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Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterday’s top ten launches. That’s it.
We’re only 21 days into the new year so if you’re starting to feel anxious about work, it might be time for a productivity check!
You’re not the only one who's confused about how little you’ve accomplished while at your computer all day. These four popular productivity products launched this month are from makers solving their own problems, and maybe yours too:
Shottr is a screenshot tool for people who care about pixels, with features like quick measurements and text recognition.
“I created it as a workhorse for pixel-professionals: designers, UI developers, and the like. Its strong suit is precision and speed, its killer feature is zoom, its target audience – people who prefer hotkeys over buttons and efficiency over fluffiness of the UI.” Max K
Omni is a Chrome extension that offers a command interface, i.e. manage tabs, bookmarks, browser history, and more with a key press.
“I've been thinking about all the time I lose doing menial tasks: finding the right tab in Chrome (I have far too many :P), starting meetings, creating tasks, clearing cookies and cache… So I decided to build Omni as a tool to do it all… ” Alyssa X
Amy collects and analyzes information from all over the web about the people you meet with and puts it in your calendar.
“I spent an awful lot of time researching people before meeting them, making sure I knew everything I needed to… Then it hit me. Instead of spending hours preparing for each meeting, people should focus on actually making each meeting count.” Nim Ron
Iteration X lets you and your team annotate and edit live websites or web apps directly in Chrome.
"While working on many web projects over the years, we were constantly troubled by the inefficiencies in the current product design and development workflows… Our goal with Iteration X is to bring collaboration directly on the product, where it naturally belongs.” Mehdi Djabri
For many of us, search engine optimization is an enigma.
First-time founders and marketing professionals alike dig through blogs and hire experts in the field to tell us about problems we never knew existed and keywords that hit just the right spot. The prizes are more traffic and a coveted spot on the first Google results page.
And the first pages of other search engines, too. Although some experts will tell you that the problem isn’t you, it’s your search engine. But we digress.
The all-seeing Google crawlers want what they want. Fortunately, we’ve seen plenty of new launches in this space, many leveraging AI to take the guess out of your work.
Content AI by Rank Math SEO - An AI assistant for creating SEO friendly content
Growth Bar - A GPT-3 tool for finding keywords and writing SEO-optimized content
People Also Search For - A free tool to find keywords your audience is searching for
YouTube Transcripts 2.0 - A Chrome extension that creates optimized YouTube transcripts — right in YouTube
SEOForLunch 2.0 - A once-a-week email curating only the best content about SEO
Free Article Outline Generator - Another AI-powered generator. It creates ready-to-use, optimized outlines for your content
My SEO Sucks Calculator - A link-building calculator to find the price of links across the web
SEO Glossary - 150+ SEO terms to help you deepen your SEO knowledge
Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by us and sponsored by our friends at Forge.
We surpassed 900 unicorns last year, with a cumulative valuation nearing $3 trillion. Such milestones typically call for celebration, but the occasion can be muddled for employees.
Financial experts warn us: equity is higher risk than typical cash income. Nonetheless, risk-averse and bullish talent is lured to startups by the potential of a huge cash-out when their companies go public. Going further, one survey notes that 92% of startup employees have taken a personal financial risk to own the stock options they were offered. Former Airbnb employee, Gabriel Cole, told the NYT that he had spent his life savings to buy his stock in 2015.
The standard employee stock vesting period is 4 years. So what happens when a company takes even longer to IPO? After all, the median age at which companies make their public debut increased from 4 years to 12 years between 2009 and 2020 as more founders choose to stay private for longer.
In the case of Airbnb, it meant frustration. A staff letter to the founders helped push the company to IPO in 2020, after 12 years private.
All of these trends have led to a boom in secondary markets for private equity. Companies like Forge are making it easy for founders to give their employees the option to sell their shares while the company is still private. That gives employees liquidity, so they can free up some cash to do things like buy a home, and it supports founders who aren’t in a rush to IPO.
It also helps founders attract talent, which is crucial with so many workers looking to jump ship. Those risk-averse people who lean towards a higher salary and liquid stock grants from public tech giants may be more willing to join a scrappy team knowing their assets won’t be locked up for 12 years.
Though pre-IPO liquidity was possible pre-Forge, it was difficult. When Airbnb employees needed liquidity, they took their own path, jumping through legal hoops with the help of brokers to sell off shares. Knowing if they were getting a good price for their stock was tricky with no visibility into demand or current pricing. Forge’s marketplace simplifies the process and is designed around market-based pricing so employees get for their shares what the market is willing to pay.
Today’s launch precedes the company’s own public trading debut early this year. Forge emerged as the largest player in its space, with rival multinational banks trying to play catchup. Companies on the platform include the buzzy neobank, Chime, which announced a $750 million Series G in August and is targeting March for an IPO.
Founders and employees can browse startups on the platform and get started on the site.👇
What do we want? Products.
When do we want them? Now.
That’s why “product-led growth” has been the breakout strategy of the last decade. When companies use PLG as their go-to-market strategy, they work on getting their potential customers to use their products straight away through trials and freemium models. Removing friction from that user experience helps get people using products, integrating them into their workspaces, and paying for them faster.
Arcade wants to help with that. The Chrome extension tool enables companies to quickly and easily create product demo flows that can be shared or embedded. It calls the demos “arcades” to emphasize the concept of playing around with the product.
Makers Caroline Clark and Rich Manalang are former Atlassian colleagues (Charlie McGeorge rounds out the founding team), a company well-recognized as a product-led growth pioneer (see Jira and Trello), along with Slack, Zoom, Hubspot, and Monday.com. It’s good company in an exploding market — one that grew from a $1 billion market cap in 2012 to $687 billion in 2020.
The idea behind Arcade seems so simple, but that is the point. Sometimes even a trial or freemium model isn’t enough to win over a customer. For example, getting full use out of a product might require integrating it into your CRM or uploading sensitive data. You, your engineers, legal teams, and so on, often just want to see how it works first. Arcade could enable a sales or marketing rep show you in minutes.
Navattic is another newcomer and competitor we saw launch last year. Like Arcade, the YC-backed startup lets you build, share, and track product demos. Users make a front-end copy of their app and create interactive demos. Storylane, another recent YC alum, launched last year too. Storylane takes the browser extension approach, letting users capture their domains and add a story through “walk-through widgets.”
We also covered Test-Box last year, which takes a customer-led approach to sales. You can think of it as a sister approach to PLG.
And if you’re a company leader that’s not using either of these models, we suggest checking out Wingman’s launch today, an AI-powered mobile wingman for your sales reps.
The humble widget has viral potential. See: Locket, a widget that has unexpectedly risen to the top of the Social Networking category of the App Store. The widget shows live pictures from your friends, right on your home screen. Maker Matt Moss shared:
“I had graduated from UCSB that June, but [my girlfriend] was going back to school in the fall... We started using the app every day to stay in touch… Once our friends started asking to try it, we decided to release it on the store. Since then, a few viral TikToks have catapulted the app to wayyyyy more users than we ever expected :)”
“Simple but beautifully executed” is the popular opinion on the widget thus far.
Here are seven more widget-based products from the last year you should check out to simplify your mobile experience.
Pretty Progress - Personalize your own countdown & progress widgetsLearn Geography - Put a country quiz on your home screen
Home Widget - Control all your HomeKit devices right from your home screen
Deliveroo Widget - Reorder from your favorite UK restaurants and grocery stores
Usage - Monitor your device with stats like storage and battery life
Meep meep - Track activity of any Instagram account
Wyd? - A widget “for smartphone addicts” to encourage you to do one thing
We’re excited to announce the last batch of Golden Kitty Awards finalists. Voting is now open for the following, so go ahead and choose your favorites.
✍🏼 Side project
and…
We’ll also be announcing finalists for our Maker of the Year and Community Member of the Year soon.
Voting officially closes Sunday, January 16 at 11:59 pm PT.
😻 One last big thank you to this year’s Golden Kitty Awards sponsor, Flatfile, the onboarding platform for importing customer data in as little as 60s.
There is still time to register for the Golden Kitty Awards 2021 virtual ceremony where hosts Greg Isenberg and Sahil Bloom will be announcing this year’s winners live, alongside MANY other exciting guests and activities. Get this on your calendar now so you don’t miss it.
The second to last drop of Golden Kitty Awards finalists is here! You know what to do (in case you don’t — VOTE)👇
⚜️ Design tools
🏋️♀️ Health & fitness
Voting closes Sunday, January 16 at 11:59 pm PT. Go upvote your favorites HERE.
Make sure to reserve your front-row spot at the virtual Golden Kitty Awards 2021 ceremony to witness this year’s products get etched into history with winners of the past, like Figma and Robinhood.
🙏 A big thanks to this year’s Golden Kitty Awards sponsor, Flatfile, the onboarding platform for importing customer data in as little as 60s.
Look out for tomorrow’s newsletter, where we’ll be sharing the final batch of finalists including the highly-anticipated category, Product of the Year. In the meantime, go vote for the rest.
More Golden Kitty Awards finalists just dropped!
Time to vote! 👇
👨👩👧👧 Children & Family
🧑🎨 Creator Economy
Voting closes Sunday, January 16 at 11:59 pm PT. Go upvote your favorites HERE.
Don’t forget: you're invited to the LIVE Golden Kitty Award ceremony. Avoid the FOMO and grab a virtual seat here.
Special thanks to our sponsor, Flatfile, the onboarding platform for importing customer data in as little as 60s, for making the Golden Kitty Awards 2021 possible.
Purrfect, now that you have all the information you need, go cast your vote. We’ll be back tomorrow with the next handful of categories.
The second drop of Golden Kitty Awards finalists is here!
Starting now, you can cast your votes for...
💸 Fintech
🛠 Hardware
📎 SaaS
(😻,😻) web3
Voting closes Sunday, January 16 at 11:59 pm PT. Go upvote your favorites HERE.
There is still time to register for the GKA 2021 ceremony on January 27. Be warned, this is NOT your dull, run-of-the-mill awards show – we’ve put together a spec-cat-ular list of guests and entertainment. This includes hosts Greg Isenberg and Sahil Bloom from The Room Where it Happens podcast, a panel with our very own Ryan Hoover, live music, an after-party in the metaverse, and much more.
❤️ This year’s Golden Kitty Awards are made possible by our sponsor, Flatfile, the onboarding platform for importing customer data in as little as 60s.
We’ll be back tomorrow with the next handful of categories. Now, go choose the best.
Last week, you nominated your favorite products for the Golden Kitty Awards 2021. We tallied up thousands of nominations and have the finalists for the first six categories!
Starting now, you can vote for the best in...
Mobile Apps
Audio & Voice
No Code
Productivity
Work from Home Anywhere
WTF?!
Voting closes Sunday, January 16 at 11:59pm PT.
Put everything on hold for a few minutes and go vote HERE.
Winners will get to share their acceptance speeches LIVE during our virtual awards ceremony. You're invited to join us in a global celebration. Expect...
🧠 Hosts Greg Isenberg and Sahil Bloom to drop insights
😺 THE Ryan Hoover to share his 2022 outlook as he hosts a panel
🪄 Magician Johnny Wu to leave us speechless
🤔 Fierce competition on tech-themed trivia with the Big Quiz Thing
🎤 Grooves from up-and-coming musical artists via Sofar Sounds
🐕 Doge overload with an after-party in the Doge Temple
❤️ Appreciation for our sponsor, Flatfile, the onboarding platform for importing customer data in as little as 60s
Tbh, missing this would be CATastrophe, so head over to the website to register.
We’ll be back tomorrow with the next handful of categories. Now, go choose the best.
