The Roundup

You may have heard tales of start-ups being sold on eBay (see: Justin Kan’s first start-up, Kiko), but a big part of the coverage in today’s tech news tends to be focused on large acquisitions. The world of M&A goes beyond tech giants acquiring smaller companies though.

EarlyAcquire launched last week as a marketplace for buying and selling side projects. What makes this different is that the team aims “to provide the best curated deals under $10k before anyone else can get them on other networks,” as well as allow anonymous acquisitions. Once you submit your project, the EarlyAcquire team reviews and publishes it for others to see. When someone is interested in buying, you can start negotiating using its internal messaging system.

EarlyAcquire is not the first of its kind. MicroAcquire made a splash when it launched a couple of years ago, with almost 7,000 of you upvoting it. The product has seen 500+ acquisitions since its debut and over $300M in closed deals. Yesterday, MicroAquire’s founder announced the first $10M deal. Some called it a MassiveAcquire.

Golden Kitty Award winner, Tiny Acquisitions, also recently launched its second iteration. While the platform started with the premise of strictly allowing deals under $5k, it recently announced it’s expanding to accommodate listings of projects up to $100k.

If you’re a micro-SaaS founder and considering making an exit one day but need a little help growing, SaaSmate.co launched a few days ago to help makers find product partnerships, reduce customer acquisition costs, and mutually expand customer bases.

gm, friends.

On Thursday, we announced the launch of our Web3 feed – a place where you can discover the latest Web3 projects and learn the ins and outs of this new era of the Internet.

Nearly 6,000 Web3 projects have launched on Product Hunt, 35,000 of you are already following the crypto topic, and Web3-related keyword searches make up over 32% of the top 8 most searched terms — we took the hint.

The idea for the feed came about during one of our annual internal hackathons, when Web3 engineer, Tim Carambat, proposed building a central hub for Web3 enthusiasts that not only allows them to discover new projects but also gives makers a way to reach new audiences.

In its current format, the feed allows you to browse through projects, filtering by the category they fit in – DAO, DApp, DeFi, or by the blockchain they’ve been built on. We designed the feed while keeping in mind the particularities of Web3 projects. The embedded Twitter follower count may, for instance, help you better understand the hype and community behind a launch.

The Web3 space can be confusing and it’s hard to know where to start. We get that and we’re with you. That’s why we’ve also partnered with experts, like David Phelps and Linda Xie, to help shed some light on Web3 concepts. Whether you still don't understand NFTs or you’re ready to dive into more advanced topics, we’ve curated a collection of resources ranging from understanding the uses cases of NFTs to deeper dives into the economics of them.

We’ve still got a lot planned and we hope this initiative encourages more of you to launch. We’d love to hear your thoughts, so make sure to drop us your feedback!

This is your daily reminder that you don't need all those tabs open.

Last week we saw a new player join the save-for-later race in an attempt to make collecting knowledge easier. Meet Heyday. What seems different about the tool is that you don’t actually do any of the saving yourself. Instead, the browser extension automatically collects web pages you visit and pulls in content from your apps.

Maker Sam DeBrule shares that he started working on Heyday as “today's tools require behavior change and constant input. That’s okay for productivity junkies but the rest of us are stuck with 100 open tabs.” He believes that “knowledge management tools should be easy/fast to set up, layer on top of existing workflows, and require little manual input,” carrying on to explain that staying organized should be made as easy as “Honey makes it to save money or Grammarly makes it to write well.”

Heyday remembers what content you visit, including websites or tweets, and uses artificial intelligence to resurface these whenever you’re reading something in the same area of knowledge. One user referred to it as “your own personal Google search engine for anything you’ve looked at, read, or thought ‘I should make a note of this.’”

The save-for-later, bookmarking space is a compelling, yet crowded one. We’ve written about using AI to resurface content in the past so it’s interesting to see makers working to minimize the time we spend learning and getting used to a new tool.

What do you use to make sense of all the information you come across? Let us know.

Employers are still struggling to fill jobs and retain employees and it looks like some of those just entering the workforce are ditching suits for the metaverse.

There are at least a couple reasons why people are interested in switching to a career in Web3. One is that Web3 provides younger candidates the opportunity to become an expert without the need for decades of experience. Another? It pays WELL. “Regardless if you like it or not, Web3 is easily 2x to 5x what Silicon Valley pays,” NomadList founder shared after coming across a $750k/year job posting.

Last week we saw the launch of Hustleverse, a community that wants to help engineers, designers, marketers, PMs, and community managers in Web2 onboard and transition their careers to Web3. “We’ll host events with Web3 founders and builders to teach community members about Web3 tools and career opportunities. We’ll also facilitate high-level peer networking to help members build their network,” maker and Creative Director at early-stage VC Hustle Fund, Hung Pham, shares.

If you’re still on the fence about this Web3 thing, you can also window shop. Web3 Jobs has 15,256 jobs and 2,231 projects listed that you can browse. You can also sign up to receive a daily or weekly round-up of new jobs added. You know, just in case.

Hunted takes a slightly different approach. It connects you with Web3 startups that can commit to your desired salary. You get to stay anonymous until you interview and earn NFTs along the way.

What’s better: getting in 10,000 steps a day or switching to a Mediterranean diet? Well, it depends. Being able to tell what’s making you feel great (or not) is hard and varies by person.

Enter Cor.

We first heard about it six years ago when founder Bob Messerschmidt launched a crowdfunding campaign. As the former Director of Platform Architecture for Apple's Optics and Spectroscopy team, Messerschmidt had worked on bringing Apple Watch health sensors to market. After a long hiatus of heads-down building, Messerschmidt is back.

Cor is an at-home infrared spectrometer that uses your blood to provide insights into how lifestyle tweaks affect your health.

Infrared spectrometers use specific wavelengths of light to identify and quantity molecular changes. The spectrometer is the size of a WiFi router and comes with analytics tracking tens of millions of data points. You’ll have to prick your finger and gather a small sample of blood every week, but according to the team, you’ll be able to discover what food and fitness practices have the highest impact on you.

This might feel familiar to one infamous Silicon Valley scandal many of us are watching unfold in a dramatized TV series right now. In contrast to Theranos’ culture of secrecy, Cor shares its plans publicly, explaining that insights and profits from their early adopters help scale data and bring the product to the average consumer. Messerschmidt has also been clear about what data Cor can and can’t provide. In an interview with Forbes, he compared the device to current wearables – you can think of Cor as being “1,000x more sensitive than Apple Watch.”

Still, if you’re squeamish at the sight of blood, but like the idea of taking more control over your health, Mage recently launched to help you own your medical records, kind of “like a passport for going into medical facilities.” You can share your health record with a hospital but only for the duration of the visit.

“Tesla is not cool enough anymore,” wrote Jasmine Sungu with the launch of Olympian Motors.

Sungu started the new electric vehicle company with co-founder Eren Canarslan upon realizing there is a demand for alternative EV designs and experiences. Sungu had previously worked at IBM and EY as a managing consultant in the automotive and mobility industry. Canarslan's career started at Ford as an R&D engineer and, prior to Olympian, the founder had been working on automotive, mobility, and augmented reality at Qualcomm Strategy & Ventures.

The founding team set out to create an experience-first consumer segment in the auto industry, prioritizing aesthetics over horsepower, user experience over torque, and simplicity. In practice, that looks like a "radically minimalistic" cockpit experience, swapping out tons of button and switches for an augmented reality HUD (heads up display) with voice-assistant and head/eye-tracking applications.

Olympian says it has the first fully fabless production model in the US, meaning the company designs its cars and microchips, but contracts out production rather than owning a factory. According to Canarslan, the model keeps Olympian asset-light, enabling it to have a product-development cycle that’s 300% faster than the U.S. average. The team is currently building prototypes for its Olympian O1 (Sedan) and a Model K1 (SUV) with the first shipment scheduled for November 2022.

Whether you agree with Sungu or not about Tesla’s coolness, it will be nice to have new options, faster. Elon Musk also said that Tesla won’t be rolling out any new models in 2022 because of the global chip shortage. Its most recent consumer EV launch was the Cybertruck in 2019, and production won’t start on those until 2023.

Still, think Tesla is pretty damn cool? Check out this new Cyberbackpack while you wait. Otherwise...

Sorry Dunkin’ but America’s not runnin’ on your coffee. It’s running on XaaS.

Same with the rest of the world. The global anything and Everything as a Service market is expected to grow from $419.02 billion in 2021 to $2,384.12 billion by 2028, according to Fortune Business Insights.

XaaS refers to the subscription-based business model of offering all sorts of products and tech over the internet, but we probably don’t have to tell you that. Harvard Business Review notes that over 84% of global smartphone users already know what it is. The pandemic increased our love of XaaS and there’s plenty to love as it speeds up progress on anything from sustainability to AI.

As techie nerds, we’re always eager to see which services startups are tackling now, and we thought you would be too. Here are 10 unique problems being tackled by XaaS:

• Snippyly and Liveblocks help devs build real-time multiplayer experiences into their software
• Identance, Persona, and Passbase simplify the complicated process of identity verification
• Terra connects users' wearables and sensor data to apps with an API or widget
• Convoy built an open-source webhooks service to combat fragmented implementations
• Duffel Payments helps travel companies sell flights from their products
• Nyckel and anon let companies integrate machine learning without ML experts
• Climatiq makes it easy for companies to calculate their carbon emissions
• Subspace introduced low-latency, real-time internet for verticals (like gaming) that need fast speeds
• Angle Audio helps makers add audio rooms into their product with ease
• Asserto lets devs add authorization capabilities in a fraction of the time it would take to build it by hand

What happens when a brain researcher who specializes in the rehabilitation of athletes makes an app? A lot of celebrity endorsements will follow.

At least that’s the case for Nuro by Nurosene. If you have already heard of the app, founded in 2019 by neurologist Daniel Gallucci, it may be because of headlines around Michael Phelps (Olympic swimmer) and Richard Sherman (NFL star) joining the advisory council or Joe Jonas investing in the app. There’s are other big names associated as well but what they all have in common is the impetus to speak out about mental health.

Nuro provides a science-based, self-guided platform for better brain health. “Our app was designed by a team of neurological experts that have been using these methods in clinic with elite athletes for decades,” explained Nurosene Product Manager, Jamie Hackett, with last week's launch.

According to the company’s investor information page, Nurosene agreed to acquire NetraMark, a Canadian AI and ML startup that provides learning solutions to biotech companies. The goal is to digitize the experience of seeing a functional neurologist.

One of the most interesting features is a Virtual Neural Scan described as a non-invasive, personalized tool to strengthen your brain basics. It starts with a series of tasks to assess four neural networks (a collection of synapses that fire across the human brain and create meaning) — cognitive flexibility, working memory, long-term memory, and adaptability.

“...[T]he brain is a self-organized series of neurological networks… Your score is a PROXY for what we think certain networks of the brain may be doing, what they may excel at, or not. This is very much ACTIVE data as you progress…” the site explains.

The assessment of these four neural networks serves as the basis for personalizing your experience. The result is Daily Brain Flow exercises, designed to stimulate and optimize the dynamic nature of your brain and improve your mental performance.

Though we may not know what it’s like to compete in the Olympics, we’ve all been through something in the last few years. Would you try Nuro to boost your mental health? Why or why not?

Like many of you, our minds and hearts continue to be with the people of Ukraine. Product Hunt is a global community connected through our love of products and technology.

We know that our thoughts can feel trivial during this time — particularly if you’re separated by miles and borders — and that finding a way to help is difficult. In times of crisis, we are always inspired by makers who lead not only with their thoughts but with actions, too. Makers around the world have been rallying to create and share resources for how we can help.

We've compiled a few of them here:

Help Ukraine Win: A collection of resources and info on how foreigners can help
Help Ukraine: Another detailed resource for how those outside Ukraine can help
Help Ukraine | Crowdsourced List: A list of resources to help Ukraine with crowdsourced info
We Stand With Ukraine Website Badge: A simple website badge to show support for Ukraine
Pro Ukraine Website Banner: A website banner that directs Russian users to Help Ukraine Win — for Russian civilians who want to support Ukraine

These resources provide various ways to help, from suggestions on where to donate (if you are able) to petitions that you can sign and more to support Ukraine.

What’s up with the browser extension with 1,500+ upvotes that had people saying this last week:

“Trust me on this...Bardeen is the #nocode tool of the year 💥.”

Bardeen is an automation tool to replace your repetitive tasks in just a click. These days, a lot of startups like Bardeen are working on solutions for context switching and SaaS sprawl. One way companies tackle the problem is through internal hubs. Another is search. There’s automation, too.

Robotic process automation goes further. RPA uses AI to program software to do basic, repetitive tasks across applications. While a tool like Zapier lets you connect apps to automate your workflows, Bardeen is working to use RPA. RPA for personal use is still very new. As Matt Turck, Managing Partner at FirstMark Capital and Bardeen investor, put it:

“Over the last few years, enterprises have poured billions of dollars into Robotic Processing Automation (RPA) to automate their backend systems. But, if you look at what we all do at work every day, we’re all badly in need of our own RPA. We spend so much time and mental energy on simple tasks that could be automated.”

With Bardeen, users can deploy an automation workflow, right in their browser with a click. Two hundred “playbooks” give users pre-built automation, or they can create their own (similar to Zapier). Machine learning helps users identify which tasks can be automated and recommends playbooks. Founder Pascal Weinberger also shared with one commenter that Bardeen runs “entirely on the edge (so in your browser). That comes with all sorts of privacy, security, and cost advantages...”

Thursday's launch was Bardeen’s public debut from stealth and came with an announcement of its $3.5M seed fundraise. Weinberger and co-founder Artem Harutyunyan are accomplished engineers. In a limited snapshot: Harutyunyan spent 8 years as lead developer at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), and Weinberger worked at Google Brain on various ML projects and led the AI team at Europe’s first moonshot factory.

Harutyunyan shared on the launch page:

“I started moonlighting on.. a slack bot that would… take away most mind-numbing and repetitive tasks… A while after, I talked to Pascal. I was really surprised when he literally pitched me my own idea! 🤯… Fast forward a few months and a bunch of us quit our jobs and we're working on Bardeen with some old friends.”

Sounds fun!