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A bit of internet fun: cellphone nostalgia.

Yesterday, Mowned — a combination of “mobiles” and “owned” — launched on Product Hunt. The site is a self-described “little corner for smartphone enthusiasts,” a place to review and browse through popular smartphones and last decade’s dumb phones. 🙌

According to the maker TJ Sergiu, the idea is to help you share the story behind your previously owned phones, because everyone remembers their flip phones fondly.

“With my passion for smartphones, I started this project a few years ago as a free tool used for generating forum signatures with phones owned over time. It's a fun project that brings different memories! I know that I think about all of my phones owned over the time..it's a journey to nostalgia.”

Within these showcases, users can also find most-liked phones, the top phones for a specific time period and the most popular colors phones were/are bought in.

So we ask you — Product Hunt community — are you team iOS or Android? Answers go here. 👈

If you’re feeling superrr nostalgic, you may also enjoy this iPhone with a 1980s retro vibe, a remake of Snake, or browsing old phones on eBay.

Or if you’re looking to live a more minimal lifestyle, get the the phone that has no apps or texting.

Square is pivoting to a robot company. Just kidding. But the company, largely known for its point-of-sale devices that turn iPhones and iPads into cash registers, is expanding into robots.

This week, the company launched Square Photo Studio, which is a robot that shoots professional product photos for store owners. 🤖📸

The details: The robot cost Square over $20,000 and is housed in a warehouse in Industry City, Brooklyn. The idea is to provide e-commerce business owners with an affordable, scalable, and accessible alternative to traditional photography (that’s better than iPhone photos).

How it works: Square will take orders from anyone in the U.S. for photos (with the robot as the photographer). The company will charge ~$10 plus shipping for customers to send a product (weighing less than 20 pounds) to be photographed in Brooklyn, and within two weeks they’ll receive three digital photos of the item. The company is also providing 360-degree product shots for $30.

If this experiment takes off, Square would also open up more studios that specialize around different products. The long-term vision: what Square did for cash registers, it wants to do for product photography — all in the name of helping small businesses close sales. 💸

“Maybe you've tried to take shots with your phone and noticed how difficult it is to get it to look right, or maybe you've spent thousands of dollars to buy a DSLR and struggled with white balance — there should be a better way! Product photos can make or break sales online, and great photography can increase your conversion rate by 30% or more,” Square e-commerce GM David Rusenko wrote on PH.

Notes from the community:

“I've been using Fiverr for my e-commerce photo needs but will try this next time. Although the 14 day turn around is a bit long, the 360-degree photo is a neat feature.” - Michael

“I completely understand the turnaround time, high quality photos take time, not every object photographs the same or even edits the same” - James

For context: Square, the Jack Dorsey-founded company, is also doing pretty well. The company’s stock was up 40% this year, and it hasn’t stopped launching new products throughout its decade-long tenure. Since Square was founded in 2010, it has made credit card machines, monthly payments, a card reader for restaurants, software for invoices, the Cash app, a business debit card, and our favorite, an illustrated children’s book about bitcoin. 🤑

With the advent of platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Tidal and Amazon Music, streaming has become the lifeblood of the music industry. In fact, 75% of industry revenue last year was generated from streaming services.

The rise of these music streaming services also marked a generational shift away from radio, with millennials listening to more audio than any other generation. Spotify, Apple Music, etc. have jockeyed for the attention of this coveted demographic...but what about Gen Z? 🤔

Mubert, a new futuristic music app, may be ahead of the curve. Yesterday, the new Mubert launched on Product Hunt as the “radio for Generation Z.” The app works like a streaming service, but uses algorithms to produce original, electronic music in real-time. You can choose different modes of listening, like “Study,” “Relax” or “Dream,” and Mubert will produce a unique sequence of sounds according to your taste. It’s kind of like listening to a DJ, if the DJ was you. 🎧

What do early adopters think of Mubert?

“App is just dope” - Matasha

“Love love love love it. New design is so cool!” - Vitaly

“Best example of generative music!”- Viktor

According to Mubert CEO Alexey Kochetkov, the app already has 200,000 users. For context, Spotify has 217 million monthly active users, including 100 million paying subscribers. Apple Music has about 60 million subscribers.

Mubert isn’t the only one exploring generative music. Startups like Popgun and Auxuman are creating AI pop stars. Lil Miquela has been producing music since the beginning of her artificial birth (although created by real human beings… old school). As with most things in tech, we’ve already seen this weird future in film. Remember Simone?

FaceApp came back last week with a bang. For a refresher, the app went viral ~ two years ago with its seamless ability to make you look younger or older. An initial note from FaceApp founder and CEO Yaroslav Goncharov in 2017:

“FaceApp uses neural networks to modify a face on any photo while keeping it photorealistic. For example, it can add a smile, change gender and age, or just make you more attractive. It takes only one tap to apply a filter.”

As people once again began posting their old/young photos across the internet last week, FaceApp came under fire for privacy concerns. It was reported that the app’s creators are harvesting metadata from user’s photos, and closer looks suggest that the app’s permissions are similar to those at other tech companies. BuzzFeed even ran tests with the app that indicate that users aren’t giving up more data than the single photo they upload to use the app. The company also said in a statement that it deletes most images from its servers within 48 hours of upload, and doesn’t share data to third parties.

If you’re off the FaceApp train, there are other face-altering apps you can play around with. We went down the Product Hunt rabbit hole to find some:

✍️ Avatoon lets you cartoon yourself

💄 MakeApp uses AI to add or remove makeup from any face

😜 Emoji Me Face Maker turns you into an emoji

😳 Reflect is AI-powered face swap

🙃Facehub is real-time face-to-face swap

Back in January, we penned Notion as one of the startups to keep an eye on in 2019. We also wrote about how our community loves Notion, and reference it as an app that changed their lives. Turns out, they might have been on the nose. Last night, The Information reported that the San Francisco based startup is raising $10M, hitting a wild $800M valuation with its new funding (that it’s referring to as an ‘angel round’).

A little background: Notion is a powerful note-taking app that does it all when it comes to productivity (think the best features of Dropbox, Excel and Google Docs). Notion first launched on Product Hunt three years ago (h/t to Naval for the hunt), and won a Golden Kitty in 2016 for Best Desktop Product.

A note back then from Notion founder Ivan Zhao:

“Notion wants to challenge this status quo of ‘software as silos.’ For the 1.0 release, we are bundling real-time documents, wiki-like organization, and lightweight tasks into a unified tool that can handle pretty much all your team's knowledge needs – and this is just the beginning.”

Clearly.

Some initial reactions from the PH community:

“The thinking that went into designing Notion was clearly a cut above the rest. Nice work on it so far, can't wait to see where you all take it” - Alexander

“It will totally replace all my Google Docs + Trello + Dropbox Paper + bunchofotherstuff craziness. Thank you for the great product” - Kitze

“I must echo the sentiment that so many people here share; Notion is a well-conceived and expertly executed tool for knowledge work. I have used, and considered the merits of so many solutions purporting to solve the problems involved in contemporary knowledge work, and to my mind, none understand the problem quite as well as the team behind Notion.” - Sky

It’s worth noting that this $10M is Notion’s first major funding round, as it has historically given up very little equity in the six years since it was founded. However, the app didn’t launch publicly until 2016, and now has over a million registered users.

Another thing worth noting: Zhao openly shared on Product Hunt that Notion nearly ran out of money at the time of its 1.0 launch, and thanked his mom for financial help.

It seems she should be seeing a positive return on her investment. 😉

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

Not too long ago, we wrote about how Blockstack (the decentralized computing network and secure app ecosystem) filed with the SEC for a qualified token offering. Last week, that filing made history by becoming the first digital token offering qualified by the SEC.

What does it mean?!

For one, it means you (or anyone who is a qualified purchaser) can purchase Stacks tokens (STX) as part of the qualified sale under Regulation A+. It’s a big step for the future of crypto (and fundraising in general), proving there is a viable path for SEC-qualified token offerings in the US. Before the Reg A qualification, only accredited investors, like VC firms USV, YC, Winklevoss Capital, and Naval Ravikant, had the ability to purchase tokens legally in the U.S. Now it is open to everyone.

More $$$ for decentralized apps

Buoyed by the initial success of Blockstack’s App Mining program and the ongoing token offering, Blockstack plans to increase monthly App Mining payouts starting next month. By May 2020, they anticipate that up to $1M paid will be paid out (in Stacks tokens) monthly. For the record, this money goes directly to developers buildings apps on Blockstack.

Apps!

At Product Hunt, we’ve been an App Reviewer for Blockstack since the beginning of its App Mining program. We’ve had a front row seat to new secure, privacy-focused applications that put users in control of their own personal data.

There’s now more than 170 of these decentralized applications aimed at protecting you from the ground up, including solutions for blogging, fundraising, and creative collaboration. A few of our recent favorites:

💸 BitPatron is a decentralized, censorship-free Patreon alternative
🔑 Closet is a password and secrets manager for teams
🤑 Lannister Capital is a simple wealth manager and financial planner
👀 Paid lets you sell anything and pocket everything with bitcoin
🔮 Predicto lets you make predictions to earn money

You can also check out all of the decentralized apps (there’s 170 of them!) with a Blockstack ID.

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.

There’s a housing crisis in San Francisco. There’s also crisis-level housing shortages in New York, London, Denver, Phildelphia, Detroit, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle and Boston, to name a few.

This week, we saw an earnest attempt to solve this very real problem with a ~creative~ solution on Product Hunt. It’s called Rent the Backyard, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. 🏡

How it works: Rent the Backyard quite literally builds a studio apartment in your backyard, lists the unit online and then splits the profits with you.

The details: Each studio comes with a bed, a kitchenette and a bathroom with a shower. Depending on the unit, homeowners can also make a few customizations. The startup plans to out these units with solar in 2020, but for the time being, they connect to your home’s utilities to run. Rent the Backyard says it will pay you for these costs off the top of the rental income. 💸

Some initial thoughts from the Product Hunt community:

“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.”

“Could people rent these out to their own adult children and/or ‘pick’ the renter?“

Tell us your thoughts here. 💬

Obviously zoning issues are top of mind for a venture like this, and according to the company, building these type of units are all jurisdiction-dependent. For example, California passed a statewide law in 2016 that eased regulation on these time of structures, which are also known as “Accessory Dwelling Units.” If you’re curious about your area, Rent the Backyard will research your city’s/county’s planning laws on your behalf.

The idea is a turnkey solution to affordable housing, both for renters and homeowners in expensive markets. According to the company, most people will be able to make anywhere from $10-20K in income each year from one of these backyard apartments.

“There’s a lot of complex challenges here but I think the biggest is in how we normalize sharing your backyard space like this. Airbnb and others like it have given us a good start, but installing a backyard apartment is a bigger commitment than trying Airbnb for a weekend. People in California are increasingly aware of these ‘Accessory Dwelling Units” and hopefully that eases the unfamiliarity’ - Rent the Backyard co-founder Spencer Burleigh

Product Hunt pro tip: Launches that inspire the most engagement tell a story.

Products that tie into culturally relevant moments like this new startup from Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams, viral surprises like Facebook-acquired tbh, and big releases from well-known companies like GitHub often attract the most interest.

We (the Product Hunt team) try to learn from the community and build for things they do (not just what they say). So, back in late 2017 we started exploring how we might deliver tech news and stories in our own unique way.

By early 2018, we launched Sip, a tappable, no-spam tech news digest app that surfaced the most interesting and important tech stories via silent notification every day.

By all accounts, the launch went well:

• It received 2,375 upvotes
• It became the #1 Product of the Day
• It reached #4 Product of the Month

TechCrunch wrote about it. The Next Web wrote about it.

The community seemed to like it, too:



We were off to a good start. But starting is the easy part.

In January 2019, we quietly discontinued Sip. 💀

What happened? We decided to share some takeaways in this post mortem.

We also tease a new project we’ve been working on. Here’s a hint. 🥞

P.S. We want to hear your post mortem stories. Submit them to Maker Stories here.

Last year, Rally Rd. launched on Product Hunt with its investment platform that let anyone buy or sell equity in exotic cars. Last week, the company returned to PH to expand its investment offerings to include wine, whiskey, watches, rare books and other luxury goods. 👀

Rally Rd. ($9.9M raised) is part of a new wave of fintech startups focused on equity-based alternative investments. It’s the 21st century version of building a portfolio. 💸

“When we built V1 of Rally in 2016, we started by making Classic Car investing accessible to everyone — but the vision was always about creating a new paradigm in equity ownership. Since launch, we’ve completed close to 40 Initial Offerings, created true liquidity in alternative assets, and opened our first retail showroom in NY so that everyone can have access to the rarest collectibles on the planet. This week we took the next step in that mission and officially released our next 3 asset offerings: Sports Memorabilia, Vintage Books, and Rare Timepieces, all within the Rally Rd. app,” - Rally Rd. co-founder Rob Petrozzo

What Petrozzo means by “Initial Offerings” is that Rally Rd. prices the “asset” (whether it be a rare Mustang or a first edition Harry Potter book) based on comparable asset values and social data, and then splits the car into shares to run an SEC-qualified Initial Offering. It’s like a mini IPO.

But do people actually think alternative investing can generation a return? Some thoughts from the PH community:

“I've been a happy Rally shareholder since their first car's launch – a 1955 Porsche – and can't wait to invest in their newest asset classes. These are financial investments first and foremost, but there's nothing quite like holding one of these stock certificates, knowing it represents a part of something I dream of calling my own.” - Nick

“These guys get it and are delivering an easy and beautifully designed framework on which to research and trade.” - William

For the record, collectible assets have consistent histories of appreciation — this method of investing simply democratizes the process. For more alternative investments, there’s also Masterworks and Arthena for investing in art (though you need to have a net worth over $1M for this one). And there’s Mythic Markets for investing in fandom collectibles. Last week, Skillshare founder Michael Karnjanaprakorn launched Otis, a platform for fractional ownership of items like Supreme skateboard decks, vintage comic books and a KAWS tondo painting.

We expect to see a continued rise of fractional ownership startups. Would you invest tiny amounts into collectible assets? Tell us in the comments. 💬

Yesterday, Google’s experimental incubator Area 120 unveiled its latest project. It’s an app called Shoelace, and its goal is to help people find things to do with other people who share their interests. Sound familiar? Probably, because it sounds like another crack at a social network.

For context, Google’s last social network, Google+, shut down in April (sort of), and then was reborn as the enterprise-focused Google Currents. For even more context, it’s worth noting that Google+ is the successor to Google Buzz, Google’s social networking/microblogging/messaging tool that was discontinued in 2011.

How Shoelace works: Users can browse through Shoelace’s daily-picked activities, from pickup soccer to dog playdates to comedy shows, or add their own events, dubbed “loops,” to a map. It’s sort of like if Meetup and Facebook Events and a WhatsApp group chat had a baby, served up in a sleek design aimed at millennials and Gen Z-ers.

What it’s really closer to is a social network like Nextdoor, which is based on local connections. While Google is definitely entering a crowded market with Shoelace, there’s clearly a need for a digital tool that facilitates IRL, local connections, because companies keep launching these types of products.

A sampling: There’s Islands for college students, Snap Map to see where your friends are, Hey! for matching and meeting up with others, IRL Social Calendar to help you plan IRL hangs and many, many more.

To start, Shoelace is testing the waters in NYC. If you’re based in New York, maybe try it out this weekend and tell us what you think. If you’re anywhere else in the world, would you use this in your city? Tell us here.