The Roundup

This year has been particularly interesting for folks interested in AI, especially when it comes to image generators. After OpenAI’s release of DALL-E 2 a few months ago, we’ve continued to see similar products spring up.

The latest one making the rounds on Twitter is Stable Diffusion, an image-generating AI from the DreamStudio team. What makes Stable Diffusion different is the fact that it’s open-source. That alone has brought up a lot of concerns as to how the tool could be used in harmful ways. But something that’s been even more controversial is how these types of AI tools might abolish creative jobs and stock image websites.

An interesting article from Washington Post tells the story of how maker Jason Allen, who runs a tabletop fantasy games company, submitted an artwork generated by Midjourney (another AI tool) and won a fine-arts competition. It’s hard to tell how this will play out in the long run and whether technology like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion will completely remove the need for creative jobs or will simply be used as a tool to enhance creativity.

Expert opinions seem to lean towards the former case. Back in April, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, shared his thoughts on the matter: “Although I firmly believe AI will create lots of new jobs, and make many existing jobs much better by doing the boring bits well, I think it’s important to be honest that it’s increasingly going to make some jobs not very relevant (like technology frequently does).”

Safety concerns around the ethics of AI could be what delays the process though. And just like ATMs replaced bank tellers, change is inevitable as technology advances.

Which camp are you in?

As much as we love fully-fledged, complex productivity apps that basically let you optimize your entire life, there’s something about simple, yet powerful browser extensions. They’re lightweight and usually don’t require you to do much, except for a few clicks – a true and tried “less is more” approach.

We’ve been watching the space closely and noting down interesting ones we’ve seen launch recently. Here are some that might make you want to go “Add to Chrome” (or whatever browser you’re using – we won’t judge, now that Internet Explorer’s dead).

AdGuard MV3 is “the first ad-blocker” built on top of Chrome’s Manifest V3. It lets you block ads, trackers, and social widgets, as well as self-defined web components and domains.

AI2sql uses AI to generate SQL queries from natural language input.

Depths is a bookmark manager for developers. The extension lets you tag all your saved resources and calculate an estimated read time, with full-text search enabled.

CSS Scan 3.0 helps you check the CSS of any element you hover over and copy its entire rules with a single click.

Slashy adds custom command functionality to Notion. It comes pre-packaged with plugins to make drawings within Notion and record your video and audio, and it gives you the ability to create your own simple commands or advanced plugins with its SDK.

Iago helps you learn new languages by overlaying subtitles on streaming websites like Netflix, Disney+, and Youtube, in both your native and target learning language.

The cool thing about the Internet is that it’s infinitely scalable. SaaS is one business model we’ve seen skyrocket in recent years. With a global market value of over $170B, the SaaS space has increased in size by around 500% over the past seven years. Not surprising, as 80% of businesses use at least one SaaS application.

Here’s a rundown of recently launched SaaS tools we think you might want to know about.

Zeda.io has been designed to help product teams collect feedback, define goals and initiatives, plan roadmaps, and write clearly-defined specs for developer and design teams to execute.

UpLink lets accountants, auditors, and lawyers request hundreds or thousands of documents from others. This removes the need for the back and forth with the client, which is usually done over email while keeping track of status in Excel.

Snackeet allows you to integrate Instagram-like stories to your website, so you can boost engagement rates, sell products, get feedback from customers, and get more leads for your business.

Changelogs & Idea Management by Ignition helps you collect and organize feature requests and prioritize your roadmap. You can use it to then announce new features via custom branded changelogs.

Kinde provides founders with the infrastructure for authentication, user management, feature flags, and billing. Kinde uses an API or SDK to integrate with your product.

Creabl is a user-behavior analytics tool that lets you know who your customers are and why they convert, monitor mouse trails and clicks, group users in specific segments, and track retention.

Sleek slide decks are like a form of art. You know it when you spot one, but it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes it so visually appealing or how to replicate it. They’re also a time suck – writing the content is one thing, but getting it to look cohesive on a fixed canvas? That’s a whole other beast.

Gamma launched to make the latter quicker. The tool lets you focus on writing and uses flexible cards and fluid layouts to automatically align and fit the content. The makers liken it to building a Notion doc that converts into a presentation. It lets you embed GIFs, videos, charts, and websites, and has a “one-click” feature that allows you to restyle the entire deck without having to rework it each time. You can measure and understand engagement through built-in analytics and collect feedback from your collaborators using comments and reactions.

First-time founders Grant Lee, James Fox, and Jon Noronha met while working at Optimizely, an A/B testing tool that was acquired by Episerver in 2020. After coming out of stealth a year ago, the team raised a $7M round with participants including Airtable and Patreon founders, as well as Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan, and LinkedIn’s former CEO, Jeff Weiner. “While we're still super early, we're excited to open things up today, and wanted the PH community to be among the first to try out the product,” Lee shared on Gamma's launch, which racked up 1,700+ upvotes.

The team also shared a little behind the scenes of building Gamma: “We ‘eat our own dogfood’ / ‘drink our own champagne’ here; every week, someone makes a deck and presents on it. Topics have been as varied as the History of McDonald's McRib, UFOs, woodworking, and tattoos.” We might give this a try for our next team gather.

We’ve covered alternatives to Google Slides and Powerpoint in the past, so seeing new tools wanting to disrupt the space feels exciting.

What do you use?

Think of Product Hunt as the non-judgmental Breakfast Club. You like to spend your money on JPEGs? Carry on. Maybe it’s jewelry or maybe it’s art. You do you. In fact, we’re always on the lookout for interesting products that think outside the box and challenge how we perceive wealth.

VALT caught our attention. The asset management app is part of Vincent, a search engine and database that allows you to discover and analyze $6B of alternative investments across 150 investment platforms. VALT came as a response to feedback the makers received about Vincent – “I’m kind of busy with my day job and I’d like to just send you some capital and have you invest it in the best deals for me.”

The platform lets you invest in alternative assets to diversify your portfolio. It gives you access to assets typically reserved for institutions and the ultra-wealthy, like rare art, collector’s items, pre-IPO ventures, and NFTs. VALT has an in-house portfolio team that sources these and provides in-depth analysis. Investors can access private calls with the team, investment memos, weekly performance updates, and news alerts.

It’s not the first rodeo for some of the makers behind VALT. Slava Rubin and Eric Schell co-founded the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo, which has helped companies raise over $1.5B in funding.

If you want to try your hand at investing but need to do some research first, check out Revenue Watcher, a curated database reported directly by the founders of startups and indie projects. Revenue numbers are sourced from platforms like Twitter, Hacker News, YouTube, Starter Story, and Indie Hackers. Bear in mind, this isn't financial advice and you should always seek professional advice before committing to any risky investments.

We’ve covered all kinds of tools recently, from no-code tools to AI tools. Depending on where you are, you might've entered the last month of summer. We’re taking this chance to do something a little more laid back and fun, like a round-up of recently launched music apps.

The celebration of International Friendship Day last weekend reminded us of Spotify's latest launch, Friends Mix. The new personalized playlist allows you to discover new tracks based on Blends you’ve created with your friends. According to TechCrunch, “Spotify says there are more than 11 million user-generated playlists with the word “friend” in the title. The company also notes that there has been a 35% increase in streams of these playlists in 2022 in the United States, compared to last year.”

MD Vinyl has skyrocketed on the App Store charts, becoming #1 in the US, overtaking TikTok and BeReal. The iOS widget connects to your Spotify or Apple Music app to sync the song you're playing and display it as a vinyl in the widget. Pretty retro, huh?

sona’s music-based digital therapeutic app is aimed at helping relieve anxiety symptoms. The music is created by Grammy-winning producers and artists, using a composition process backed by leading neuroscientists.

If you’re feeling brave and want to create the music yourself, Chord Genius helps you learn songs on the guitar, using chords and lyrics that move along. You can stream music from Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube and change the playback speed so you can learn at your own pace. You can’t rush art, after all.

Inspired by Mother Nature, earth.fm is like Spotify for natural soundscapes. Its interactive map takes you from listening to birds in the Congo basin rainforest to albatrosses in the Indian Ocean. Bonus points for partnering with charities focused on creating jobs, protecting ecosystems, and helping mitigate climate change.

Finally, ICYMI, check out Limewire’s comeback.

If Product Hunt ever made a game, it would likely be something like Stray.

The third-person indie adventure game that took the Internet by storm recently follows the story of a homeless cat roaming a robot-filled cyber-punk world. If this isn’t enough to whisk you away, the cat is cute (but equally ferocious) and ginger.

Without giving away too much, it seems like some of the game’s popularity stems from it catering to both hardcore gamers and those of us who can only think of The Sims when we hear video games. The endearing story has players exploring a post-apocalyptic city, as well as completing missions and tasks. Still, you don’t feel the same sense of impending doom as you do with most adventure games. You also get an unlimited number of lives, which leaves you time to take in the enthralling visuals.

Stray was developed by BlueTwelve Studio, an indie game team from the south of France, who spent six years perfecting the storyline, graphics, and meows. Reviewers are raving about it on Metacritic. So are critics. Alyse Stanley, Editor at Washington Post’s Launcher shares that “‘Stray’ is an enrapturing experience, the kind of game that doesn’t leave your brain after the credits roll.“

Maybe one of the best things to come out of Stray’s launch is the number of feline pictures we’ve seen on Twitter. The cat puns, too. Knowing the Internet, seeing an account dedicated to real-life cats being mesmerized by Stray wasn’t that much of a surprise.

Have you played it yet? What did you think? Let us know.

We’re a little more than halfway through the year and have already seen tons of cool developments in the world of AI. It might seem like many of these are the result of the metaverse craze the social media giant ignited at the end of last year. In reality, a lot of the bigger projects like OpenAI’s DALL-E 2, Codex, Google’s Imagen, or Meta’s latest No Language Left Behind have likely been years in the making.

The topic of AI is a hot one already. Recent claims from one Google engineer arguing that the AI he was working on became sentient aren’t putting minds at ease either. While most of us can’t get our hands on these (somewhat) dystopian programs, makers have found day-to-day use cases for AI that remove some of the manual work and let you focus on the high-impact things instead.

ICYMI, Copilot by Github x OpenAI is now available for all developers to suggest code and entire functions in real-time.

Slogan Generator creates a catchy one-liner for your business from a short description you input.

Typeform launched Relayed, a tool that captures real conversations (via async talking or a meeting import) and summarizes them to help your team stay up to date.

Code Language Converter uses AI to convert code snippets from one programing language to another. Similarly, AutoRegex uses OpenAI's GPT-3 to produce regular expressions from plain English.

Also using OpenAI, this tool suggests namings for your GitHub repositories.

Octie.ai is a free marketing assistant that writes emails, product descriptions, social media captions, and subject lines for you.

What did we miss?

Most days we bring you the deets on all the cool software makers are launching, so each time we see new, shiny hardware, it’s a little extra special. If you haven’t felt excited by new phone releases in a while, these announcements might do the trick.

First up, we have the highly anticipated Nothing Phone (1) from OnePlus co-founder, Carl Pei. The device stands out with its “glyph interface,” which consists of a set of light strips on its rear. These act as notifications for things like the state of your battery and incoming calls.

When the device goes on sale at the end of July, it will be available in the UK and parts of Asia and Europe, at a mid-range price of about $475. Nothing seems to be betting on its distinctive design (it’s transparent) and powerful integrations with third-party products and technologies, like Polygon, instead of costly (yet cutting-edge) processors.

Xiaomi also launched its 12S Ultra flagship phone recently, which sports an impressive, custom-built 50.3MP 1-inch camera sensor from Sony that lets you take crisp images in low light, adding depth to your shots. In contrast to Nothing’s device, the 12S Ultra comes with the new, energy-efficient Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor.

If you’re an old soul and like to describe yourself as quirky, the Nokia 5710 XpressAudio might be a better choice. A blast from the past, the device brings back the traditional keyboard, but with a twist. The back of the phone has a built-in charging case for the earbuds it comes with.

In a world where giants like Apple and Samsung reign +40% of the smartphone market, seeing companies like Nothing try to disrupt feels exciting. Will you be snagging any of the above?

Believe it or not, we’re already halfway through the year. Last week, cap table management platform Carta launched its H1 2022 compensation report. If you’re a big data nerd, you’ll love this. The company utilized more than 127,000 employee records from startups that use Carta Total Comp to paint a picture of where startup compensation is at, what jobs are most in-demand, and which cities are the highest paying.

When it comes to salary trends, it looks like it’s a good time to be in legal, strategy, product, or engineering, in that order. All of these functions have a median salary of over $150,000. Still, according to Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta, “Product actually fares even better than third if you just look at companies worth over $1 billion. Median salaries in Legal and Strategy are high in the dataset because often small startups only have a single lawyer (and they are very senior).”

Product touches so many areas of a company that it makes sense to be so highly valued. If you’ve been pondering switching to a job in Product or are curious about what it takes, we have a few resources for you to check out.

Future of Product Management Report 2022 surveyed 5,000 PMs to provide a deep dive into Product-Led Growth, key stats, and trends to look out for.

Speaking about Product-Led Growth, this book will teach you the importance of PLG, how to showcase value through your product and help you assess which free model is right.

But if you’re more of an audiophile rather than a bookworm, Lenny Rachitsky recently launched Lenny’s Podcast where he interviews product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable and tactical advice to help build, launch, and scale your product.

This Notion Pack for Product Managers includes a collection of curated templates for daily standups, agile retrospectives, and 1:1 meeting planners.