The Roundup

We’re all content creators. Whether you’re a student writing a research paper, Redditor, or marketing professional, you most likely spend a good chunk of your time organizing your thoughts or research to put something back into the world.

We’ve covered a lot of tools that help with production: video editors, podcast tools, community management — but there’s a big space between having an idea and putting pen to paper, metaphorically speaking. In fact, maybe you don’t even have an idea yet and your content is just a to-do on your checklist.

Here are 4 of the latest tools for stimulating or organizing your thoughts.

Genei - A research tool that pulls together your content (webpages, PDFs, etc.) so you can search, summarize, and keyword it. Genei topped TechCrunch’s list of its “Favorite Startups from YC’s Summer 21 Demo Day.”

DataHerald - A self-service software that lets you leverage the world’s data by creating interactive data visualizations from live data feeds, without coding. “Think Tableau with thousands of pre-populated data sources.”

Research AI - A tool to help students get rid of writer’s block by providing title ideas, paraphrasing, and helping to write paragraphs with text completion.

Heights - These “smart supplements for the brain” are made to help sharpen focus, support deep sleep, and balance mood to soothe stress and anxiety. Cofounder Dan Murray-Serter, explains that unlike other Nootropics (supplements that improve cognitive function), Heights isn’t focused on a quick-fix, but long-term “brain care.” The founding team is supported by advisor Dr. Tara Swart, an Oxford-trained doctor and neuroscientist.

Though it's unrelated to today's topic, the second startup on TC's list was Playhouse. We covered the "Zillow meets TikTok" app here.

“Product Hunt is where we first launched just 1.5 years ago,” wrote Eric Glyman, Co-Founder and CEO of Ramp, in last week's launch of Ramp 2.0. The company also announced it raised $300M at a $3.9B valuation.

In its original launch, Ramp’s product was its free corporate card. Its north star has been to help businesses spend less through unlimited cards, 1.5% cash-back on everything, and insights to reduce wasteful spending. New features like merchant blocking have been added at the request of users.

The response has been good. Ramp reported a 5x increase in cardholders since the beginning of 2021 and a 1,000% increase year over year in transactions.

With Ramp 2.0, its hero product still stands, but it wants you to know: It’s not just a corporate card. It’s a finance automation platform.

"[W]ith Ramp, you’ll get corporate cards and payments with built-in expense and accounting automation software, all in one well designed, easy-to-use, and free solution,” Glyman explained. As the launch meme puts it, finance teams can make siloed finance tools disappear with a Thanos finger snap.

Ramp 2.0 adds negotiation-as-a-service for software procurement into its platform, too. That was part 3 of its announcement tied to its positioning — the company acquired Buyer, a startup we watched launch on Product Hunt just one year ago.

In most articles about Ramp, you’ll find a reference to its competitor Brex. As both grow, the differences between the company’s strategies diverge. Brex announced a $475M raise at a $7.4B valuation in April, as well as its first paid tier. It made its first acquisition too — a startup called Weav with a universal API for commerce platforms. Signs point to Ramp serving larger companies, and Brex focusing on small businesses.

Fin-techies are wondering if Ramp will continue to ride its free model to exit, or introduce paid features into its growing software functions to morph into a freemium model.

You can click through to check it out now, while we know it’s still free.

Project management is a space in non-stop iteration mode. Every once in a while, a product like Slack or Trello revolutionizes the space. It’s followed by a series of “If X and X had a baby” products that combine and iterate core concepts.

That’s not to downplay the latter. Makers come to the table with fresh product design and development perspectives for incorporating emerging tech and trends.

In project management, those trends currently include spatial note-taking, real-time collaboration, AI, automation, and whiteboarding. A few new noteworthy contenders have launched with a combination of such features.

For engineering teams, there’s Tara AI, a product that’s coming straight for Jira. The company just launched its second version after incorporating feedback from the community last year. With a vision for “a ticketless future,” Tara AI 2.0 includes automatic status updates based on Git events, auto-sprinting, and progress views with live pull-requests and commit statuses.

Clover is a creative workspace that combines notes, whiteboarding, todos, and a daily planner. Clover's spatial and real-time workflows give it brainstorming, diagramming, and collaboration power in addition to task management.

“At the core of Clover is a new type of document called a Surface. It combines the power of a modern text editor with the flexibility of a whiteboard (think Dropbox Paper meets Figjam).” Co-founder Tom Giannattasio shared.

If Clover is a creative workspace, think of Infinity Maps as your knowledge workspace – “if Miro and Notion had a baby.” Infinity Maps is bringing together whiteboarding, diagramming, and real-time collaboration.

Like Clover, Infinity Maps is hoping to tap into your “sense of space” to help bring structure to projects that are complex and scattered, without stifling ideas and creativity. Infinity Maps is in its 1.0 launch phase and Clover just opened its beta — the perfect time to test and share highly impactful feedback with the makers about what you need.

Infinity Maps also has a pretty loveable video, and we love a good launch video.

Redfin and Zillow have tangentially benefitted from the cultural phenomenon of the real estate market, but have they really leveraged it as the content machine it is?

HGTV figured it out early. The network's breadth of both filler and compelling content propelled it to a top 5 cable network in the US. Competitors like Netflix followed their lead, and also figured out that social media is as much a powerful content generator as it is a distribution channel. In today’s world, influencers get contracts to host design shows and popular accounts are adapted to TV shows.

“Real estate is not just a transaction. It’s an entire culture,” wrote Alex Perelman with last week's launch of Playhouse. The makers of Playhouse spotted a gap between all of the home-related content you consume and transactions IRL.

“Maybe you saw an amazing house tour, but is it even in your state?... This one company does incredible tile work, but dang, not in your zip code. And so on it goes... a missed opportunity to connect millions of entrepreneurs and small businesses with potential customers in the real world.”

With the Playhouse mobile app, users can browse video listings like they would TikTok.

“Our vision is a real estate app that is both entertaining and practical. The content is fun and addictive like TikTok, but also practical and actionable like Zillow or Yelp.”

Would social and local content make your home browsing easier or more enjoyable? Let the makers know what you’d like to see from the app.

TikTok is getting lots of attention, as usual. Last week it announced ephemeral Stories and we all had something to say about it.

Last month, the company started testing a job application tool with the likes of Chipotle, Target, and Shopify. Now Gen Zers are landing jobs through #winning TikTok videos. Techies are predicting LinkedIn will follow with a similar feature soon.

Sure, PDF CVs have felt passé for a while, but we still send and upload them regularly.

CV first launched on Product Hunt 8 months ago with its new solution. Maker Andy Chung explained he wanted a simple page where he could edit and share his CV that wasn’t “heavy” like LinkedIn, but wasn’t a PDF either — a more “link-in-bio sized” resume.

The makers have now returned with Read.cv which includes social features to enable “meaningful connections” among users. Maker Joey Flynn explains how their approach is different from LinkedIn. The most important point is that “no one, including [the makers], can muck up your profile.” He explains:

“No one can endorse you for random stuff, no upsells, no banner ads... If read.cv is going to work, you're going to need to be able to send anyone your profile and know exactly what they're going to see — we will always preserve [that] at all costs.”

We are all about a clean, digital CV, particularly if it means finally putting an end to the miserable experience of uploading a PDF, then re-inputting all the same info into fields again.

On that note, another new launch, Job Tracker 2.0, is making job searching less painful. The Chrome extension and platform allows you to track and organize your applications across the web.

If you’re not a job seeker now, bookmark these or be a good friend and pass them on. Friends don’t let friends search for jobs unequipped.

If you are searching, psst... we're hiring!

If you had doubts about no-code’s future, perhaps $100 million could persuade you?

Last week, Bubble announced its Series A, following a 2019 seed round, preceded by 7 years of bootstrapping. Founder Emmanuel Straschnov told TechCrunch how they’ve been using the seed money.

“In our business, it’s a features game. [Our users] are not technical, but they have high standards.”

We’ve been introduced to some of those new features on Product Hunt; Bubble’s integrations for Zapier, Airtable, and Figma all launched in the last year. Like Zapier, Bubble also wants to invest in education through its own content and university partnerships.

Despite a growing list of competitors, the new features aren't necessarily part of a race to the finish.

“I don’t look at all the no-code players as competition… the true competition we have is code.”

In that spirit, here are five recent launches from startups on a similar mission — to democratize software development (or burst the tech bubble).

Adalo - Build apps for every platform

Glide 2.0 - Create web apps from Google Sheets (now without Google sheets, too)

Softr 2.0 - Build web apps & portals from Airtable

Noloco - Build custom web apps quickly

Dorik 2.0 - Build websites with unlimited pages without code

If you’re new to this or overwhelmed, you could check out No-Code Stack for tool recommendations, practice with Bubble’s step-by-step How to Build guide and recreate Twitter, or dive right in with the latest...

When Ryan Hoover introduced me, Josh Buckley, as Product Hunt’s new CEO a few months ago, he teased a big vision for the future. I’m incredibly excited to finally be able to share some of that vision with you.

Say hello to Hyper, a new kind of early-stage venture firm inspired by the awesome community of makers and early adopters at Product Hunt. Hyper’s investments are about a lot more than just money — we provide startups with the things they need most in today’s tech ecosystem: a great mentorship program, a helpful community, and unique distribution partnerships, among other things we’ll announce later this year. And what makes Hyper really interesting is how we plan to reinvest our fund profits back into the ecosystem.

We’re going to invest in a small number of startups four times per year, with the first group starting our 8-week founder program on September 10th. Applications for Hyper’s Fall season are open as of today, so if you’re a startup founder, or if you’re thinking of starting a company, you should apply now.

Read more about the Hyper team and how it works, and let us know what you think. We're excited to see what the tech community (like TechCrunch) and Product Hunt community are saying about our launch so far:

"Congrats! Brilliant move for the Product Hunt community 🙌" - Ben Lang

"Congrats to you Josh & whole PH team. Excited to see this one. Applying it right away :)" - Dheeraj Mehndiratta

Stay tuned for more announcements in the coming weeks. We have some exciting news that I can’t wait to share with you.

Most of us have struggled with our hormones, in some form or another. Yet keeping them in check has become a taboo topic.

According to Hone, 30 million men over 35 struggle with low testosterone. Co-founder Saad Alam shared his story in last week's launch:

“I started to lose my energy, my stamina, my sleep became worse, my sex drive was completely gone, I felt sad, and I started to gain weight... and it took me 6 months and countless specialists to diagnose my condition. I went on hormone optimization therapy and...it changed my life.”

Hone offers at-home blood tests, 30-minute telehealth visits, and treatments shipped to your home. The launch fits into a growing group of makers and investors pushing digital health forward globally, while trying to crack through social stigmas and taboos (women’s health is full of them too.)

Also here to tackle taboos today is BlockerX, a judgment-free app that helps in overcoming compulsive watching of porn. Porn consumption is a potential problem for all genders and ages, but founder Tejas Balasubramanya specifically calls out 18 to 30-year-olds — a segment that’s more likely to struggle with this issue.

“Watching porn compulsively is one of the most embarrassing problems that a young guy could face. Because this is a taboo topic, there's very little support available to get out of this problem.”

Despite the simple name, the app isn’t just a blocker. It offers an online community and a buddy system so you and a friend/partner can help keep each other accountable towards your goals.

Taboos, by definition, take work to break. Users who are still too nervous to ask a friend for help can “find a buddy” through BlockerX's forum as well.

Gumroad founder and Hone investor, Sahil Lavingia, was one of the first to open up on Twitter by sharing his own experience with low testosterone, which encouraged others to follow suit. We’re here for it.

It’s been quite a year already.

For many of us, it didn’t pan out as expected. In tech, the silver linings were found in unicorn herds, phoenixes rising from the ashes, and pandemic-made underdogs.

It seemed like every other day, we were talking about a new industry or space that's experiencing unprecedented growth from a new way of living, from EdTech to alts and NFTs.

H2 has already started off with a bang, but before we get too much deeper, we’re recapping the standout top launches from H1.

Contra - A new professional network for flexible work

“I've only been part of this community for about a week and... already I've gathered feedback on my work from professionals, gained access to book, video, and course resources relating to my field, helped people out with their queries, and so much more!” - Aishwarya Agrawal

Ray.so - Turn your code into beautiful images

“This is awesome! Wish it existed when I was building [my company], as we shared lots of code snippets on social and elsewhere. I love how simple and curated it is with the color schemes.” - Danny Halarewich

Audiblogs - Listen to any web article in your podcast player

“[A]bsolutely amazing! If you're anything like me and have a chrome window with a thousand tabs of articles that you'll definitely, absolutely, 100% find the time to read (lol), you need this.” - Nader Khalil

Persona - Identify verification for any use case

“10 lines of code for an entirely customizable identity verification system?? That's a game-changer. Count me in.”- Jake Disraeli

Open VC - Browse 2,200+ funds by investment criteria

"Love this! Such a useful tool for entrepreneurs working on researching their target investors." - Stephanie Rich

We've been talking about “no-code” for a while now. Lately the term can feel like an umbrella that encompasses a whole lot. Our take is that makers are regularly pushing “the limits” of the space. A few new launches demonstrate recent growth.

Last week, the team at Glide presented an overhaul to their app builder. Glide 1.0 launched two years ago for creating mobile apps from Google Sheets. With the update, users no longer have to use Sheets. Glide has its own built-in function, Glide Tables, that makes your potential app more scalable. Add features like collaboration tools and action sequences, and you have a quick way to create an app, now with even more power.

Also unsatisfied with leaving makers to string together no-code tools, Noloco launched last week, hyping their tool as a “complete no-code solution for the next generation.” Noloco’s approach to end-to-end app development includes features like a built-in database, design customization, and subscriptions. The last point is one of the main ways Noloco hopes to differentiate itself from Webflow. As one user puts it:

“It's like Webflow + Memberstack + Jetboost + Stripe all in one.” - BD Hoang

Despite the potential of a great all-in-one tool, it’s not uncommon to hear makers say they started with no-code tools until they scaled. In February, we watched the launch of Uiflow Studio, a tool for developers to build UIs and web app logic visually. The company told TechCrunch that its targeting companies at the point in which they begin designing their own UI. Designers can import Figma files, with all visual assets becoming ready-to-use custom components.

“Uiflow also brings enterprise scalability, performance, collaboration, and integrations with lots of APIs and Data Stores. That differentiates us from single-user focused no-code platforms.”

Co-founder Sol Eun also told the Product Hunt Community that Uiflow was heavily inspired by Unity, the game engine, to enable rapid productivity by building both client-side logic and UI/UX visually.

Uiflow gained over 1,200 signs ups after its Product Hunt launch. We’re thrilled to see these new tools gain traction among community favorites. 🙌