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"Zoom gloom" is over. Or things are looking up, at least.

You probably saw that Zoom publicly launched Zoom Apps on Wednesday. Product lead, Ross Mayfield, kicked things off on Product Hunt with insights into the product thinking.

Zoom Apps brings experiences, from project management to games, directly into Zoom.

What you maybe missed is all of the great apps that launched in tow. We compiled them to give you a glimpse of what you can add, on the fly, to your meetings.

Avoma Assistant - Use AI to automate and categorize your note taking

Hive Notes - Collaborate on notes and track tasks in-meeting

Polly - Enable instant engagement like Q&A, icebreakers, and feedback

Funtivity - Virtual activities like trivia, scavenger hunts, and escape rooms

Miro App - Collaborative white boarding — for anyone, not just Miro users

Allo - Collaborate visually with whiteboards, kanbans, and more

Zoom With Me - Custom, snazzy-looking thumbnails for your meeting

Fellow’s App - Keep your agenda and meeting notes on hand

Dot Collector - Collect real-time feedback and polls

Expect a lot more to come.

And, pro-tip, it's not an app but you can also bring joy to your meetings by adding your furry friends.

This newsletter was crafted by us, and sponsored by our friends at Magic.

Password security is notoriously insecure — 59% of people reuse their passwords everywhere and 81% of all breaches are due to passwords. No big deal. 🤦‍♂️

Then why do so many of the sites and apps we use rely on it? Partly because it’s been the standard since the 70s, and partly because building authentication from scratch is a lot to unpack.

Magic launched a fix for that. The Magic SDK lets makers build passwordless logins with a few lines of code.

Companies like Slack and Substack have been using passwordless authentication for a while. Now Magic makes this tech accessible for everyone, but with blockchain-based encryption that’s decentralized so no one but you can access your data. With Magic, every single user is issued a blockchain key pair, enabling advanced developers to use blockchain and crypto to build future-proof and innovative applications.

Magic first launched last year, and has just closed a $27M Series A led by Northzone. Beyond democratizing passwordless logins, its decentralized approach to identity piqued the interest of investors like Balaji Srinivasan, Naval Ravikant, and Ryan Hoover.

Makers in the Product Hunt community were excited about it as well:

“Wow this is so exciting! I hope this starts a new industry standard in the near future.” - Louis Xu

“Great work! We've integrated Magic,… and it makes getting started w/ new users a breeze.” - Felice Feng

“I first saw the magic link [concept] on Slack and really nowhere else. This seems pretty intuitive. Great job!” - Omid Borjian

We’re ready to forget passwords altogether, too.

“One can barely tell where the ads end and your search begins.” - Sridhar Ramaswamy

Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan — an ex-Google SVP of Ads and an ex-YouTube VP leading monetization — want to make your search experience about you, not ads.

Neeva just launched on Product Hunt; it’s a new ad-free and private search engine. Today on our blog, Ramaswamy shared why the co-founders decided to leave the tech giants and undertake a new search engine.

This quote gives us a mental image of the common experience:

“When most of us are searching for flu symptoms, we want to know the symptoms—not see an ad for cough syrup, and certainly not an ad for cough syrup that will follow us across the Internet for weeks.”

Neeva’s approach to search is to flip the model (a model we've treated as the norm) to a subscription-based service that is “100% focused” on user experience. Raghunathan explained:

“Traditional search engines work by monetizing you, the user. You are the product being sold, and not the customer.”

For one thing, a subscription model means more personalization in a search engine, like searching shops for only small retailers or companies that ethically source materials. It also means control over your privacy. Neeva says it has no ads, no third-party tracking, and doesn’t sell your data.

Questions for the makers and comments are rolling in. So far, the community seems to “get it.”

“Interesting idea! Ultimately, you either pay for the product, or you are the product.” - Miguel Iglesias

“Nowadays, media space is really overloaded with different ads. Good luck to you and to the moon!” - Vadym Shcherbakov

Add your thoughts here.👇

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 today.

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.

“You want your 6-year old to learn about Mars — let’s take a spaceship to Mars then!”

That’s how founder Ahmad Faraaz introduced Kalam Labs to the community today. The new live game streaming platform offers a way for kids to learn about science topics, like black holes and aliens, without stuffy materials like PowerPoint presentations.

Kalam Labs hosts live streams daily and Faraaz noted that, on average, kids are completing 45 minutes of the 60-minute streams — a 5x higher completion rate over YouTube.

Aliens don’t usually make it into many children's curriculum, but then neither do a lot of topics — like starting a business. A startup called Mighty is enabling children to gain real-life experience in entrepreneurship with its eCommerce platform for kids.

Mighty made its way onto Product Hunt after closing $6.5 million in seed funding this month. The LA-based startup works like a Shopify platform, but made-easier for children. Kids launch a website, design a logo and brand, customize products made by other CEOs, and earn real money. Mighty takes care of things like shipping and product development (kids can’t currently sell their own handmade items but the founders told TechCrunch they’re working to change that).

There are a few concerns around the idea for a modern-day lemonade stand. As a community of makers, many can understand that entrepreneurship comes with a significant level of stress and dedication. Plus, kids are spending so much time online these days.

KidX Classbox just launched to alleviate the screen time issue, at least partially, by combining online learning with real-world play. KidX combines pre-recorded videos of math, logic, and brain games that are made interactive with correlating toys.

Parents are under a lot of pressure when it comes to figuring out how to provide the best education and experiences for their children. Since every child is unique, we love to see new approaches.

Data from CB Insights revealed that $1 out of every $5 raised globally last quarter went to Fintech. 😮 This quarter is shaping up to be a big one too — neobank (read: digital-only bank) Revolut just became the UK's biggest private company ever at a $33 billion valuation.

So what else are we seeing in this space lately? Mostly that people love when they don’t have to lift a finger. Here are recent launches that automate your finances:

Checking: Lance is a business bank account for freelancers that puts your checking account on autopilot, auto-budgeting your income every time you get paid. It even calculates, withholds, and pays your quarterly taxes (U.S. only for now).

Expenses: Volopay is automation for your business expenses. The new reimbursements feature takes care of reporting, receipt upload, approval flows, claims processing, and accounting automation. Isn’t that what Expensify does? Yes. Founder Rajith Shaji explained in the comments that what makes the product worth noticing is that it’s 1) forever-free and 2) one part of the company's ecosystem of offerings which includes corporate cards and money transfers.

eCommerce: Synder provides a single source of truth for online sellers who have various payment methods or subscriptions to manage. It automates your accounting and records fees to give you an instant overview of your multi-channel cash flow, and inventory too.

Commissions: Calculating sales commissions is not only cumbersome for accounting teams, it often leaves sales reps double-checking that their commissions were accurately calculated and fiddling with spreadsheets. PaletteHQ is a SaaS platform that connects to CRMs and accounting softwares to calculate commissions automatically.

Crypto: We wrote about Coinrule last month but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention it here especially as it’s also a UK-based startup. Coinrule automates crypto trading across platforms by enabling their users to set up rules without code or bots.

We don't know about you, but saving money doesn't really come to mind when thinking about gaming. These recent launches can set you up nicely.

Rewards
Mythia is a debit card that gives gaming rewards. If rewards cards turn you off, we get it. The founders do too. Derek Pankaew shared:

"When I was 22, I started “travel hacking”, i.e. using airline miles to fly all over the world for free. As I did, I realized just how convoluted and confusing airline miles are, and thought there had to be a better and more fun way to do card rewards.”

Mythia was designed to feel like a video game itself, with weekly challenges (e.g. save $50 this week) and randomized rewards — no transfering points or searching for qualifying rewards flights. The name may sound oddly familiar since the startup first launched 8 months ago. It's re-emerged with a new approach (it's a debit card now, for starters) and name post Y-Combinator.

Hardware Hacks
Eyeware Beam turns your iPhone into a head and eye tracker for your Windows PC. With your app open while you play, the technology uses computer vision, AI, and 3D cameras (on your iOS device) for tracking. Cofounder Kenneth Funes said:

“We believe this is a game-changer (literally), as you can take advantage of a device that is in your pocket, instead of buying extra hardware.”

Funes notes a few uses for Eyeware Beam that range from improving your gameplay to better influencer content for streamers.

Buy/Sell/Trade
GamerPay launched yesterday for people to trade gaming skins and assets safely via an integration with Steam. Cofounder Martin Lykke Suhr started working on the product after seeing gamers scammed regularly. He shared:

“We are gamers ourselves or parents to minors who game. So our biggest motivation is to be the safe destination for young and old gamers to trade - safe enough that the parents of young gamers even encourage it.”

Let the savings begin.

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 yesterday’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.

If there’s one thing millennials and younger generations love more than exotic travel, it’s staying local.

Love for local products continues to rise steadily. The pandemic and still-growing sharing economy have given localization an extra boost too. Here's a handful of new tools for supporting your neighbors.

Food

Local: Locale connects fresh foods from local businesses together so it reaches you in one box.

“Food delivery is a really crowded space. However, small ticket items don't fit the instantaneous delivery model… Locale customers... get it all delivered in one box with a $5 delivery fee.” - Jonathan Friedland

Hyperlocal: Galora connects you with your neighbors to find homegrown goods — from eggs to cannabis.

“My backyard in LA produces a couple hundred pounds of fruit each year, and most of it spoiled... Finding a way to sell or trade this amazing food in my community was the inspiration for Galora.” - Ryan Xavier

Art

Ever eyed that art on the wall at your local cafe?

Lonely Walls lets you discover and buy work from local artists. In turn, it connects those artists with local businesses to help them create unique art exhibitions on site.

Experiences

WKND creates personalized, local weekend adventure packages for you and your friends. It starts with a Myers-Briggs-inspired personality test and ends with a “ready-to-live-and-share local weekend.”

“The car-free, workaholic and social media-driven generation find it difficult to recharge, reboot, and re-energize every weekend… We’ve been working hard over the past year to build a unique and powerful local travel platform.”- Brian Friedman

We’ve covered Auditorium before so we’ll keep it short: hyper-local, live audio performances. Boom.

It’s worth saying — we know many of these products are unique the U.S. If you’ve got an alternative (like this UK one), do the community a favor and post it!

The tech world is seeing rainbows over the news of a unicorn frenzy — 136 new unicorn startups in Q2 2021 (for comparison: all of 2020 birthed 128 unicorns 🤯, via Crunchbase). We’re thrilled too, but we’re just as giddy about… launches and cats!

Q3 started off with a bang. First, that tl;dv video cracked us up. Then InAppStory came to play with a launch that included a Product Hunt-themed game.

InAppStory first impressed us with a cold pitch tweet that got our attention.

Beyond excellent personalization in the video, InAppStory has a solid offering. The platform enables makers to integrate Stories, including interactive ones, directly into their apps ("like on Instagram, but better"). Maker Vladmir Lastovsky wrote:

“When I found that there were around 5 million mobile apps in 2020, I was shocked. They struggle with low retention, in-app engagement, and don't give the audience what it loves – good content.”

The official launch video goes on to explain that 62% of apps don’t get used every month. InAppStory is working to fix this by making it easy to add great content, widgets, and games into apps to increase engagement and conversion.

They created Cat Hunt to give us all a peek at the kind of interactivity you can accomplish within InAppStory’s framework. It was enough to convince many in the community that Product Hunt should add stories to our mobile app.

Will we do it? We shall see. In the meantime, waste a bit of time with a game of Cat Hunt.