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We love a ~weird~ product launch, and Sleep Pod delivered last week.

The $110 “blanket” is basically a baby swaddle for adults. Sleep Pod maker Matt Mundt is a former Apple and Harley Davidson designer on a mission to solve a personal problem: insomnia.

How it works: Sleep Pod is designed to feel like a hug. It uses a four-way stretched material that's designed to feel breathable, but that applies a gentle pressure to your body when you're snuggled inside. That pressure will reportedly help you reduce anxiety and fall asleep faster.

Some initial reactions on Product Hunt:

“I've wanted to try a weighted blanket, but I don’t find it practical to store and move a large, heavy blanket so this solution is much more appealing” - Liza

“This looks somewhat claustrophobic” - Aleksander

Getting swaddled like a baby not your thing? Here are some alternatives that might help you catch some more 💤:

👀 Gravity is a weighted blanket for sleep

👫 Dualsleep is a dual-temperature duvet for couples

🛏 The Bed Tent is a bed for introverts

🤤 Mini Pillow is a pillow that lets you sleep anywhere

🙌 Dreem Coach is a library of programs to improve your sleep

💡 Casper Glow is a magic light for better sleep

🎶 Can't Sleep is AI music designed for sleep

👂 Sleepbuds are tiny earbuds for when you're sleeping

😌 Beditations are guided meditations to improve sleep

No one — with the possible exception of finance experts — looks at their equity package and thinks, “Yep, makes sense.” In startupland, equity can seem like a lottery ticket.

It's definitely not something to rely on or a replacement for your salary, and that can be confusing. So to help clarify, our fam at AngelList put together a short glossary of terms you're likely to see in your offer. Things like “four-year monthly vest” and “strike price” and “preference stack” and “one-year cliff.”

And we (of course) went down the rabbit hole looking for some great equity-related products as well.

Equity Calculator helps you figure out how much your equity is worth 💸

SalaryOrEquity quantifies equity as an approximate salary 👀

TLDR Options guesstimates the value of your equity visually🤔

Startup Economics helps you understand how funding events will effect your startup 💵

OptionPlan helps founders design a stock option plan with benchmarks for every role 🙌

Earlier this week, Mage, a marketplace app for Magic: The Gathering (colloquially known as Magic) cards, launched on Product Hunt. If you're not familiar with Magic (though it was released in 1993) — it's a strategy card game where players battle each other as wizards, or “planeswalkers.” Today, it's the largest trading card game in the world with 35 million (!) players.

How it works: The Mage app uses computer vision and machine learning to scan, recognize and price every single Magic card.

Some initial feedback from the Product Hunt community:

“I wouldn't have my collection categorized if it wasn't for this app.” - Javier

“Useful app for staying up to date with Magic News, deckbrewing in the couch and fast and easy card buying” - Michael

We've started to see more and more of these products — niche digital marketplaces — crop up as alternatives to eBay. There's Bump for limited-release streetwear from brands like Supreme and Kidizen for used children's clothes. One of the earliest examples of this is GOAT, a secondary online marketplace for buying and reselling sneakers, which launched back in 2015. Earlier this year, Foot Locker invested $100M in the company.

It's not hard to imagine Mage having similar success. The average Mage customer spends about $120/month on Magic cards, and Mage takes a 10 percent cut of each purchase.

They're also set up to tap into an even broader market of collectables. Next up? According to Mage's founders, they're interested in expanding with Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Dragon Ball Z, along with baseball cards, stamps, coins and wine.

It's a great time to be a maker.

Low-code tools like Webflow, Voiceflow, Bubble and Airtable are making building more accessible (and faster) than ever. By 2027, the U.S. is projected to have more freelancers than full-time employees and more professionals are learning towards remote working. In 2018 alone, we saw over 20K products launch on Product Hunt as Makers have become more empowered to share their startup, side project or weekend experiment with the world.

But while working — and launching products — from anywhere can seem glamorous, it has downsides. Folks that work from home told us that loneliness, a lack of human interaction, and difficulty collaborating with others can be disheartening.

So we set out to build a tool that might help.

What it is: For the past few weeks we’ve been beta testing a new browser extension to help makers share what they’re working on, support others, and stay productive.

How it works: In every new tab, the question “What are you working on?” is presented to encourage focus on a singular task alongside other makers. People — especially those in the Product Hunt community — want to support each other but they don’t know how. Sharing goals in public creates serendipity and attracts help without social awkwardness or fear of rejection.

We’ve seen all kinds of goals, reflecting the varied interests and roles of the Product Hunt community.

• Shaomeng finished writing copy for the landing page of his new project
• Chris wrote the script to his upcoming TEDx talk
• Daria hosted a webinar in Russian
• Kevin got 50 new users for his music running app
• Soyo became an certified workout instructor
• Keziyah applied to an accelerator
• David launched his new product on Product Hunt

You might be 3,000 miles away from Chris, Jessica, Daria, and the others but we’re all working “together”.

Join our coworking community by downloading Product Hunt Tab for Chrome or Firefox (Safari coming soon!). 😊

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

It wasn't that long ago that Zendesk was a startup. The company got its start in 2007 in a Copenhagen loft, armed with a mission to build software that would help other companies build a great customer experience through a simple set of support tools. 💯

Zendesk is now worth $8.9 billion, but the company's early years forged an identity that remains key to its culture today: Zendesk is still very much a startup at heart and wants to give back to this community.

The challenge

It can be challenging for startups to build a customer support function from the ground up, especially because time and resources are limited for young companies. 🛠

The solution: Qualifying startups can get two seats of the Zendesk Suite, free for a full year. Note: You must be a new customer, have fewer than 100 employees, and have no more than Series B funding.

The details

Zendesk Suite includes:

• Support 🙌
• Guide 👀
• Chat 💬
• Talk 🗣

While customer preferences are constantly changing — and consumers expect to be able to interact with brands across many channels — this suite of products gives startups what they need to grow an omnichannel customer experience at-scale.

More Zendesk services

Last November, Zendesk launched a new sales automation tool, called Sell, as well as a custom app development tool called Sunshine. ☀️

And Zendesk Explore is an analytics product for businesses to measure and understand the customer experience. 📈

“APPPLEEEE!” - Oprah yesterday.

Apple just took the hood off a bunch of services, deviating from its traditional hardware announcements (it announced new AirPods, the iPad Air and iPad Mini last week) and instead unveiled new content and services for its ~1.4 billion active devices.

We broke down everything you need to know about yesterday's Apple Event:

TV

The event's crown jewel was the reveal for Apple TV Plus, an ad-free streaming platform that Apple's been working on for years. In addition to Oprah, celebrities like Steven Spielberg, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspooon, J. J. Abrams, Steve Carell and Kumail Nanjiani took to the stage to promote original content that will premier exclusively on the platform. 📺

Apple TV Plus will be available in over 100 countries starting in the fall, but there's no price tag on how much it will cost yet. However, Apple might actually give away these shows for free to anyone with an iOS or tviOS device, which could compliment the redesigned Apple TV app coming in May.

Payments

Apple also announced Apple Card, a new credit card service that folks can sign up for directly from their iPhone. The card has zero fees, low interest rates and a decent rewards program: users get 2% cash back on spending via Apple Pay. 💸

The Apple Card is a clever move by Apple. Users will only get the 2% reward when they pay with their phone (via Apple Pay), which may force more physical retailers and restaurants to support Apple Pay. Whereas Apple Pay was more of a convenient perk for iPhone users in the past, Apple Card holders will be losing money if they can't pay with their phone. Another thing: This 2% cash back will go into Apple Pay Cash, which is a Venmo competitor. 🤔

Apple also said that Apple Pay will be supported by public transit systems in Chicago, Portland and New York City later this year.

Gaming

Apple Arcade is Apple's new subscription services for video games, where users will get access to over 100 new and exclusive games. The news comes a week after Google announced its own streaming gaming platform, Stadia. 🎮

News

Apple News Plus is an extension of Apple's existing news app, which will now include over 300 magazines. The initiative is largely based on Texture, the Hulu-for-magazines app that Apple bought last year. Apple shared a bunch of new partnerships on this front, including publications like theSkimm, The Wall Street Journal, Vox, The LA Times, The Cut and TechCrunch. 🗞

New York-based Blade launched back in 2014 to bring ridesharing to helicopters. The aviation startup currently offers on demand rides around New York City, like rides to the Hampton for $800. Now, Blade ($50M raised) is offering rides to Bay Area commuters, with trips from SFO and Oakland Airport to the South Bay, Monterey and Napa.

To be clear, these rides costs at least $200 per person.

As Blade continues to expand (it plans to launch in India next), it may have some competition in the flying taxi market. Uber has plans to commercially deploy a ridesharing network for the sky — dubbed UberAIR — by 2023. Uber has also claimed that using its air taxi service will be cheaper than owning a car.

There's also Kitty Hawk ($1M raised), a Larry Page-backed startup with plans for an autonomous and fully electric air taxi. Volocopter ($35.2M) is developing its vision for air taxis that integrate into metropolitan transportation and Lillium ($101.4M raised) is working on bringing its electric flying jets to the public within the next six years.

Aviation company Airbus, which has partnered with Blade to to launch an intra-city helicopter service outside of the U.S., plans to test autonomous flying taxis in Germany this summer.

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

Another day, another Facebook security breach headline. Yesterday, it was that Facebook inadvertently stored hundreds of millions user passwords in plain text, searchable by employees. 😳

Luckily, decentralized apps exist to make the world a little (a lot) more secure. Instead of asking users to build a new identity for every dApp (you typically need to download a browser extension, create a wallet, buy cryptocurrency, etc.), some dApps have launched with Blockstack to manage user profiles.

Users can sign up once and “Sign in with Blockstack” just like they would Facebook. Except then Facebook can’t share your private passwords. You manage it yourself, secured and protected on Blockstack.👏

We joined Blockstack several months ago as an official App Reviewer.

How it works: $100,000 is up for grabs every month. dApp developers can sign up for App Mining to earn for their traction. Blockstack will then divvy up $100k across (or ‘to’) registered Blockstack dApps based on their overall ranking each month.

Here were five of this month’s apps that you should check out:

Recall is an open-source alternative to Google Photos. 📸

What sets it apart from other photo vaults is that it lets you select your preferred storage provider, and there are no restrictions on file sizes.

“This is awesome, photos are people’s most private asset and they should have 100% control over their memories” - Enrique

NoteRiot is a decentralized note taking app where alll of your data stays encrypted on the storage location of your choice. 📝

“Decentralized apps are catching up quickly to their centralized counterparts. I have used EverNote, SimpleNote, even NVAlt, but care about my privacy and so have been migrating over” - Christopher

DECS is a decentralized code snippet organizer. 🙌

It lets you store, secure and tightly control access to proprietary snippets, tokens, configurations, certificates, and other sensitive data all in one workspace.

“Great first step to decentralized GitHub” - Joe

Forms.id is a privacy-focused alternative to Typeform and Google Forms. This way, both the survey's creator and respondents are protected. 🙏

“Nice to see another form builder tool in the industry” - Evren

Decentus is a news aggregator where link submission data is owned by the users. It's like Hacker News or Reddit, but decentralized. 🗞

“This is an interesting concept — I don't think many people are thinking about their own data when they upvote an article or submit a link to sites like Hacker News or Reddit” - Taylor

Check out the full list of Top dApps from March.

Want to get paid for your dApp? Register here for App Mining to be eligible for next month’s payouts. 👏

Who remembers Turntable.fm? 👋

If you don't, it was basically a social network that allowed people to DJ in virtual “rooms.” It was sort of like if Spotify had chatrooms with bobbing avatars. And it shut down in 2013.

Today, a Turntable.fm-esque successor launched on Product Hunt. It's called Roadtrip, and it's a music app where you can either DJ or let someone else DJ your commutes, workouts, etc. 🎧

How it works: First, you connect your Spotify account to your profile on Roadtrip. Then, you create a “room” and start playing music from curated playlists or playlists you've made yourself. While you're DJing, you can also unmute yourself and talk to your listeners. It's kind of like running your own radio station. You can even share your room to your Instagram story.



Some initial reactions from the Product Hunt community:

“Commutes do suck. I try to avoid as much as possible but music has a way of making the time fly.” - Ross

“I liked the concept of going live with some jams with only audio and no video” - Elena

Roadtrip is tapping into common human behavior — sharing music with friends — and giving it a spin (pun intended) in the age of Spotify/Apple Music/Tidal, etc.

“While building we’ve found that it made long commutes, working out, or days when you were traveling a little less lonely. Also, music just made calls more fun. With some sound effects and small Easter eggs, Roadtrip started to give us those summer camp vibes of some of our favorite social apps.” - Roadtrip Maker, Matt Mazzeo

It's the latest among the growing list of audio-based experiences designed to tap into the AirPods (ICYMI, Apple announced AirPods 2.0 yesterday) that are always in our ears or the smartphones that are always in our hands. There's already Drivetime, a hands-free trivia game controlled entirely by voice. Fallound connects to Google Maps and gives you perfectly timed podcasts according to your journey. Readcast lets you bookmark interesting articles and listen to them later. Feel like taking a road trip yet? 😉