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

The world’s first global “Smartspot” launched on Product Hunt this week.

The Solis X WiFi Smartspot, made by Skyroam, combines a global 4G WiFi hotspot, a power bank, a remote camera and a smart assistant into one, pocket-sized device.

How it works 👇

The Solis X’s secure WiFi works in over 130 countries, and can connect to up to 10 devices at onces. It’s ideal for remote workers or digital nomads, and helps you avoid connecting to risky public WiFi or waiting to upload that Insta back at your hotel.

Another perk: your phone won’t die. The Solis X’s built-in power bank charges your phone on-the-go and has over 16 hours of battery life.

You can control the Smartspot’s remote camera from the Solis App on your phone, so you can sit/stand anywhere — like a ledge near the Grand Canyon, for example — to get the perfect shot when no one’s around.

Skyroam also partnered with IFTTT to bundle in a smart assistant into the Smartspot because what can’t it do!? The assistant lets you connect to and control thousands of apps, so you can do things like track your travels in a Google Sheet, or automate a text to a loved one while you’re on the move.

As we wrote earlier this week, Y Combinator’s bi-annual Demo Day took place on Monday and Tuesday in San Francisco, where 166 startups pitched their startups in front of investors and the press. 🚀

Pitching your startup in front of hundreds of people — or any any amount of people — can be intimidating. But it’s part of being an entrepreneur, and there’s some solace in knowing that almost every founder has had to pitch their vision (that is, if they want money) at some point in their startup’s journey.

Today, Startup Decks launched on Product Hunt to show us just that. The database consists of hundreds of startup pitch decks, including Coinbase, Intercom, LinkedIn, Airbnb (aka AirBed & Breakfast), Magic Leap, Oscar and dozens of others. In particular, Startup Decks Maker Andrew Gazdecki wants to expose more pitch decks from bootstrapped companies.

What we like most about this project is that it serves as a healthy reminder that there’s zero correlation between a startup’s success and how nice their deck looks (see Coinbase’s deck above...no offense, Coinbase).

Pro tip: You can also submit your own deck into the collection. 💯

“Cameo is lit!! Got my friend a video from Toddy Smith for her birthday and she screamed so loud i can't hear anymore” - Victoria

“This is one of the coolest apps I have a seen in a very long time. We use Cameo to reward our team members with their work anniversaries and it has been a epic success.” - Charlie

“If you want life advice, a shoutout, or just a word of encouragement from your favorite celeb, look no more.”- Jaren

Cameo, the startup that lets you book celebrities to send your friends and family personalized video shoutouts, is on a roll. The company launched in 2017, when co-founders Steven Galanis, Martin Blencowe and Devon Townsend originally set out to build the new “autograph from professional athletes,” betting on the rise of influencers on social media and selfies upon every celebrity sighting. 🤳

Today, the company has 18,000 celebrities in its arsenal —from Caitlyn Jenner to Charlie Sheen to Snoop Dogg — and has delivered more than 300,000 video requests. It’s also raised more than $65 million in venture backing. Yesterday, Cameo announced that Stefan Heinrich Henriquez, the former head of marketing for TikTok, is joining the team as CMO. 🚀

Product Hunt recently spoke with Steven (Cameo’s CEO) about their startup story, where we covered how the team first won over “talent" (celebrities), their keys to viral marketing and their crazy launch story that was *almost* a failure.

A sampling:

“We launched with one person and the first Cameo ever resulted in a reaction video. Marketplaces are always tough because it’s the chicken and the egg — how do we get fans to come if we don’t have the people they want and how do we get the talent to come if the fans aren’t here? The second we had that first reaction video, it really put the wheels in motion for acquiring more and more talent and customers.

In the summer of 2017, we hired 15 college interns and had them DM people on Instagram and Twitter all day to get talent to come on the platform. And that ended up being the secret sauce. We have 120 employees now, and probably 70-80 of them are dealing with talent. Most talent is still being sourced through Instagram or Twitter DM. It was huge because it enabled us to not go through agents or managers. Anyone in the world can DM anyone in the world. You could DM Justin Bieber and he may read it.“

Two of the co-founders give you, the Product Hunt community, a shout out on Cameo. Watch. 

Today (and tomorrow) investors and press will descend upon Pier 48 in San Francisco, where founders in Y Combinator’s Summer 2019 batch will present their startups. The bi-annual pitch day is well-known for providing a pulse on the current state of emerging tech. For those not attending Demo Day, we’ve put together a preview of 10 YC-backed companies that recently launched on Product Hunt.

🏠 Rent the Backyard (San Francisco, CA) builds a studio apartment in your backyard

This is going to help provide quality rental property in areas that really need it! It will also help keep folks in their homes by monetizing the asset.“ - Ivan

💯 Actiondesk (Paris, France) lets you build powerful automations with spreadsheets

“As an investor and entrepreneur, I've seen dozens of companies constantly doing the same manual processes to use data to run their operations. Extracting it, combining it, crunching it. Actiondesk can automate that and as such is addressing a strong need in the market.“ - Gabriel

🖥 Tandem (San Francisco, CA) is a virtual office for distributed teams

“With remote work on the rise, there's a growing need for more flexible, spontaneous, real-time communication. Tandem has put a lot of time into delivering a beautiful app that makes it dead-simple to talk with your team.“ - Gustaf

📊 Narrator (New York, NY) provides a full-service data team for startups of any size

“This could save so much time for startups, allowing them to focus on expanding the product.” - Aaron

💬 Dex (San Francisco, CA) is a personal CRM that reminds you to keep in touch with people

“Dex is really dope! Reminds me to keep up with people I care about even with my hectic schedule. Would recommend to anyone in a similar position (probably all of us, tbh)” - Robert

💸 GreenTiger (Sunnyvale, CA) lets you trade U.S. stocks from India with zero commission

“It's impressive that you guys figured out the regulatory hurdles. My mom's a financial advisor and she's ecstatic about this! Can confirm its the new talk around the Valley.” - Tanay

🌏 Wren (San Jose, CA) calculates your carbon footprint to fund rainforest-saving projects

“My carbon footprint is pretty low. I don’t own a car, I bike to work and live in an apartment with no air conditioning. However, I like to travel abroad. Project Wren gives me a verified way to offset my flights. It’s great that they allow you to direct your money to specific projects.” - Ryan

⛽️ MyPetrolPump (Bangalore, India) lets you order fuel directly from your phone

“We've been a customer for over 2 years now and they've played a big role is solving our fleet fueling needs.” - Jitesh

👋 Waves (Sunnyvale, CA) is a dating app for sexual fantasies

“It basically works like this: If you're into ropes, you put that in Waves, and all your potential matches are also people who are into ropes.” - Emerson

🙌 Carry (San Francisco, CA) is an executive assistant for travel on Slack

“Having an on-demand personal assistant for travel is a game-changer for both individuals and teams who fly a lot.” - Gustaf

You can dig into the full Y Combinator database with this tool. You’ll find leaderboards of the most valuable, most trafficked, and most upvoted startups from YC.

More and more of us are starting to work from home, so we may as well deck out our houses/apartments/dwellings with some ~unusual~ items.

We’ve been seeing a lot of home products launch on Product Hunt lately, and they’re anything but conventional. A sampling of new household items we dug up in the PH rabbit hole:

😻 Vonk is furniture your cat is allowed to scratch

👀 Mahinarium Selfie Dolls are...exactly what they sound like

🛋 Couchmates turns your roommate into a "couch concierge"

🖥 Norm is a solid-stone desk with built-in tech

😌 GoRelax is a relaxation mat for stress

🙌 Welly are stackable, customizable first-aid kits

🛏 The Drift is a flexible subscription for modern furniture

🔌 Wyze Plug are compact wi-fi smart plugs

👏 Minut is a camera-less home security devices

🌿 Horti is a plant subscription to develop your green thumb

What would you add to this list? Share it with us on Twitter and we’ll RT the most useful or ridiculous recommendations.

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

Blockstack, the decentralized computing network and secure app ecosystem, announced a new partnership with Lambda School this week. If you’re not familiar with it, Lambda School takes a unique approach to education by offering coding and software training (in virtual classrooms), which cost nothing until a student is hired. 🎓

"At Lambda School, our goal is to remove as many barriers to high-paying careers as we can for our students. We design our curriculum based on the exact criteria hiring managers look for, ensuring graduates have mastered all of the practical skills they need to succeed.” - Austen Allred, co-founder and CEO of Lambda School.

The idea is that building decentralized app will be a practical skill to have in the future (that also pays today). Students enrolled in the program will learn how to code Blockstack apps. Students will also be able to earn money through Blockstack’s App Mining program, which as we wrote about last month, is increasing its monthly payout to $1 million. 💸

As part of the partnership, Blockstack is committed to ensure all student-built applications undergo quality control testing, including app reviews, user testing and a guided launch of their apps on Product Hunt.

Important legal disclaimer below. Sorry, we know it’s long! 😅

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has qualified the offering statement that we have filed with the SEC. The information in that offering statement is more complete than the information we are providing now, and could differ in important ways. You must read the documents filed with the SEC before investing. The offering is being made only by means of its offering statement. This document shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

An indication of interest involves no obligation or commitment of any kind. Any person interested in investing in any offering of Stacks Tokens should review our disclosures and the publicly filed offering statement and the final offering circular that is part of that offering statement here. Blockstack is not registered, licensed or supervised as a broker dealer or investment adviser by the SEC, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) or any other financial regulatory authority or licensed to provide any financial advice or services.

Forward-looking statements: This communication contains forward-looking statements that are based on our beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to us. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the following words: “will,” “expect,” “would,” “intend,” “believe,” or other comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements in this document include, but are not limited to, statements about our plans for developing the platform and future utility for the Stacks Token, our Reg A+ offering and launch of our network, and collaborations and partnerships. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different. More information on the factors, risks and uncertainties that could cause or contribute to such differences is included in our filings with the SEC, including in the “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion & Analysis” sections of our offering statement on Form 1-A. We cannot assure you that the forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. We disclaim any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Snap’s latest hardware is here and it is...chic. 💅

Yesterday, Snap took the hood off the third version of Spectacles with an update — and more fashion-forward — design.

What’s new: The new hardware features two cameras that can create 3D effects in videos and will run you $380 per pair. For context, last year’s Spectacles cost $150. Snap is also marketing the glasses as a “limited release,” perhaps from having to write down $40 million in unsold inventory from the first version of Spectacles or perhaps from wanting to be like Supreme. 😎

While Snap is known — and remains unique — as the social network for disappearing images, videos recorded on Spectacles will live in an “archive” of memories, which may or may not also be the plot of a Black Mirror episode. Sci-fi turned real product or not, there have been mixed reactions to the new Spectacles (with most gripes around the price tag):

“They do look great, targeting the luxury wearables market is similar to Apple. Interesting Snap keeps innovating in this space. Wouldn't be surprised if there's a breakout use case for an expensive HD face camera eventually.” - Maxim

“Honestly, looks beautiful. I am not sure that I could afford buying this thing but I would definitely love to try it out.” - Hanna

Viral video maker Karen X. Cheng, who made some of the shots for the Spectacles launch video, also jumped into the comments.

“Can confirm 100% it's working hardware. Super impressed by the form factor, as it's really quite flattering on a wide range of face shapes, and most of all stoked that they fit really well on Asian faces (which few glasses or sunglasses do).”

Would you buy a pair of these? Vote here.

Tumblr got a new owner yesterday. 👀

Verizon, which bought Tumblr two years ago when it acquired Yahoo, is selling the social network to Automattic, aka the company behind Wordpress. While the size of the deal hasn’t been disclosed, Automattic reportedly paid under $20M for the microblogging site (Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1B in 2013). As part of this deal, Automattic will also be taking on Tumblr’s 200 employees. It's worth noting that David Karp, Tumblr's founder, left the company in 2017.

In addition to Wordpress, Automattic already owns a suite of publishing tools like Jetpack and Simplenote, making Tumblr an appropriate addition to its umbrella.

Tumblr is an iconic product of the internet, originally known its young, active user base that shared pictures, videos and text before Instagram, Twitter and Reddit became mainstream. And over the years, we saw some big launches from Tumblr. There was Tumblr GIF Maker for making GIFs, and then there was Tumblr TV for finding trending GIFs. There was also Tumblr’s answer to Periscope, Facebook Live and Twitch: Live Video on Tumblr.

In late 2018, Tumblr took a hit when Verizon decided to ban adult content on the platform. This led to a mass boycott, as Tumblr acted as a safe space for many LGBTQ members to express themselves online.

There’s a challenger to the scooter fad on the rise: electric mopeds.

A new company called Revel ($4.5M raised) recently unleashed a fleet of ~1,000 Vespa-style vehicles in Brooklyn and Queens and is slated to expand to Washington, D.C. later this month.

The moped difference: Revel’s mopeds can go up to 30 miles per hour, which is 15 m.p.h faster than electric scooters. The mopeds are also constrained to city roads, and can’t be driven on sidewalks, in bike lanes, over bridges or in tunnels. And in places like New York — where scooters are banned — mopeds are allowed under state law. 🚫

How it works: For your first ride, you’ll receive a brief tutorial on Revel’s app that covers things like how to start and accelerate. You’re also required to wear a helmet, which Revel provides in the vehicle’s trunk (though some users are leaving their leftovers in there). Every ride costs $1, and 25 cents per travel minute. 🏍

Revel is reminiscent of Scoot, a San Francisco-based moped startup that was early to electric ridesharing. Some thoughts from their Product Hunt launch four years ago:

“I'd dare say this qualifies as alternative transport and at $2 bucks a ride, I can't wait to see this expand to new markets.” - Josh

“I tried to incorporate scoot into my daily commute, but getting one in the morning to get to work and back was a coin-toss.” - Hari

“Getting around SF on a scoot is seriously the most fun you'll have commuting, visiting friends, or just plain taking a joyride. The fact that it's cheap is just an added bonus.” - Carly

Bird acquired Scoot for reportedly less than $25M two months ago.

Quick poll! Would you use Revel if it came to your city? Vote here.

Google Maps is finally rolling out its AR navigation, Google Live View, a feature it promised at its annual developer conference last year.

The augmented reality feature is launching in beta on ARKit-compatable iOS devices and and ARcore-compatable Androids.

How it works: When you’re using Google Maps for directions, you simply navigate to “Walking” when presented with transit options and then tap “Live View.” You’ll see arrows and big street markers laid out on the real world in front of you, so you can orient yourself quickly instead of spinning around in every direction like a person using...an outdated version of Google Maps. 😉

One person in the comments expressed concern that this might cause massive battery and data drain (especially when traveling abroad). As another community member put it, probably best to make sure you have battery when using this, and “don’t walk into a pole.”

One early review: “Works surprisingly well! I've tried it on my trip to Washington. We'd usually stop/sit somewhere and figure out our next destination. This feature helps a lot just figuring out where to start going. After that, you don't really need to have it enabled, the old good way still works the best.” - Filip

Do you plan on using Google Live View? We want to know.

In this upgrade, Google Maps is also rolling out “Your Places,” a swipeable view of reservations for your upcoming trips (aimed at making flight and hotel check-ins easier). “Your Match” is another new feature on Google Maps — it will quickly show you restaurants tailored to your taste.