword and sentiment analysis, Genies can act out things you say in real-time. Genies can also communicate with each other in groups of up to six people, and be used across iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, to name a few.
A brief history of Genies
Last December, Genies came out of stealth with a beta app to deliver the most buzzworthy stories of the day to users alongside an avatar that does something related to the news. At the time, the startup was valued at $100M from top investors. 😳
Some immediate reactions on Product Hunt:
"So cool! A Genie could react to news that Elon Musk’s SpaceX landed its Falcon 9 rocket with an avatar shooting into space 🚀🌌" — Niv
"As a 17 year old, I can see this spreading like wildfire in high school and college campuses around the country." — Sameer
"Genies might be a preview of the future of media. At least, this is probably what their investors (including NEA, Foundation Capital, CAA, Trinity Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, and Maveron) are hoping for." - Ryan
Today, the company disclosed an additional $10M in a second round of funding, bringing its total capital raised to $25M.
Genies is backed by an all-star lineup of investors, including: NEA, BoxGroup, Lerer Hippeau, CAA Ventures, Trinity Ventures, Foundation Capital, and many others. Celebrities have also invested, including Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony, Joe Montana, Shawn Mendes, A$AP Rocky, 50 Cent, The Chainsmokers, among others. 💸
What's next
Genies also announced a partnership with its first global advertiser, Gucci, for users who want to dress their avatars. 👠
Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Genies.
Over the past several years there’s been a shift in the media industry. Let's call it the rise of the paywall. 💸
As publishers both large and small struggled to generate ad revenue, the collective media industry moved towards a more direct financial relationship between publications and readers with subscriptions. 👀
It turns out people will actually pay for news. The New York Times has about 3 million paying readers. The Athletic, a subscription publication for sports news, reportedly has over 100,000 subscribers (and received $20M in funding earlier this year). Investigative tech news site The Information is well-known in Silicon Valley, with subscribers paying $399 for an annual subscription. Even Medium is pushing towards a subscription-based model after taking a dramatic left turn away from the ad business last year. Now, their subscriber base has reportedly grown by 160 percent.
Several startups have also cropped up to help anyone create paywalled content. Substack (a YC-backed company led by the former CTO of Kik) makes it super simple to create paid email newsletters. Revue is an easy-to-use publishing platform for email that also lets you charge subscribers.
Now, a new publication is challenging the paywall, with a mission to make the news accessible to anyone — regardless of price point.
Earlier this week, The Correspondent launched in the U.S. with an entirely new vision for the media industry: a member-funded, free to access, ad-free platform on a mission to “unbreak the news.” 🗞
The Correspondent is an offshoot of “De Correspondent,” a Dutch startup that uses a choose-what-you-pay membership model for a year's worth of access to its news. De Correspondent already has 60,000 subscribers in the Netherlands.
“At The Correspondent, we actually make a difference between subscription and membership. In our view, subscribing is: paying money to get a product, and membership is: paying money to join a cause,” — The Correspondent Founder and Editor Rob Wijnberg wrote on Product Hunt
Members in this case are a community of readers that The Correspondent views as an untapped resource of knowledge versus a “target audience.”
“We invite them to share that knowledge and experience by having correspondents spend at least 30 to 40 percent of their time interacting with members and readers — not as an “extra”, but as an integral part of her work” — Wijnberg
The news follows two more big name publications — New York Magazine and Quartz — putting up paywalls this week.
Zendesk is having a big week.
On Tuesday, the company launched a new sales automation tool, called Sell, as well as a custom app development tool called Sunshine. ☀️
The significance of the launch
Largely known as a major player in customer service software, Zendesk acquired sales force automation startup Base in September to expand into CRM.
Now, Sell's launch marks the first step in Zendesk's plan to introduce technology for sales among its suite of products. 🤝
The details
🙌 Sell aims to enhance productivity, processes and pipeline visibility for sales teams.
💸 The tool will cost $19 per user per month.
👀 It also comes with features like drag-and-drop dashboards and over 30 out-of-the-box reports
Understand customer data wherever it lives
Sunshine, Zendesk's development platform that also launched this week, will be available for free as part of the company's enterprise tier.
Sunshine is built entirely on AWS and has a ton of features, including:
👁 A single view of customers from across applications
🕐 An events tool that lets companies create a timeline of customer activity
💭 A “Custom Objects” feature lets users store random customer information
Explore more Zendesk
Zendesk Explore is an analytics product for businesses to measure and understand the customer experience.
With Zendesk Explore, you get instant access to the customer analytics that matter—and the deeper understanding of your customers and business that comes with it. 📈
Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Zendesk.
“Setting aside the rest of the week to go through the 9000 people on this year's Forbes 30 Under 30” — Hunter Walk
Forbes released its annual “30 Under 30” list yesterday, highlighting 600 youngin's who promise to be the next generation of leaders. With such an exhaustive number of people featured, it takes a lot out of what makes the coveted list actually special — young people changing the world. 🌍
Watching people (at any age) make cool new things is something that inspires us — and is one of the reasons we're hosting our own Makers Festival next week.
But to give you some inspiration before the hackathon, we combed Forbes's list for the coolest products made by the people on it. Here are 30 of them:
Cargo wants to turn ride-sharing vehicles into vending machines. 🚘
Cabin is a luxury sleeper bus service from San Francisco to Los Angeles. 😴
Omni lets you store, share and rent out your unused belongings. 📦
Drop is an app that rewards you for spending at your favorite places. 💸
Genies was dubbed a “Bitmoji killer.” The app lets you create personalizable avatars that react to the news, and the startup has raised funding from top VCs at a ~$100M valuation. 👀
Grabr works as a marketplace for people unwilling to pay international shipping rates. ✈️
Cafe X is a robotic coffee bar. It's exactly what it sounds like. ☕️
Recharge lets you pay per-minute to use a hotel room to rest. 🏨
Plotaverse is a suite of five motion photo editing apps that has over 6 million downloads (and is used by people like Kim Kardashian and Ariana Grande). 📸
Tia is basically a personal gynecologist in an app. 🙌
Unfold helps you create gorgeoussss stories for Instagram and the startup is seeing 100K downloads/day with millions of users. 📱
Life House launched on Product Hunt earlier this month with a mission to upgrade boutique hotels for the Airbnb generation. 🏩
Pathrise is a “career accelerator” for students that will coach you until you get a job. 👩💻
InkBox is a semi-permanent tattoo startup for tats that last 12-15 days. 🤔
Agrilyst helps indoor farmers manage their crops. 🌾
Lattice was created to make employees' working hours more efficient. ⏰
ScopeAI helps companies sort through customer feedback using AI. 🗣
Mars Reel is a sports video highlight reel for high school sports. 🏀
Brex has branded itself as “the first corporate credit card for startups.” 💳
Rainway is a web service that lets you play your favorite PC games on any device. 💻
Ader connects brands with gaming influencers. The network has over 2,000 content creators to date. 🎮
Betches Media started as a Wordpress blog and is now a full-fledged multimedia company geared towards millennial women. 💁♀️
Superhuman (as the name implies) is one of the fastest email systems out there. 💌
Morning Brew is a daily email newsletter that delivers bite-sized business news. 🗞
Teachable lets you sell individualized online courses (and get 💰).
Purple is a chat app that lets creators (like journalists) engage with audiences via text message. 💬
Candid, a direct-to-consumer startup for clear aligners, was built as an alternative to Invisalign (and costs 65 percent less). 😁
Atrium created a low-cost legal option for startups (and Justin Kan is a cofounder). 💵
Felix Gray is for all of us: non-prescription glasses for people who stare at screens. 🤓
HelloAva is an AI-powered personal skincare consultant. 😍
Many of us in the tech industry are all too familiar with the concept of “brain hacking.” Let's call it the Elon effect.
But before we all bring the power of the internet into our minds (welp), let's talk about the crop of apps that exist right now focused on making our brains stronger, less stressed and more productive.
🧘 Headspace is the “gym membership for meditation.”
😴 Endel uses personalized sound environments to help us sleep, relax and focus.
👀 MindFi is an app that trains you to meditate with your eyes open.
🙌 Aura is a “Spotify for mindfulness meditations” that audio streams platform for digital health and wellness content that recently raised $2.7M.
🧠 Tinycards is an app from Duolingo that gives you flashcards on hundreds of topics.
🤓 Learning Lab is a tool that challenges people to learn anything in one month alongside their day jobs.
🎶 Brain.fm gives you the music you need to meditate, relax, sleep, work or focus.
🔊 Noisli lets you mix different sounds to create your perfect environment, so you can then boost your productivity.
🙅 The ToDon't List is a to-do list for things you shouldn't be doing.
👂 Self-Monk is an AirPod-first meditation app
What do you use to boost your brain? Share it with us on Twitter and we'll RT the most useful or creative recommendations. 😉
ICYMI, we announced the Product Hunt Makers Festival (our annual hackathon) yesterday, which you can sign up for until November 24 at 11pm. Note: One of the themes this year is “Brain Stuff.”
Last year we ran our first ever hackathon online with over 4,000 makers participating from all over the world. 🌎
This year we’re calling our 2018 hackathon a Makers Festival, welcoming all types of makers to build together over Thanksgiving week. It’s a chance to connect with other makers to solve interesting problems, challenge yourselves to create something from scratch and win your very own kitty award (more on that later). 😉
Who is Makers Festival for?
Makers Festival is for everyone! Not just coders. All types of Makers and Creators are welcome to participate: Designers, photographers, illustrators, artists, writers, videographers, etc.
What can you make?
You can make anything — it doesn’t have to be an app, bot or website. It might be an e-book, interview series, photography collection, a painting, a song, etc.
Rules:
* There's no restriction on team size
* All participants must sign up here
* All participants must complete all three assignments (Project page, Upcoming page and Medium post)
* All participants must complete their submission form by November 24 at 11pm PST
* Winners will be chosen by the Product Hunt community with our team’s input, and the winners will be announced on November 26 right here in the Product Hunt newsletter 🙌
Facebook's former CIO Tim Campos just launched a new calendar app to take the hassle out of scheduling meetings.
The kicker: you might actually use it.
"It's kind of like a mashup of what would happen if Google Docs, Google Maps, and Google Calendar all got married” — Tim Campos
The new app, called Woven, isn't the first startup to take a crack at solving frustrating calendar experiences. X.ai ($44.3 million raised) and Clara Labs ($7.2 million raised) use AI to schedule meetings on your behalf. Meetingbird (acquired by Front) and Calendly let you create meeting slots for others to choose from.
Woven is different in that it puts calendars and scheduling features together — but it isn't trying to reinvent the wheel. Instead of trying to replace GSuite or Outlook, Woven works on top of Google and Microsoft tools.
“Our desktop and iOS apps sync with your existing Google calendar and provide a couple of unique new features to start: 1) we show your events on a map with automatic 🚘time calculations; and 2) you can collaborate with guests to find the best time and place to meet” — Woven Designer Bob Ryskamp
Woven also uses a built-in virtual assistant that you can ask to suggest meeting times on its own.
The company has raised $4.8 million in funding and here's a preview of what might be coming to your calendar next:
📊 Analytics for your time
🎬 Rich attachments (docs, videos, agendas)
☑️ Automated task/work time scheduling
Samsung just unveiled a foldable smartphone. You read that right.
At Samsung’s annual developer conference in San Francisco yesterday, the company finally revealed the long-rumored foldable display — dubbed the “Infinity Flex.” 📱
Justin Denison, a Samsung exec, demonstrated how the phone works with a prototype on stage, showing off how the phone could run three apps at the same time when opened.
“The Infinity Flex display is the foundation for the smartphone of tomorrow” - Justin Denison
But Samsung isn’t the only smartphone maker working on foldable screens. It was reported in March that Apple is reportedly working on a foldable iPhone it plans to release within the next two years. So hang tight, Apple loyalists. 😉
We’ve also seen other *unconventional* phones emerge lately. Light Phone is a minimalist’s dream and raised over $2M in funding. The Zanco is the world’s tiniest phone. Nokia made a “Matrix” phone. The Fox Mini 1 is a $30 backup phone for your smartphone.
