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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.

We’re giving away $1,895 cash for new Work(out) From Home equipment! Enter here now.

We planned this giveaway with a few of our friends — like 1440, the Sportsletter, Man of Many, and TheFutureParty — before Peloton announced it was cutting the cost of its standard bike by 20%. That means there’s extra cash at stake.

Of course, you can put cash towards any equipment you want.

Rowing machines are picking up steam. Aviron, a YC-backed startup that launched earlier this year, just raised $4.5M. Unlike Peloton, Aviron's angle is to use gaming to motivate your workouts (pictured below). There's also Ergatta, a competitor that closed $30M fundraising round last month.

Tonal and Tempo’s smart home gyms surged during lockdowns. Tonal became a unicorn in March with a $1.6 billion valuation. Tempo, another YC alumn, closed a $220 million fundraising round in April.

If you’re a skeptic on at-home fitness, you might have seen Peloton’s latest numbers and scoffed. The company posted a $312M loss in its fourth fiscal quarter and fell short of its expected earnings for the new year.

As a member of the Cody Rigsby #BooCrew, yours truly is biased, optimistic, or looking at the whole picture (all of the above). Peloton’s Q1 may have fallen short, but revenue also increased 232% year over year. Pandemic-powered shipping delays triggered 1.1K complaints to the Better Business Bureau, but others in this space (Tonal and Tempo) reported supply chain issues too. Peloton’s now expanding its manufacturing capacity and expects to make 2M fitness units this year.

Peloton ultimately seeks to earn a profit on subscription revenue, not hardware so the new bike price is not necessarily a cause for concern. The company uses a slim gross profit on its bikes to offset its acquisition costs for new subscribers.

And that’s where it thrives. The cultish aspects of the Peloton community may be the butt of jokes, but the flexibility of a digital cult is you can participate (or laugh with it) as little or much as you want.

As Rick says,"good music comes from people who are relaxed."

Historically, it's been hard to do that in an industry that's slow to change and even glamorizes a tough grind. Fortunately, music artists are finally getting their fair share of recognition with the creator renaissance, and new self-service tools are empowering a new generation of independent artists. Here are a few of the latest.

Musixmatch Pro

The makers behind Musixmatch have been launching on Product Hunt for the last seven years. You might use the Musixmatch app for playing music with lyric visualizations. Or, you may be using Musixmatch on Spotify without knowing it — the company started powering Spotify’s real-time lyrics globally last year.

Now, the company has entered into distribution. Musixmatch Pro is a one-stop, self-service shop for artists where they can verify music credits, claim and administrate copyrights, distribute music, and get paid.

Byta

There are two parts to music discovery – when the fans discover it, and when the industry professionals do. The second one usually requires secure file sharing. The problem Byta solves might not seem tough — sending, receiving, and listening to music files. Turns out, it’s not that simple (enter: costly music leaks).

Byta enables secure and efficient file sharing, claiming it's “the only [file sharing] platform which takes advantage of audio files' unique properties” like embedded metadata. Those aspects are as crucial for bedroom artists as they are for big labels when sharing. (You can also read more about Byta’s journey from a bootstrapped to VC-backed company on our blog).

Mubert Render

If you’ve ever had to dig through tons of audio stock files to find music for projects like videos or a website, you know it's a time-consuming process to find the perfect fit. Mubert Render launched today with a new tool that makes music tracks with the exact length, mood, and genre you need with the help of AI.

That sounds like a double whammy for music artists and creators who need audio for their projects.

The metaverse is on the horizon, but the Multiverse has arrived.

Not the Marvel one with a crocodile Loki. This one looks a bit like Silicon Valley’s RussFest.

Multiverse, a collection of immersive environments, was introduced a year ago to host a virtual Burning Man 2020. Co-founder Brittany Brousseau said in today’s Product Hunt launch that the makers had been working on it for years but Covid propelled the project forward.

The Multiverse is cross-platform, enabling participants to enter on any mobile device or VR headset. Once in, your 3D avatar can roam freely and interact with live voice.

Last year’s virtual environment covered seven square miles. According to Brousseau, tens of thousands joined globally (the platform can handle 1 million concurrent users), 650 DJs participated, 300+ art installations were created, and 139 live broadcasts streamed simultaneously. For this year's Burning Man city, the makers have added social and communication layers among other features.

Multiverse looks as vibrant as the IRL event. It strikes a different cord from Horizon Workrooms, Facebook’s virtual office unveiled earlier this month, but both give us a broader picture of life in the metaverse.

In Horizon Workrooms, colleagues can sit at the same virtual table via their avatars, whiteboard and type with their virtual hands, and gesture back and forth to each other. Spatial audio contributes to a more personable experience than tech that’s audio-only. You'll need a Quest 2 is for the full experience, but anyone can join a workroom with a smartphone or computer.

Workrooms is in open beta. Zuckerberg and team have been quick to admit that, at this stage, there are many gaps and to-dos. Beyond the tech, one big question remains: will Facebook open up Horizons for cross-platform connection to enable a real metaverse with interconnected worlds?

TBD, but with Product Hunt's remote team that includes VR enthusiasts and Burners, you can expect to see us at both the virtual table and the flaming art cars.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes starts her trial for defrauding patients and investors about the company’s breakthrough, automated blood testing that never panned out.

If Theranos technology had delivered on its promises, it likely would have remained a leader in a space that’s booming. Crunchbase reports that 43 of 158 US-based at-home testing companies received funding in 2020.

Critics are concerned that when demand for Covid testing fades, broader market interest won’t hold up. Investors and makers remain bullish.

“We strongly believe diagnostics will shift to an instant, at-home, high-frequency model. We’re enabling the tracking of biomarkers through phones instead of going to a lab,” Pratik lodha, co-founder of Neodocs said in the startup’s Product Hunt launch on Friday.

Neodocs Wellness Card lets you order instant lab tests from your smartphone. Users can take a urine sample, dip their wellness card in, and after two minutes, they can scan the card with the app to reveal information about their health.

At-home testing startups do face another hurdle besides Covid (particularly female-founded ones) — they get compared regularly to Theranos.

Lola Priego is the founder of Base which offers at-home blood and saliva testing to reveal info about your sleep, stress, and diet. It launched on Product Hunt less than a year ago. She told the New York Times that she gets a Theranos comparison at least once a week. It has caused the founder some setbacks, but fortunately, concerns are usually put to rest when Priego explains that Base works with Quest Diagnostics, a multinational company, for analysis of its tests. Another startup, DotLab, battles the comparisons by explaining that it publishes its results in peer-reviewed journals, something Theranos was criticized for not doing.

Neodocs, for its part, says its Wellness Card test pads are CE and FDA-certified, and it's collaborating with IIT Bombay to perform continuous testing and validate the accuracy of the results.

“Product Hunt is where we first launched just 1.5 years ago,” wrote Eric Glyman, Co-Founder and CEO of Ramp, in yesterday’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 yesterday 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.

The National Restaurant Association reported that 50% of full-service restaurants in the US are now using QR code menus.

Just five years ago, QR codes were more decoration than utility in consumer tech. Although plenty of QR code scanners exist, convincing users to download and keep a rarely used, single-function app proved difficult.

Then in 2017 Apple set the stage for greater adoption when it enabled the iPhone camera to read QR codes. Android did the same the following year. Suddenly QR codes fit right into apps and marketing materials as a reasonable means for accessing information quickly. Asia in particular has excelled at finding innovative use cases.

Now, QR codes have finally made it to the restaurant industry and started a revolution. Many restaurant owners are convinced QR code menus and ordering are here to stay since adopting them for social distancing. They've enabled owners to put their menus online, keep menus updated in real-time, manage orders quickly, and prevent the spread of germs and viruses.

Menu Cards and Orderli both launched today with app-free solutions for restauranteurs. App features for new QR code products make the transition from paper menus to QR codes an even bigger technological leap for the industry. Many, like Menu Cards support a quick and easy-to-launch experience. Orderli is a full service solution with its own tablet for keeping track of orders and POS integration.

We’ve also seen a free QR code menu creator, an open-source QR platform, and a product that lets you use one QR code to serve users content in their preferred language.

There are startups that got an early lead in this space with a product in place prior to the pandemic. Sales are up 544% for Singapore-based Waitrr. OneDine expects to double its customer base in the US and UK over just four months.

As long as demand skyrockets (Bit.ly reported a 750% increase in QR downloads over the last 18 months), there’s can be room for indie makers and VR-backed startups to meet the unique demands for eateries — mom & pops, modern restaurants, tourist destinations, and so on.

Zoom solidified itself as an incumbent in the video space last year. Even after facing security issues early in the pandemic, and a sticky association with virtual fatigue (“ Zoom Gloom”), the company pressed on to launch Zoom Apps earlier this year.

We’ve written here and there about Zoom apps and tools. One of the newest is Macro, a Zoom client built for self-expression. Macro’s concept of “bringing your full self” plays out in features from quirky filters to Airtime, which helps nudge you towards inclusivity by signaling which participants are getting less time with the mic.

Macro launched its proof of concept a year ago, and today its Product Hunt launch debuts with a narrowed purpose and improvements based on user feedback.

“Talking with early Macro users helped us realize that what made Macro really valuable wasn't the note-taking and the slight productivity bump.... It was how it made them *feel* during the meeting,” co-founder Ankith Harathi shared.

To support self-expression, Macro is honed in on personalization. In an article for Product Hunt, Harathi shared why his team doubling down on personalization led to forming an opinion about who would “win” the video space.

“Zoom has crushed it as an app, on its way to becoming a platform, and we believe it will become the protocol winner in this space, ” he wrote.

While we’ve been impressed by a number of new video tool launches (like Butter and Sessions), Harathi’s explanation of the video landscape and creating “opinionated software” in the video space is worth a read.

You can read it here and check out the full list of features 👇.

Bitcoin rebounded to $50K last weekend. It has been on a steady rise since taking a tumble from its all-time high at over $64k in April.

Mainstream crypto adoption and performance are still heavily influenced by single players — Elon Musk walking back on his support for Bitcoin was one of the drivers of the downturn. Meanwhile, makers and investors in this space press on. Here are four innovative investment-focused products we’ve seen launch since the dip.

Token Alerts - For those that can tolerate high risk, this tool can be useful for moonshot investing. It scans the Binance Smart Chain and integrates with Reddit to alert you to pumping tokens you can flip via a real-time dashboard and desktop notifications.

VitaDAO - VitaDAO is a decentralized collective that funds research and drug development for longevity (i.e. the human lifespan). The DAO offers an alternative model from how biopharma is traditionally funded in this space, which is driven by intellectual property and patents — a model that’s often seen as least beneficial for patients and researchers. Members can join by purchasing VITA tokens or earning them through contributions of work.

Dibbs - Dibbs is in the fractional ownership and sportscard trading space but presents itself as the first 24-7, real-time fractional trading card marketplace. Dibbs investors can buy fractional interests in authenticated sports cards. The cards are stored in vaults and secured with blockchain technology.

Visionaire Beta - This fantasy football meets startup investing game allows you to earn real money by scouting companies, competing in tournaments, and ranking on the leaderboard. Players buy virtual stakes by purchasing Vision Shares (virtual equity NFTs) and collect Ether when their startup performs.

Now the question is: which startups would you put in your league first?

Interest in direct-to-consumer genetic testing is making a comeback.

A year ago, sales of DNA testing kits were down. 23andMe and Ancestry had to cut jobs because of the pandemic, and then Ancestry abandoned its testing kit business altogether.

Now things are looking up. This month 23andMe, which went public in June via a Richard Branson-founded SPAC, reported a 23% Q3 revenue increase from the previous year. Founder Anne Wojcicki had told Bloomberg a month prior, “It’s kind of an ideal time for us.”

The company has been moving to leverage more of its DNA data following an explosion in telehealth growth and renewed interest in genomics because of the coronavirus. It’s now building itself as a therapeutics company, has licensed its first drug, and has used its data to study how genomics contributes to how individuals react to Covid.

A startup in this space is leveling up too. Genomelink, founded in 2017, has just launched its 2.0 iteration today on Product Hunt following its S21 Y Combinator stint.

Genomelink allows users to re-use the data they’ve received from companies like 23andMe and Ancestry to “unlock hundreds of apps” that go deeper into what your DNA can reveal. The Japan-based founders have combined experience working in bio-info, medical platforms, and genetic testing.

Co-founder Tomohiro Takano explained that he was motivated to start Genomelink when he saw that cancer families were paying almost $2k for testing never-to-be-used again.

“We believe in the future, billions of people will have access to their DNA data. When that happens, imagine: [the place] where you will store DNA data and how you [will] connect data [to an] app ecosystem. That will be Genomelink in a nutshell,” he wrote.

The founders are looking for feedback from the Product Hunt community and have offered paid features in exchange for your thoughts. Get in on it by clicking through below.