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“Why get a check when you could get a checkbook?” - Naval Ravikant

That’s the sentiment powering Spearhead, a bold new approach to venture started by AngelList co-founder Naval and Accomplice founder, Jeff Fagnan. Spearhead was founded on the notion that startup founders make the best investors, and companies founded by a team with both founder and investor experience have a sort of startup superpower. 🔥

Spearhead launched in 2017 and originally provided founders with $200,000 in investment capital from its first fund. This week the firm announced that it plans to give its founders 5x more capital to play with — $1 million to 15 founders, to be exact.

How it actually works: This group of founders will get their own fund so they can learn the craft of angel investing to increase their chance of future success. To be eligible to become a Spearhead “lead,” you must live in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston or New York City and run (or very recently have run) a startup. Once a founder goes through the two-year program, he or she can also apply for $10 million (to invest) after graduation. 35 founders have completed the program so far, and Spearhead just opened up applications for its third cohort.

The Spearhead leads have invested in 160 companies to date, including startups like ZeroDown, Cloosiv, O.school, PopSQL, Sword Health, Superplastic, Height, AirGarage, Scythe and Altitude Networks.

With infrastructure like Spearhead, AngelList, and scout networks available, there’s more early-stage investors than ever. If you’re interested in learning the investing ropes, this is a good guide to understanding how early-stage funding works and this will teach you how to invest.

Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Blockstack.

It’s no secret that there’s a new class of apps on the rise.

They’re user-centric, privacy-first and regulars on Blockstack’s daily charts for most of 2019. Everyday, these apps hand over new types of control to their users as they slowly trickle into the mainstream.

If you haven’t taken the reins of your own online identity and data yet, it may be a good time to get started (before the next large-scale data hack, leak, etc.). To get you going, these apps are all accessible with a single Blockstack ID:

👀 Trove is a privacy-focused, decentralized bookmark manager

📞 dPhone makes secure calls directly between you and the other person

⚫️ BlackHole  is an easy, secure, and server-less file transfer

📖 Gekri is an encrypted private diary

📸 EZResize lets you quickly resize your photos without prying eyes

💬 Land Ho! lets you keep your searches to yourself

🙌 Xor Drive lets you own your data, always

😃 Nomie is a private mood tracker

If none of these strike your fancy, there are over 270 more to play with and, if you’re a builder, you can get paid to build these types of apps through Blockstack’s App Mining program.

Google’s latest smartphones finally arrived yesterday, along with a bunch of other new products that were announced at the Made by Google hardware event in New York City. 👀

Here’s what you need to know:

The Pixel 4 📱

The official Pixel 4 reveal was preceded by plenty of leaks, but it’s still a pretty exciting update. The device’s new hardware features include an extra camera lens, an infrared face scanner to unlock the phone and computational photography to automatically process images to look more professional.

The Pixel 4 also includes a Recorder app that can transcribe speech in real time, without an internet connection. You can then search through all past recordings for a particular word — this is a Google product after all. 😉

Do you think the new Pixel is similar to the iPhone 11?

Pixel Buds 👂

The new Pixel Buds are Google’s competitive answer to AirPods. They integrate with Google Assistant, and sit snugly in your ears. Google says that the headphones can stay connected to your phone (via Bluetooth) up to the length of the football field. The buds will be available in Spring 2020 for $179.

Something fun: They come in an array of different colors, including black, white, mint green and coral.

What do you think? Better than AirPods?

Pixelbook Go 💻

The Pixelbook Go is Google’s most affordable Chromebook to date. The laptop will start at $649, and it’s important to note that it doesn’t rotate into a tablet. The Pixelbook Go is ideal for traveling and moving around — it has a rubbery bottom (which is ribbed for an easier grip) and can last 12 hours on a single charge.

Would you use this as your travel laptop?

Nest Mini 🔊

The Nest Mini is a tiny new speaker, and it’s smarter and faster than its predecessor, the Google Home Mini. They (mostly) look the same, but the new speakers have a bass that’s twice as strong and come with a wall mount. In typical Google fashion, the smart speaker is available in a few cute colors — coral, light blue, light gray and black.

Which voice platform team are you on? Take our poll.

Nest Wifi 👀

Google also released an update to its original WiFi router, unveiling the new and improved Nest Wifi. The system has a powerful router and comes with companion extenders called Points. These Points each have a speaker and microphones that support Google Assistant, so they’ll essentially double as Google Homes.

Bonus Announcements 🎉

Google also announced that its new gaming platform Stadia is officially launching on November 19th. The company will be phasing out its virtual reality platform Daydream.

The founders of ASYSTEM (pronounced “a system”) have a new term for men’s wellness. It’s called “betterment,” a descriptor they’re using to sell subscription-based skincare and vitamin supplement products. 👀

ASYSTEM just launched on the heels of a $4 million seed round from investors like Firstminute Capital, S8 Capital and PLG Ventures. They’re entering a crowded space, where multiple companies are competing to challenge our dated notions of what it means to be a guy. So far, we’ve seen launches from startups like Hims ($197 million raised), Ro ($176.1 million raised), Keeps ($22.8 million raised), Dadi ($7 million raised), all of which have made inroads to help men deal with “wellness” areas like hair loss, erectile dysfunction, sperm storage, etc.

“Hims is a fabulous company that makes men's wellness a priority for an affordable price. Honestly, I was skeptical at first, but with consistent use of their hair products and diet/ exercise, I was able to turn some balding around.” - Noel, on Hims

“Really excited to be an investor in Roman. There really hasn’t been any kind of trusted brand for men before. This is great example of a beautiful, needed services designed for the digital age.” - Alexis, on Roman

“What I like about Keeps is how easy the process is to find a right treatment.” - Dave, on Keeps

“Love this idea. It’s so hard to take charge of this otherwise — it can be confusing, expensive, embarrassing.” - Tom, on Dadi 

ASYSTEM’s product offerings are less taboo, a key differentiator for the startup.

The company’s vitamin supplement package promises improved “focus, stamina, energy, recovery, mood and sex drive,” and will run you $75 per month. For $45 per month, you can buy ASYSTEM’s 3-step skincare package. The “Total Body System” (both packages) will cost you $99 per month.

ASYSTEM’s founders, Josh Levine and Oliver Walsh, are both veterans in the lifestyle business; Josh is the former founder of Frame Denim and Oliver was formerly the CMO of Aritzia.

Would you try ASYSTEM? Tell us here.

There’s nothing quite like a reminder of your mortality to start the week.

ICYMI:  You Will Die in X Weeks just launched on Product Hunt to help you interactively visualize how many weeks you have left to live. 💀

Maker Shah Galeeb Ahmed says he hopes this “scares people into not wasting time.”

“I had a similar graphic on my personal site that counted down the weeks left in my life, and lots of people found it either awesome or scary. So I thought I'd let others build their own.” - Shah

Other comments illuminated that these types of products typically get two types of responses; some people enjoy this strange form of motivation and others hate visualizing their life passing by. Which one are you? 🤔

If you fall in the former group, you can try out Population Project to see how much of the world’s population is younger and older than you. You’re getting old is another fun (or terrifying) tool for a snapshot of world events and statistics around your birth date.

For more constant morbid reminders, try Death Clock, a Chrome extension that reminds you of life’s fleeting nature every time you open a new tab. And of course there’s WeCroak, the app that makes the reality of death inescapable. The app sends you a reminder five times a day at unpredictable intervals, but always with the same message: “Don’t forget, you’re going to die.”

“The idea is, when you contemplate mortality 5 times a day, it's easier to pay attention to what matters, and let go what really doesn't.” - Manasvini

Infinite Objects’s slogan is “we print video.”

Like you, we didn’t know video was printable, but Infinite Objects has a clear-cut vision. 👀

“Our idea is simple, yet radical: we think video should be valued the same way prints, posters, and photography have been for centuries. We're doing this by permanently 'printing' digital (video) content on a physical object," - Infinite Objects Founder Joe Saavedra

The result is a Harry Potter-esque collection of digital artwork that moves. 💯

How it works: Each “infinite object” holds up to 24 hours of video playing in a perpetual loop, ultimately delivering the same experience as an art print or photograph. The permanent video can never be updated, which is what makes Infinite Objects different from other digital art display startups like Electric Objects (now defunct), Meural, Aura Frame and Joy. The video prints have no connectivity or app to hook up to; to turn your artwork on, you simply take it out of the box.

The idea was born out of a partnership between GIPHY and the design firm Planeta — the founding team wanted to explore “how creating physical expressions for digital content could redefine how we sell, buy, experience, and value video content.”

The initial collection of video prints features work from visual artists like Allison Bagg, Peter Burr, and Sara Ludy, who have created limited-edition pieces for the digital frames. Right now, each work is priced at $399.

Would you buy a video print?

Name the word that doesn’t belong: candle, blanket, book, bath, tea, wine, software. 

I bet that wasn't too hard. 😉

When you think tech products you don’t normally think cozy, but we want to thank PH member Nichole DeMeré for making us question why not. She recently asked the community, “What products make you feel warm and fuzzy?“ We’ve gotten some...unexpected answers. Enjoy the rest of your fall with a new apprecation for the hominess of Trello.

A few of our favorite “warm and fuzzy” products:

😌 Headspace for meditating

“Headspace is one of my favorite apps, as well as the first one that comes to mind when someone says “warm and fuzzy.” The illustrations are perfect for making you feel relaxed and at ease. I not only love the the UX, but the product is extremely helpful. Often we’re so busy that we forget to take some time to reset.“ - Matt

✍️ Taskade for taking notes and chatting with teammates

“Love the sheep logo, pastel colors, and wallpaper backgrounds in the app.” - Evan

🎵 Spotify.me for your music habits

“Spotify is the best, always makes me feel at home” - Eric

🙌 Trello for organizing

“I've been always in love with Trello. I just love it's smooth and never-changing interface and UX. Simple and solid - just all genius things are. Their Kawaii mascot Taco makes the emotions even stronger.” - Alexander

Check out the full list here (or add your favorite *cozy* product!). 👈

In the fall of 2017, Maker Brad Dwyer made an AR app that solves Suduko puzzles using your iPhone’s camera. The premise of the “game” was simple — all you had to do is point your phone’s camera at a physical Sudoku grid and the phone would automatically fill out the blank squares. Game over.

“This is like ordering food and watching someone else eat it” - Josef 

The launch came a few months after Apple’s iOS 11 release, when ARKit was still in its infancy. Flash forward two years, and Brad is still focused on bringing physical games to digital life with AR.

His latest launch is called BoardBoss, and it’s an app that uses computer vision to understand different board games. It them solves them using augmented reality.

“When we released Magic Sudoku - ARkit, the biggest question was ‘doesn’t this ruin the game?‘ — and yeah, it kind of did. With BoardBoss we are making sure to focus on adding features to games that *enhance* the experience for players.“ - Brad

The first release supports Boggle, so give it a whirl and tell us what you think. Brad says that chess with AR could be the next game he tackles.

For more AR games, try these:

🚂 Conduct AR! is an augmented reality railroad action game

👀 HeadSquare is a multiplayer AR ball game

😅 HexaDrive is an endless runner game with AR

🏀 AR Solo Basketball app turns anywhere into a basketball court

🛠 Crafter: AR Build Battle lets you make things in AR for your friends to guess

🚘 Room Racer is a miniature AR racing game

💪 HoloGrid is a monster AR battle

Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Mode Analytics. 

Fresh off of its Series C, collaborative analytics platform Mode has a new product launch today. It’s called Helix, and it’s an instant, responsive data engine that combines modern business intelligence and interactive data science. 📈

Since the company launched in 2014, data-driven organizations like Lyft, Twitch, and Invision have used Mode’s streamlined, code-first analytics workflow. In the past, companies have had to choose between two paths — traditional business intelligence tools for the average user and data science applications for more technical workflows. Starting today, Mode is bringing both into a single platform.

A few reactions to Helix:

“Changed my life. I was able to visualize more than 4.6M rows of data for the first time.”

“Helix is saving us weeks of development time because we can build new dashboards quicker than ever before.”

“Marketers, PMs, and executives are also discovering new opportunities and asking new questions.”

“We average hundreds of thousands of customer interactions a day, looking at interactions per city over the course of a month quickly became unworkably slow. Helix cuts this work in half - effectively doubling our productivity.”

Why it matters: In a recent survey conducted by Mode, 49% of respondents said the most inefficient part of working with data is making large datasets more manageable. Because Helix enables visual analysis on query results up to 10GB, data scientists and analysts can drastically reduce the need for repetitive aggregations and filters when writing queries. This helps data scientists uncover insights they wouldn’t have found otherwise. 👀

Helix also eliminates the need for analysts to spend time on unpredictable follow-up questions from business stakeholders. Mode customers with early access to Helix found a 36% drop in the number of data experts who said “answering follow-up questions from colleagues” was one of the most inefficient parts of their day. 💯

It’s Monday morning, you’ve had your first cup of coffee, and you’re starting to get in the zone. Just as you reach a flow state, you get a Slack notification.

Can you do that thing for that person and also can you do it ASAP? That’d be greeeeat. 

We’ve all been there. 👆

Today, Shoulder Tap launched to combat these interruptions. The tool lets you manage requests for your time in Slack, turning random “shoulder taps” into a queue. It also gives team members visibility into how many people are looking for your help at any given moment, as well as what’s being asked of you. If there’s something you can help a teammate out with, you can pull a request from their queue.

The service runs $10/month for “unlimited taps.”

Shoulder Tap joins a long list of tools that aim to make you more productive on Slack, especially as we shift to a more remote workforce. 💬

There’s  Donut for getting matched with a new “coffee” buddy each week on Slack. Humble uses Slack to help eliminate meetings. Halp is a Slack-first ticketing internal help desk. Gyroscope Team Dashboard promotes team wellness through Slack. Abot also promotes team wellness, and lets employees give anonymous feedback via Slack.