The Leaderboard

Get the popcorn.

This week, OpenSea announced it raised a $300 million fundraising round, valuing the NFT marketplace at $13.3 billion. Forbes notes that the funding introduces founders Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah into the three-comma club, i.e. their estimated net worth is valued at over a billion dollars (in this case $2.2B each).

OpenSea had quite the year as NFTs became a household term. The startup’s blog noted it increased its transaction volume over 600x last year.

Not everyone is rushing to put OpenSea in their startup fantasy league. Some might be waiting to see how Coinbase’s own NFT marketplace shakes out after it announced it would be launching one soon. Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong even said the market for non-fungible tokens could surpass its crypto trading business.

Others are debating what all this funding means for web3. It’s of note that OpenSea’s previous round of $100M was led by Andreessen Horowitz, the VC firm that Jack Dorsey has been trolling. Jack takes issue with how venture capitalists have been funneling money into web3 (VCs deployed $30B+ globally in 2021 into crypto startups, minting more than 40 unicorns last year). The entire point of web3 is a distributed internet — user-controlled, enabled by blockchain tech — so some took offense to Jack’s remarks as a stinging ngmi (“not going to make it”) attack.

Balaji Srinivasan, ex-Coinbase CTO and General Partner at a16z, pointed the finger back at Jack's own company for being guilty of enabling centralized leadership. Jack maintained that criticism only helps those in this space grow.

Regardless of what camp you’re in, if you haven’t explored NFTs yet, this is shaping up to be the year to do so, even more than 2021. We just met two newcomers in this space.

Quest NFT is a platform for easily creating NFTs from your social accounts (Instagram now, with Twitter and TikTok coming soon). Your NFT gets posted on Quest as well as the NFT marketplace, Rarible.

You can think of NFT-Inator as a way to create your own version of Bored Apes, with a simple toolkit for generating designs with randomized combinations and layers that are export-ready.

So put down the popcorn now and go make your NFT.

Today’s Daily Digest is crafted by us and sponsored by our friends at Secureframe.

When a tech founder (or anyone else on the team) dreams of closing a huge deal, they probably leave out the mundane stuff, like wading through the customer’s hundred-line cybersecurity questionnaires to prove their product is up to snuff.

Compliance may not be sexy, but SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA compliance are so crucial to doing business that telling a founder they can achieve it in weeks is enough to shoot a product to #1 Product of the Day. And earn it a shiny Golden Kitty Award.

The product: Secureframe.

After the startup made a splash with its launch a year ago, the company proceeded to close an $18 million Series A, led by Kleiner Perkins and with participation from Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund) and Base10 Partners.

Secureframe provides a complete security automation platform that simplifies compliance end to end. Its approach is to provide over 100 deep integrations with SaaS tools (like the ones your HR team uses) and cloud providers like AWS. Secureframe then automatically collects and stores the evidence that your company needs, saving hundreds of hours of tedious manual work.

To save time, companies can use one of the 40+ auditor-approved templates to get started, rather than starting from scratch. The platform also provides security awareness training and a vendor management portal where users can manage their vendors and detect which are in scope for each framework.

To modernize the old and slow audit approach, Secureframe provides continuous monitoring, real-time alerts, and a data room to generate reports. With traditional auditing and pre-audit prep, it often takes a company months of manual remediation before they can receive their certifications. That time is crucial in startup world.

Secureframe speeds up the process from months to weeks.

“Because Secureframe is basically adding a lot of automation with our software — and making the process so much simpler and easier — we’re able to bring the cost down to a point where this is something that a lot more companies can afford,” co-founder Shrav Mehta told TechCrunch. “...We’re trying to solve that problem to make it super easy for every organization to be secure from day one.”

Click through below to save your team months of time and schedule a demo of the platform.

The Golden Kitty Awards 2021 have landed! Nominations are open, so you can start submitting your favorite products NOW. These are the products you want to see go down in tech history. 🏆

Our annual awards are a celebration of the best products and makers from the last year. There are over twenty award categories covering today’s foremost topics on innovation and tech, including No-Code, AI, and Web3 (to name a few). We’ll also be putting two ameowzing humans in the spotlight for their contributions to the community.

Here’s how it works: You nominate products in each of the categories from now through Saturday, January 8. Then on Monday, January 10, we’ll start dropping finalists in each category. Five categories at a time, over five days.

After a week of voting on the best products of 2021, this year’s Golden Kitty Awards culminates with an epic virtual awards ceremony on January 27, hosted by brilliant minds, Greg Isenberg and Sahil Bloom. Isenberg and Bloom are admired authorities in the tech community for their work in venture capital, products, business strategy, and content creation including their newest podcast, The Room Where It Happens.

You’ll definitely want to stick around for the afterparty, too. We’ll drop more details soon, but expect a lot of magic ✨ and memorable live performances. You can put the event on your calendar now.

Other than YOU, the Golden Kitty Awards 2021 are made possible by our sponsor, Flatfile. We’ve talked to you about Flatfile before, so you might remember the startup for its platform that makes validating and onboarding customer data quick and simple. Flatfile helps SaaS companies reduce churn and provide even more value to their customers by cutting down the time it takes to get started.

Now go — nominate.

👇👇👇

How is that healthy eating resolution coming along? You’d be forgiven for struggling this early into the new year. We’ve all been there.

Around this time of year, people look to meal delivery services like HelloFresh or Blue Apron to help them with their goals. If it’s not healthy or home-cooked meals they’re after, it’s salvation from the daily dilemma: what’s for dinner?

Unfortunately, subscribers have been left wanting with current delivery services, including a former VP of Product at HelloFresh.

“As a user myself, I found that the service wasn’t flexible enough to accommodate my personal preferences. It also didn’t relieve me of having to head to the grocery store…” shared Christian Schiller, a co-founder of Kitchenful which launched last week.

Kitchenful can be described as a grocery concierge service, meaning the startup offers its app to help you plan your meals and groceries for the week, rather than sending you a meal kit. Users specify their preferences, and Kitchenful makes recommendations for your weekly meal plan. Then a grocery list is generated and Kitchenful places your order with your local supermarket like Whole Foods or Walmart.

The startup’s approach stands out among a sea of competitors because of how customizable it is. While many meal kits have options for dietary restrictions, options are limited for customizing meal plans.

With Kitchenful, users can choose recipes and add additional products from a grocer’s inventory. The app can also help households reduce waste. Already have onions? You can remove it from the grocery list (which can also lower your grocery bill) and Kitcheful can suggest ideas on what to do with leftover ingredients, too.

Christian and his co-founder, Christian Hartung, are alums from the Summer 2021 batch of Y Combinator startups. Leave your feedback and questions for them below — for example, one commenter has asked for nutritional details on their weekly menu. If you’d like to see that as well, make sure to upvote the comment or add your voice!

Last week, we told you we were bringing back Shout-Outs, a place to highlight makers and products that made your year one to celebrate.

Some of us are observing our last day of cheer and rest today, while others have returned back to work. Regardless of which you are, we thought we’d equip you for 2022 with uplifting words of support from your community.

So before we get too far into speculating, analyzing, and hyping up 2022’s most interesting products and makers, take a moment to read a few shout-outs:

“@soham_roy4 is one incredible hustler and collaborator I came across. To own a vision and take command of execution is a skill very few have. He excels in both.”

"What a crazy good year 2021 was for makers and the indie community! I thank the crazy NoCode community and especially folks like @thisiskp_ among others who have been super active driving the community."

"A voice for change. He always made me think "what can we do better for humanity?" — @davidsacks. 🤔 And my wife Frances…. Without her, I wouldn't know where which foot goes first."

"This was a big year for the buzzword "web3" and I consider myself at least mildly knowledgeable on the subject thanks to the info from the Odyssey learning DAO."

"Grateful for @samdebrule and @haleymbryant in 2021 - without their support and insights I wouldn't have made the transition into tech and landed a role @producthunt 😺"

"@xianmingchen for inspiring with his wild progress."

It’s not too late to appreciate someone (or something) else — they’ll get a notification when you do, if they’re in the Product Hunt community, too.

It’s HERE! The countdown is about to end. We’ve made it to the top 5 most upvoted products of the year! If you missed the products from the rest of the list, you can find them in this week’s Daily Digest newsletters here.

Let’s do this.

5. Lucky Carrot is an employee engagement platform that enables peer-to-peer recognition (with redeemable carrots) and promotes company values.

“Like your powerful insights on employee interactions…, predicting possible turnover. Great to bring visibility to employee relationships. Your "Interaction Graph" is supercool 🤩.” arakelyan

4. Typedream is a website builder with a Notion-like interface for making any website look good with minimal effort.

“Man, such a great match between how my brain structures and how websites render. Love it.” Daniel Shein

3. RobinWho comes from investing app Qooore, which wanted to release a product that (hilariously) weans you from making money on the stock market.

“Finally, a product that won't let me get to the moon with all my $DOGE. Having a job to attend and debts to pay, there's no time to get rich.” Jay June

2. Tango automatically creates step-by-step how-to guides as you complete your work, with screenshots, links, and descriptions.

“Awesome stuff! Superfast way to document processes — and even faster for the viewer since it focuses on the important highlights. Better than video for sharing step-by-step workflows!” Mark Lamb

1. Sprig (formerly UserLeap) is a product research platform that lets you run microsurveys within your product, record interviews, and test design concepts.

“Recruiting and creating authentic context are my two most significant pain points when doing user research; I'm thrilled to see a product that seems to address both 🎉” Josh T

Until next year!

We have made it all the way to the top 10 most upvoted products of the year. Let's go!

10. Podcastle is an AI-powered audio platform to create production-quality audio content and conduct online interviews.

“Wow - just checked out the sound difference with and without the magic dust - that's impressive! Great work on putting such a great tool together!
”
 Petar Petrovic

9. Ray.so lets you turn your code into beautiful images.

"This is an amazing alternative to Carbon! Thanks for building it – just bookmarked the site!" Steven Tey

8. Cal.com (formerly Calendso) is an open-source, calendar scheduling solution you can self-host and integrate with your business.

"Fantastic to see an open-source alternative to the calendar/p2p-scheduling layer. The UI is great as well, but the main magic is being able to do deeper integrations." Chris Dietrich

7. Persona offers a suite of fully-automated identity verification components (like gov't ID, video selfie, supplemental documents) that can be configured and branded.

“We use persona at Rippling, where we are constantly combatting financial fraud, and Persona has been a real lifesaver for us in stamping this out." Parker Conrad

6. Contra is a professional network for flexible work where you can recognize the people you've worked with and accept inquiries for opportunities.

“Super excited to see this go live. Freelancers - like myself- are often hit by % fees on platforms, which cuts into our hard earned $$$.” Kate Rushton

See you tomorrow for the final five!

We’re counting down the most upvoted products of the year. Unfortunately, one sleepy kitty put the wrong links in yesterday’s Daily Digest, so we’ll start by recapping yesterday’s five.

20. Integrately helps non-techies integrate their apps
19. Mobile Chat Kit is a UI and SDK kit for building in-app chats
18. Zodier is a dating chatbot for popular messengers
17. Audiblogs lets you listen to articles in your podcast player
16. Doodle Ipsum generates placeholder illustrations for your site

15. SavvyCal is a scheduling tool that makes it easy for both parties to find the best time to meet, without the awkwardness.

“You know it's a good product that when you send someone an invite [and] they mention how good it was and that they are going to give it a go!” Simon Bennett

14. Veganzone is a mobile app where people can meet and share their common values, socialize over their events, and purchase vegan products.

"This application is well built for communities! Loving the social network kinda look. Congrats on the design!” Owen Chandler

13. Scribe lets you automatically create step-by-step, detailed guides with screenshots for any process.

"Love it! As a part of a large tech support team, I can appreciate how Scribe makes it easy for the entire team to follow the documentation and procedures identically."Tanja A

12. tl;dv helps you catch up on your meetings with linked meeting minutes, contextualized takeaways, and CRM integrations.

“This is so needed. So much time at work is wasted on meetings you just don't necessarily need to attend/that I would much rather rewatch later.” Mehdi Benbrahim

11. OpenVC lets you browse 2,200+ funds by investment criteria. In return, VCs receive less spam and more qualified deal flow.

"Finally! This database was needed many years ago. Thanks a lot for making the VC world a bit more open!” Tony Urban

Tomorrow, we’ll kick off the top 10 most upvoted products of 2021. Can you guess who made the cut?

ICYMI, we’re here counting down the top most-upvoted products of 2021. We’re down to our top 20. Here we go!

20. Integrately helps non-techies integrate their apps and automate their processes.

“The learning curve is low because their interface is very simple and intuitive, I can optimize my boring tasks… The cost is also very cheap compared to other major competitors in the market.” Huy Tùng

19. Mobile Chat Kit is a UI and SDK kit from Stream that enables makers to build beautiful and scaleable in-app chats.

“Love how Stream is helping product teams improve their product functionality, user experience AND remain focussed on their core competency!” Tai Rattigan

18. Zodier is a dating chatbot for popular messengers like Facebook and Telegram.

“Using chatbots in business will be in-demand [in the] following years, so you've caught the wave... Keep it up.” Nadezhda Krukovskaya

17. Audiblogs lets you listen to any web article in your podcast player in an Audible-like voice.

“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

16. Doodle Ipsum is a free illustration tool for devs that automagically generates placeholder illustrations with a simple line of code.

"I had fun playing around with this! Very useful, I can imagine reaching for this tool all the time. Upvoted, congrats on the launch! :)" Clio

What it year it was. We gained our own personal AI assistants, made our first no-code products with blockchain tech, and tried new search engines that made finding content easier.

Over the next few days, we’ll be closing out the year by counting down the top 25 most-upvoted products of 2021, shining the spotlight on five every day.

Here are the first five:

25. Codex is a machine learning tool from OpenAI that translates your English text into code.

“This will enable every no-coder to stand up and take the driving seat to build the software they always wanted.” Mayank Mishra

24. Leanbe is a platform that generates a smart roadmap using collected feedback and feature requests.

“I like the fact that you didn’t just build the major feature of the product but made it be universal at its core - covering the whole cycle.” Sona Madoyan

23. Deep Nostalgia is a “deep fake” tool that lets you animate the faces in your family photos.

“It really looks like the frames in Harry Potter!” Baptiste N

22. SigmaOS is a macOS browser made for work and designed to make you faster and better.

“With Sigma, I’ve been able to organize all these tabs in different workspaces for my different projects and just this already has made me much more efficient… The split screen is a killer feature for me.” Léa Lortal

21. Ghost, the publishing platform for creators, launched its 4.0 version — 8 years after its first on Kickstarter.

“Hooray! The membership features have been an absolute game-changer for me. Thank you (and your brilliant team) for the work you do.” Sam Beckbessinger

That’s all for now. Stay tuned tomorrow, as we drop the next five.