The Leaderboard
Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterday’s top ten launches. That’s it.
You're invited to the Product Hunt meetup 🎉
Last year the Product Hunt community hosted over 150 meetups around the world, from India to Montreal. Today we’re inviting you to our 4th annual Product Hunt community meetup in San Francisco on January 25th, starting at 6pm.
Most of our (globally distributed) Product Hunt team will be in town along with several internet friends. Here's what to look forward to:
🍹 Open bar (two drink max — be responsible!)
📸 GIF-powered photo booth
😎 VR games
😻 Kitty swag
💦 LaCroix (of course)
☕️ Fee-flowing Philz
🙌 Friendly folks
🤔 And a few other surprises
The event is free to join with an RSVP thanks to our awesome friends at: Google Play, Zendesk, Grammarly, Algolia, Intercom, Omni, and Spoke.
Join us and fellow makers, reporters, investors, and friends by RSVP’ing here. The first 100 people to arrive get a coveted kitty t-shirt. 😸
P.S. If you’re building an Android app you should know about Google Play’s Start on Android program which can help you recruit early beta testers, get direct UI/UX feedback from Google experts, potential Play store featuring, and $20k in Google Cloud and Firebase credits. Learn more here.
P.P.S. If you’re outside the Bay Area and want to host a Product Hunt meetup in your city, let us know! We’re happy to help.
Most of our (globally distributed) Product Hunt team will be in town along with several internet friends. Here's what to look forward to:
🍹 Open bar (two drink max — be responsible!)
📸 GIF-powered photo booth
😎 VR games
😻 Kitty swag
💦 LaCroix (of course)
☕️ Fee-flowing Philz
🙌 Friendly folks
🤔 And a few other surprises
The event is free to join with an RSVP thanks to our awesome friends at: Google Play, Zendesk, Grammarly, Algolia, Intercom, Omni, and Spoke.
Join us and fellow makers, reporters, investors, and friends by RSVP’ing here. The first 100 people to arrive get a coveted kitty t-shirt. 😸
P.S. If you’re building an Android app you should know about Google Play’s Start on Android program which can help you recruit early beta testers, get direct UI/UX feedback from Google experts, potential Play store featuring, and $20k in Google Cloud and Firebase credits. Learn more here.
P.P.S. If you’re outside the Bay Area and want to host a Product Hunt meetup in your city, let us know! We’re happy to help.
How to spy on your startup's competitors 😏
Competition isn't necessarily a bad thing. The best teams find motivation in their competitors. They also spy on them. 😉
Today we're introducing our latest Product Hunt Deal: a lifetime subscription to Social Insider Pro, a powerful data analytics dashboard that gives you a glimpse into your competitor's content performance. Use Social Insider to monitor the Facebook and Instagram activity of your competitor's:
🔍 Ad campaigns – Learn from their success (and failures!)
🔍 Follower growth – Uncover which pages are performing
🔍 Most engaged followers – These might be your most valuable leads
🔍 Audience breakdown – Identify gender and demographic data
Upvoted by more than 250 people in the Product Hunt community, unlock lifetime access to Social Insider Pro for $29.99 (normally $700/year) right meow.
Today we're introducing our latest Product Hunt Deal: a lifetime subscription to Social Insider Pro, a powerful data analytics dashboard that gives you a glimpse into your competitor's content performance. Use Social Insider to monitor the Facebook and Instagram activity of your competitor's:
🔍 Ad campaigns – Learn from their success (and failures!)
🔍 Follower growth – Uncover which pages are performing
🔍 Most engaged followers – These might be your most valuable leads
🔍 Audience breakdown – Identify gender and demographic data
Upvoted by more than 250 people in the Product Hunt community, unlock lifetime access to Social Insider Pro for $29.99 (normally $700/year) right meow.
The growth behind today’s hottest social app 🔥📈
Since HQ's launch, the app has been breaking records week after week. On Sunday, more than 1.2 million people played HQ Trivia at the same time. The app is only 3 month old, and recently launched on Android.
🤔 What's driving the growth of HQ Trivia?
HQ’s grown to over one million concurrent players through word-of-mouth, a strategy most startups shouldn’t rely on. The product is inherently social, a game most enjoyed with friends and family, very similar to traditional television shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It also encourages sharing, rewarding players for recruiting their friends with an extra life.
🔴 Push Notifications and Regular Time-Slots
Unlike most apps which encourage (and often thirst) for #engagement every hour of the day, HQ can’t be played 97% of the time. HQ uses appointment mechanics, hosting only two ~20 minute games per day. This limitation is one of its greatest assets, consolidating the anticipation and excitement in a single moment. If you miss the push notification, you’re out of luck.
You can read about HQ's clever growth and community building tactics, and what 2018 may have in store for the app in a new post we just published: The Magic of HQ Trivia.
👥 HQ for X – Rise of the Clones
HQ is clearly onto something with the participatory live trivia concept. In recent weeks a host of similar apps have come out. We’re still waiting to see what Facebook’s HQ clone will look like. Others:
The Q – An HQ clone built by a co-founder of Yik Yak
G.O.A.T. – HQ Trivia for sports
ShowTime – HQ Trivia for India
Genius – Stable HQ Trivia clone (unrelated to Donald Trump)
🤔 What's driving the growth of HQ Trivia?
HQ’s grown to over one million concurrent players through word-of-mouth, a strategy most startups shouldn’t rely on. The product is inherently social, a game most enjoyed with friends and family, very similar to traditional television shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire. It also encourages sharing, rewarding players for recruiting their friends with an extra life.
🔴 Push Notifications and Regular Time-Slots
Unlike most apps which encourage (and often thirst) for #engagement every hour of the day, HQ can’t be played 97% of the time. HQ uses appointment mechanics, hosting only two ~20 minute games per day. This limitation is one of its greatest assets, consolidating the anticipation and excitement in a single moment. If you miss the push notification, you’re out of luck.
You can read about HQ's clever growth and community building tactics, and what 2018 may have in store for the app in a new post we just published: The Magic of HQ Trivia.
👥 HQ for X – Rise of the Clones
HQ is clearly onto something with the participatory live trivia concept. In recent weeks a host of similar apps have come out. We’re still waiting to see what Facebook’s HQ clone will look like. Others:
The Q – An HQ clone built by a co-founder of Yik Yak
G.O.A.T. – HQ Trivia for sports
ShowTime – HQ Trivia for India
Genius – Stable HQ Trivia clone (unrelated to Donald Trump)
Stripe’s new tool for startups 💰🙌
Sadly, starting a company isn’t as simple as launching a product on Product Hunt. It can be quite complex:
☑️ lengthy paperwork
☑️ boring bank visits
☑️ legal mumbo jumbo
Stripe hates this stuff, too. So they built Atlas, a tool that handles everything involved in establishing an internet business (which received over 3,200 upvotes from the community).
Today, Stripe is announcing a major addition to Atlas: launching a set of tools that make business taxes easier for startups. Check it out here.
Use their handy new dashboard to submit your franchise tax filing in a few clicks (for free) and connect with a curated list of accountants to finalize your return (with up to a 50% discount). We recommend you spend the savings on this, or buy everyone on your team this affordable mini standing desk.
P.S. the recently launched Stripe Atlas Guides was also one of the most upvoted products of the year.
☑️ lengthy paperwork
☑️ boring bank visits
☑️ legal mumbo jumbo
Stripe hates this stuff, too. So they built Atlas, a tool that handles everything involved in establishing an internet business (which received over 3,200 upvotes from the community).
Today, Stripe is announcing a major addition to Atlas: launching a set of tools that make business taxes easier for startups. Check it out here.
Use their handy new dashboard to submit your franchise tax filing in a few clicks (for free) and connect with a curated list of accountants to finalize your return (with up to a 50% discount). We recommend you spend the savings on this, or buy everyone on your team this affordable mini standing desk.
P.S. the recently launched Stripe Atlas Guides was also one of the most upvoted products of the year.
A new app from BJ Novak… without trolls 👹
We have two special guests joining us: Dev Flaherty (formerly SVP of UX at Fab) and B.J. Novak (GIF star, formerly Ryan from The Office). Today they're taking over the newsletter to introduce Kiyo, a new social app without trolls and vanity likes.
Kiyo grew out of our experience building and running The List App. With that app, we learned how to build tools that enabled people to more easily express themselves: a blank page is intimidating, a bullet point is empowering. It was a creative, thoughtful, positive, and expressive community.
Unfortunately, the app contained many of the same structures that have left many feeling exhausted by the performative nature of social media. Things such as likes and public comments made it increasingly difficult for people to express themselves honestly and freely.
We keep hearing that people feel pressured to stay 'on brand' which creates pressure to only share a curated version of your life online.
However, we saw a light. We had learned how to build great tools for lasting, meaningful self-expression and believed that if we placed those tools in a more personal setting, peoples' eclectic, beautiful selves just might flourish there. And so that's what we've done with our new app, Kiyo. We think of it as a personal media app.
Check it out and let us know what you think on Product Hunt. 😺
- Dev, B.J., and the other Kiyocats
Kiyo grew out of our experience building and running The List App. With that app, we learned how to build tools that enabled people to more easily express themselves: a blank page is intimidating, a bullet point is empowering. It was a creative, thoughtful, positive, and expressive community.
Unfortunately, the app contained many of the same structures that have left many feeling exhausted by the performative nature of social media. Things such as likes and public comments made it increasingly difficult for people to express themselves honestly and freely.
We keep hearing that people feel pressured to stay 'on brand' which creates pressure to only share a curated version of your life online.
However, we saw a light. We had learned how to build great tools for lasting, meaningful self-expression and believed that if we placed those tools in a more personal setting, peoples' eclectic, beautiful selves just might flourish there. And so that's what we've done with our new app, Kiyo. We think of it as a personal media app.
Check it out and let us know what you think on Product Hunt. 😺
- Dev, B.J., and the other Kiyocats
RIP emojis. The future of communication.
A few months ago, singing cats, unicorns, and turds filled our social feeds: Apple had launched the iPhone X, the TrueDepth camera, and Animoji. The future had arrived.
These animated characters is a preview of our immersive avatar future, an evolution of digital self-expression and communication. The OASIS isn't far away. 😉
In the early days of the internet, online communities were text-based. We hung out on bulletin boards, IRC channels, and on AIM (RIP). As broadband and smartphones became more accessible, that’s dramatically changed.
Existing platforms, like Twitter and Messenger, adopted photos, GIFs, and stickers. Newer entrants like Instagram and Snapchat flourished as visual mediums, eventually introducing face filters, inspiring a waves of rainbow throw-up around the world. 🌈
The next evolution of communication will be driven by expressions, mirroring the fidelity of IRL interactions, without the anxiety and privacy concerns inherent with traditional video communication. All of the major players are weighing in: Apple’s ARKit, Google’s ARCore, Facebook’s AR Studio, and Snap's recently announced Lens Studio.
In the meantime, here are a few fun avatar apps to try:
💃 Gabsee: Put your 3D avatar in the real world
📺 Toonstar: Host a TV show with a cartoon (yes, this is weird)
😮 Mirror AI: Turn your selfie into an emoji (backed by YC)
🗞 Genies: Create a next gen bitmoji that reacts to the news
🎤 MyIdol: This is just creepy and awesome
Now for some fun: Share your avatar creation with us on Twitter as a photo or video. We’ll RT the most creative. 😸
These animated characters is a preview of our immersive avatar future, an evolution of digital self-expression and communication. The OASIS isn't far away. 😉
In the early days of the internet, online communities were text-based. We hung out on bulletin boards, IRC channels, and on AIM (RIP). As broadband and smartphones became more accessible, that’s dramatically changed.
Existing platforms, like Twitter and Messenger, adopted photos, GIFs, and stickers. Newer entrants like Instagram and Snapchat flourished as visual mediums, eventually introducing face filters, inspiring a waves of rainbow throw-up around the world. 🌈
The next evolution of communication will be driven by expressions, mirroring the fidelity of IRL interactions, without the anxiety and privacy concerns inherent with traditional video communication. All of the major players are weighing in: Apple’s ARKit, Google’s ARCore, Facebook’s AR Studio, and Snap's recently announced Lens Studio.
In the meantime, here are a few fun avatar apps to try:
💃 Gabsee: Put your 3D avatar in the real world
📺 Toonstar: Host a TV show with a cartoon (yes, this is weird)
😮 Mirror AI: Turn your selfie into an emoji (backed by YC)
🗞 Genies: Create a next gen bitmoji that reacts to the news
🎤 MyIdol: This is just creepy and awesome
Now for some fun: Share your avatar creation with us on Twitter as a photo or video. We’ll RT the most creative. 😸
RIP Google Docs ⚰️
Once upon a time Microsoft Word and Excel dominated CRT-lit desktops of offices around the world. While still great tools, cloud-based apps like Google Docs and Sheets ate into Microsoft's market share. Today, newer entrants are looking to eat Google's lunch too.
Here are a few productivity-focused startups competing with the two giant incumbents:
📊 Airtable: A tool with nearly limitless functionality. We're seeing more and more startups transitioning their documents over to Airtable.
🔥 Coda: Two Google alums raised $60M (!!!) to build this Excel-killer for the modern worker, receiving 4k+ upvotes. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is joining the Board.
☁️ Quip Live Apps: The community favorite cloud word processor launched Live Apps earlier this year, letting teams build powerful spreadsheets and workflows directly in Quip.
📝 NoteJoy: Early employees from SurveyMonkey and LinkedIn launched NoteJoy to help streamline the way your team organizes documents. It's beauuutiful.
For more, check out the community's most recommended productivity tools for work and personal use.
P.S. The most upvoted product of 2017 (with over 5,000 upvotes) is a single app that unifies all your productivity software.
Here are a few productivity-focused startups competing with the two giant incumbents:
📊 Airtable: A tool with nearly limitless functionality. We're seeing more and more startups transitioning their documents over to Airtable.
🔥 Coda: Two Google alums raised $60M (!!!) to build this Excel-killer for the modern worker, receiving 4k+ upvotes. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is joining the Board.
☁️ Quip Live Apps: The community favorite cloud word processor launched Live Apps earlier this year, letting teams build powerful spreadsheets and workflows directly in Quip.
📝 NoteJoy: Early employees from SurveyMonkey and LinkedIn launched NoteJoy to help streamline the way your team organizes documents. It's beauuutiful.
For more, check out the community's most recommended productivity tools for work and personal use.
P.S. The most upvoted product of 2017 (with over 5,000 upvotes) is a single app that unifies all your productivity software.
New year, new apps, new you. 📱🍭
As 2018 gets underway, keeping your new year's resolutions can become increasingly difficult. Luckily, there's an app for just about anything, and some of them don't turn into a real life Black Mirror episode (we're looking at you).
Below are a few products and resources that can help you with your goals.
🙏 Be Healthier
Gyroscope provides a complete overview of your health with cool graphs, visualizations, and useful integrations too. Think of Gyroscope as your body's operating system.
Myfitnesspal is the best calorie counter app around. Millions of people use it daily, and live by it. P.S. If you're looking to make a move, Myfitnesspal is hiring engineers in San Francisco.
Freeletics is the app that will get you in better shape in 2018 through high intensity workouts and custom training plans. Fun fact: the company is based in Munich and is hiring like crazy.
Lose It is another great option. The app lets you track what you eat and get nutritional facts by taking pictures. 🍇 🍲 📸
💰 Get a New Job
January is a popular month for job searching. If you're looking to make a move, 24,000+ technology companies are hiring on AngelList. Apply privately with one application, and see salary and equity upfront.
If you're happy where you're at now, that's great too.
But, if the right opportunity comes around, you'll want to make sure companies know they can reach you (there's a secret status on your AngelList profile that gives them the signal). 👀
Here's how to do it:
• Activate your AngelList Talent Profile
• Set your status to "passive" to show up in search results
• You can also choose "secretly looking" so you can reach out to companies that interest you (without appearing in search results)
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to look, explore these collections of popular job opportunities:
17 Startups Investors Recommend for New Grads
20 YC startups that are aggressively hiring
The 20 Most Competitive Startups of 2017
20 Female Founded Startups to Join in 2018
💻 Learn to Code
Of the many skills one can learn (cooking, painting, GIF-making), learning to code is incredibly useful and it’s not just for engineers. Coding is a language that will become increasingly important to understand, and today it's one of the most sought after skills.
Here are 51 of the best resources for learning to code, including:
Py: Learn to code right from your phone
Quick Code: A curated list of free programming courses
freeCodeCamp: Learn to code by building for nonprofits
Codecademy: The biggest company in the space with 25M users
📚 Read More Books
Two of the most popular Ask Product Hunt threads will fill your literary calendar for the year.
What is your one favorite startup book?
What book do you most often give as a gift?
This book is the most recommended read on both.
Below are a few products and resources that can help you with your goals.
🙏 Be Healthier
Gyroscope provides a complete overview of your health with cool graphs, visualizations, and useful integrations too. Think of Gyroscope as your body's operating system.
Myfitnesspal is the best calorie counter app around. Millions of people use it daily, and live by it. P.S. If you're looking to make a move, Myfitnesspal is hiring engineers in San Francisco.
Freeletics is the app that will get you in better shape in 2018 through high intensity workouts and custom training plans. Fun fact: the company is based in Munich and is hiring like crazy.
Lose It is another great option. The app lets you track what you eat and get nutritional facts by taking pictures. 🍇 🍲 📸
💰 Get a New Job
January is a popular month for job searching. If you're looking to make a move, 24,000+ technology companies are hiring on AngelList. Apply privately with one application, and see salary and equity upfront.
If you're happy where you're at now, that's great too.
But, if the right opportunity comes around, you'll want to make sure companies know they can reach you (there's a secret status on your AngelList profile that gives them the signal). 👀
Here's how to do it:
• Activate your AngelList Talent Profile
• Set your status to "passive" to show up in search results
• You can also choose "secretly looking" so you can reach out to companies that interest you (without appearing in search results)
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to look, explore these collections of popular job opportunities:
17 Startups Investors Recommend for New Grads
20 YC startups that are aggressively hiring
The 20 Most Competitive Startups of 2017
20 Female Founded Startups to Join in 2018
💻 Learn to Code
Of the many skills one can learn (cooking, painting, GIF-making), learning to code is incredibly useful and it’s not just for engineers. Coding is a language that will become increasingly important to understand, and today it's one of the most sought after skills.
Here are 51 of the best resources for learning to code, including:
Py: Learn to code right from your phone
Quick Code: A curated list of free programming courses
freeCodeCamp: Learn to code by building for nonprofits
Codecademy: The biggest company in the space with 25M users
📚 Read More Books
Two of the most popular Ask Product Hunt threads will fill your literary calendar for the year.
What is your one favorite startup book?
What book do you most often give as a gift?
This book is the most recommended read on both.
Biohacks to increase your productivity in 2018 📊🏃
The new year is a great time to not only reflect on old routines and habits, but also to explore new ones. To do that, we asked HVMN co-founder and CEO Geoffrey Woo to highlight a few simple ways we can better ourselves through biohacking.
Biohacking was quite the buzzword in 2017, but the core concepts are simple and approachable: it's the application of systems thinking to human performance. There's two parts to that:
1. Incorporate and modify inputs into your body and lifestyle e.g. fasting, exercise, and diet.
2. Quantify, track and optimize biometric outputs e.g. glucose levels, heart rate variability, body composition, blood markers.
Biohacking was quite the buzzword in 2017, but the core concepts are simple and approachable: it's the application of systems thinking to human performance. There's two parts to that:
1. Incorporate and modify inputs into your body and lifestyle e.g. fasting, exercise, and diet.
2. Quantify, track and optimize biometric outputs e.g. glucose levels, heart rate variability, body composition, blood markers.
Adopt New Habits
Meditation and intermittent fasting can systematically improve your everyday life. Both are simple to start, but the discipline to stick to either is not. I recommend Kevin Rose's apps, Zero for fasting and Oak for meditation, as ultra-lightweight ways to get started.
Try a Keto Diet
Another “input” I'm particularly excited about is the broad release of HVMN Ketone. The technology rapidly shifts the body into a form of ketosis, which helps you get more out of your workouts, recover faster, and makes it easier to transition in and out of fasting.
Track, Quantify, and Optimize
In addition to new habits and new consumables, a biohacker tracks, quantifies, and optimizes her biometrics. My go-to biometric visualization tool is Gyroscope. It’s an app that collates data from a number of services to create a slick, personalized dashboard of you.
Wearables and Biosensors
I also use a number of wearables and biosensors to track various metrics, but the one I'm most excited about is the new Oura ring. It’s a sleek combination of form and function backed by great sensor accuracy and battery life.
Let's Discuss!
I want to hear more from you. What are different biohacks or biohacking tools have you been using, and are there any you're interested in adopting in 2018? Add your recommendations and I'll be around to answer questions today on Product Hunt.
Launching a product in 2018? 🚀😻
Welcome to the new year, friends. 2017 was a wild one, so we'd like to celebrate some milestones from the Product Hunt community from this past year:
⬆️ 2.5M+ upvotes were generously awarded from across the world. Go back in time to see what you missed.
🌎 4,500+ of you from 124 countries joined the Product Hunt Global Hackathon. Here are the winners.
🔥 5th most upvoted product of the year was Firefox's new browser (we didn't see that coming).
💰 800+ cryptocurrency and blockchain-related products launched. Sign of the times.
💌 260+ daily newsletters written. Explore them all here. This one was the most popular of the year.
📘 1 Product Hunt book published (so far! 😏)
📝167k+ followers on our Medium blog, which grew to the 14th most followed on Medium in 2017. 👏
👥 1M+ registered users reached (even though the majority of visitors never login). To see your user #, visit your profile.
On a more personal note, I'm pumped by the response we've received from Ship, our first paid offering. We introduced the private beta toward the end of the year, now used by hundreds of paying teams to build an audience and communicate with their users. We have a deep roadmap of improvements (hint: messaging is a big focus for us), focused on helping makers ship better products.
Today we're introducing a new program to help makers ship in 2018. If your New Year's resolution is to release a product for your startup or just a side project, take a look. We're offering a massive discount on Ship Pro plans, early access to Team Profiles, and kitty stickers to 50 applicants. Sign up here.
– Ryan Hoover ✌️
⬆️ 2.5M+ upvotes were generously awarded from across the world. Go back in time to see what you missed.
🌎 4,500+ of you from 124 countries joined the Product Hunt Global Hackathon. Here are the winners.
🔥 5th most upvoted product of the year was Firefox's new browser (we didn't see that coming).
💰 800+ cryptocurrency and blockchain-related products launched. Sign of the times.
💌 260+ daily newsletters written. Explore them all here. This one was the most popular of the year.
📘 1 Product Hunt book published (so far! 😏)
📝167k+ followers on our Medium blog, which grew to the 14th most followed on Medium in 2017. 👏
👥 1M+ registered users reached (even though the majority of visitors never login). To see your user #, visit your profile.
On a more personal note, I'm pumped by the response we've received from Ship, our first paid offering. We introduced the private beta toward the end of the year, now used by hundreds of paying teams to build an audience and communicate with their users. We have a deep roadmap of improvements (hint: messaging is a big focus for us), focused on helping makers ship better products.
Today we're introducing a new program to help makers ship in 2018. If your New Year's resolution is to release a product for your startup or just a side project, take a look. We're offering a massive discount on Ship Pro plans, early access to Team Profiles, and kitty stickers to 50 applicants. Sign up here.
– Ryan Hoover ✌️
