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Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterday’s top ten launches. That’s it.
It's that time of year. Y Combinator's latest batch of startups (over 200 companies!) presented their work over two demo days this week. The Winter 2019 batch was the largest yet, and includes everything from flying motorcycles to dairy products made from plants. This year was also the first time the accelerator hosted in San Francisco, away from its roots in Mountain View.
A little about this latest batch: The 189 startups were chosen from a pool of 12,000 applicants. The top five categories these startups are building in are B2B software (40%), healthcare (14%), consumer goods (13%), fintech (8%) and consumer media (6%). 24% of these startups have a female founder, 10% have a Latinx founder and 8% have a black founder. In total, 36 different countries were represented in this cohort.
Many of the YC companies may look familiar. Most have launched on Product Hunt over the past three months. Here are a few popular picks:
Glide is a “no code” tool that creates apps from Google Sheets 👀
Our World in Data uses data to understand of the world’s problems 🌏
Taali is a superfood snack made from popped water lily seeds 😋
Postscript is like Mailchimp, but for texting 💬
Sunsama is like if Trello and Google Calendar had a baby 💡
Bottomless automatically restocks your coffee with a smart scale ☕️
AxDraft provides free legal documents for startups 📝
Brew is like Netflix for podcasts 🎙
Deel provides pay-as-you-go contracts for freelancers 💸
Basement is a social network for your close friends 🛋
Scooter startup Bird (over $400 million raised) has reportedly laid off between four to five percent of its workforce, or about 40 people among its 900-person team.
Lyft — which is set to IPO in the coming weeks — also laid off up to 50 staffers in its bikes and scooters division this month. These were mainly folks who were acquired into the company when it purchased electric bike-sharing startup Motivate.
Could the scooter fad be coming to an end? 🤔
Probably not (yet). See our earlier newsletter on how scooters won SXSW this year. But scooter companies are cutting costs and consolidating in an attempt to edge out competition in the space — because there is a lot of it.
Lime ($765M raised) is raising another $400M at a $2B valuation. Bird is also reportedly raising another $300M at a $2B valuation. In January electric scooter company Grin merged with bike-share startup Yellow to expand electric transportation in Latin America.
Last April, Uber bought Jump Bike to enter the electric bike sharing business, and is now getting into subscriptions to compete with bike-sharing incumbents like Citi Bike. In November, Ford bought dockless electric scooter company Spin for $100M, marking the first move by a major automaker into the scooter space. 🛴
Last year, we ran our first-ever Makers Festival, where we encouraged people from all walks of life to make, tinker with, and launch projects.
We saw over 2,000 makers participate, all competing for the coveted Silver Kitty trophy. 😺
We're excited to announce that the Makers Festival is back — but with a twist. This Makers Festival will be “no-code” themed.
Over the past year we've seen an upwards trend of makers building amazing products without ever writing a line of code, and we want to celebrate this. Anyone, regardless of technical ability, can create and launch a product. 🚀
And we're partnering with Coda to help you build these ideas! Coda is a new type of doc that grows with your ideas — aka it's perfect for building and launching products.
This year we have five themes to help give you some inspiration. Your project can relate to one of them or you can work on something totally different.
Our themes are listed below with linked Product Hunt collections to inspire you:
Makers Festival is your time to bring your ideas to life. No code required. And there will be a special “Maker in Chief” prize for the best Coda doc of the Festival. Registration is now open and closes Sunday March 24.
We cannot wait to see what you build! 🙌
Late last night, Tesla unveiled its Model Y, a compact SUV that starts at $39K. It's the latest in Tesla's S3XY line of cars (model S, model 3, model X, model Y). 😉
The Model Y is similar to the Model 3, but about 10 percent bigger. And don't worry, there are no falcon-wing doors with this car. Tesla plans to start production for the Model Y in 2020, but you can order one starting now on the company's website (it requires a $2,500 payment upfront).
Elon Musk unveiled the Model Y himself on stage in Los Angeles. He sprinkled in a walk down memory lane during the presentation, noting Tesla's beginnings and struggles with mass production.
We decided to take our own walk down memory lane with some of the most silly fan-made Elon Musk-related products.
Elon Musk with A Moustache is an air freshener with a moustache 👃
Ask Elon Musk Bot lest you chat 1:1 with “Elon Musk” 💬
Deep Elon Musk is AI trained to tweet like Elon Musk 🐦
Elon Musk Replacement extension replaces “Elon Musk” with “Grimes' Boyfriend” 😂
Elon Mask are life-sized masks of Elon Musk 🎭
Yesterday, Google launched an “experimental” Chrome extension called Tune to hide toxic comments on sites like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.
Behind the curtain: Tune is part of a conversational AI research project made by Google Jigsaw — a unit of Alphabet that aims to use technology to make the world safer.
It works by letting you set the volume of toxic comments you see across different sites down to “zen mode” to skip over comments completely, or you can turn it up and see allll of them.
The Product Hunt community had some mixed reactions...
“On one hand we criticize filter bubbles, on the other hand, we build things like this” - Anna
“Useful focus group to see how people pick and choose what they deem as something not worth seeing. Data farm to inform grander goal.” - Christopher
“It's simply an unhealthy approach to information” - Filip
For some, one toxic comment can create fear around posting online or using certain websites altogether (i.e. social media). For others, it's easy to ignore the trolls. That's the idea behind Tune; it gives power back to readers.
But is a censored internet what we really want?
There's already Refined Twitter and Blindfold for controlling Twitter. And there's Vanilla for checking the toxicity of your own tweets. There's also Sour Grapes for hiding negativity on your Facebook Ads.
If anything, what we need right now is a more *transparent* internet. It's worth noting that Google claims that no personal data is stored from the extension.
At Product Hunt, we see a ton of product launches from makers with different backgrounds and levels of experience happen every day. But what happens after a successful launch? 🚀
As ideas start to grow into actual businesses, the number of tools and services you need to keep operations running smoothly grows as well. Here at Product Hunt, we currently use 39 (!) products across our team.
When it comes to choosing and implementing these services as a founder, the sheer amount of options can be overwhelming — and prices can add up quickly. So we're launching a solution: Founder Club.
What it is
Founder Club is a curated collection of top products and services designed to help you start and grow your business. To start, we've partnered with 27 companies to offer great deals on these tools to club members. Our launch partners are:
- StickerMule - 100 custom die cut stickers for $29
- AWS Activate - $5,000 in credits
- Sentry - $150 credit
- Baremetrics - 30% off
- Hubspot - 30% off and 15% ongoing
- Hootsuite - 50% off
- Adespresso - 40% off
- Asana - 30% off
- Typeform - 50% off yearly Pro plans
- WeWork - 10 - 20% off
- Mailjet - 1 year free on the Sliver Premium Plan
- Slab - 50% off for 12 months
- Mixmax - 30% off for 12 months
- Segment - $25,000 credits applicable to Segment's Team plan
- Gusto - 3 months free
- Sketch - 30% off
- iubenda - 30% off Privacy Policy Generator + Cookie Solution
- Aircall: 25% off for 1-Year
- The Information: $150 off
- Calm: 30% off
- Pusher: 6 months of Chatkit free
- Instabug: $500 credits
- Browserstack: 30% off live 5-user plan
- Algolia: $1000 credit
- OpenPhone: 40% off for 1 year
- Rover: $25 credit
- Xero - 25% off for 6 months
- Product Hunt: discounts sprinkled in, including 50% off on Ship and Job listings 😸
Pricing
Founder Club is a subscription-based membership, priced annually.
- Discounted launch pricing (expires on March 15): $30/month charged annually
- Regular pricing: $60/month charged annually
How to join
From now until March 15, anyone can join Founder Club to redeem these deals. On March 15, folks who want to join will be placed on a waitlist so we can make sure we're able to provide the best experience for our club members. 😻
Join the Founder Club.
Raise your hand if you woke up late, were late to a meeting or were generally confused by the time yesterday. 👋
You're not crazy — the clocks moved forward an hour on Sunday because of daylight saving time. “Spring ahead,” as they say. ⏰
The good news: your days will start to get longer and longer. The bad news: the time change will take some getting used to, especially if you're on a distributed team. And yes, the global Product Hunt team struggled with the time difference yesterday. 
For those of you who also have teammates all over the 🌎, here are some apps to help you keep your times coordinated:
Menu World shows the time for different cities right from your menu bar 🌉
There lets you follow your teammates and their local time ⏱
FlagTimes is a Mac app for anyone working in different time zones 👀
Tropic lets you see where your remote teammates are in their work day ☀️
Spacetime lets you see where calendars overlap on your remote teams 📆
Padbury Clock Screensaver is a minimal screensaver that tells time 🙌
Death Clock is a gentle reminder that life is fleeting 💀
Product Hunt Clock displays the time at Product Hunt 😻
SXSW kicked off on Friday, bringing folks in tech, film, media and music together for the annual festival in Austin, Texas.
Since the event draws an early-adopting crowd on the hunt for the next breakout hit, the fest has historically served as a launch pad for new apps to take off. Previous SXSW breakouts include: Twitter (2008), Foursquare (2009), Highlight (2012), Secret (2014), and Meerkat (2015).
This year, however, SXSW is shifting away from a place for startups to launch apps. Big tech companies focused more on branded *experiences* — from Snap's “Snap House” to Patreon's “House of Creativity.”
And politics came to the festival in a big way this year. Up-and-comers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Beto O’Rourke were there, and presidential contenders like Amy Klobuchar, Howard Schultz, Elizabeth Warren and John Hickenlooper all spoke at the fest.
Electric scooters also made a splash at SXSW, as they became the primary way to get around. 
While the jury's still out on a hot new breakout app from SXSW this year, the winners of the festival's annual pitch competition were announced yesterday. Here are a few of the winning apps you should check out:
Tankee is the first gaming network for kids 🎮
Nebula Genomics wants to put all of you on the blockchain 😳
Supportiv is an anonymous support network 💬
Twenty Tables helps people find meals at local restaurants for $6 🍔
Healium uses VR to lower stress 😌
We're also keeping an eye on Traverse, a new immersive audio platform that will let you map your surroundings with AR. It's set to launch at SXSW today.
Happy International Women’s Day! 🎉
To celebrate, we’re highlighting women Makers and their infinite wisdom. Every day, we see women share their creations on Product Hunt, from tools that help you launch your own MVP to micro-robotic sex toys to podcasts that put women at the forefront.
We’ve gathered some of our favorite nuggets of advice from these empowering women:
Steph Smith, Maker of FeMake, Eunoia, Make Yourself Great Again and nomad (hubb), emphasizes the importance of staying open to new challenges. 🙌
“It’s helpful to recognize that many makers are still learning and often feel like imposters, even if they’ve been creating for years. The only thing that separates those who are successful from those who aren’t, is the few that are willing to continuously build, iterate, and learn from their mistakes.”
Sarah Noeckel, Maker of Femstreet, talks about the importance of a strong brand. 💪
“There is a big difference between brand and branding. It's not about the Femstreet logo but about the way we communicate who we are, what we do and why we do it. Brand helps to accelerate the adoption of your product, attract talent, investor awareness and it has forced me to work on my messaging and Femstreet's positioning.”
Tracy Chou, Maker of Project Include, says that emotional resilience is key. 😌
"I’ve found emotional resilience to be an absolute requisite for all my work. With regard to startups for example: in addition to the baseline level of anxiety that often comes with startup uncertainty, there is also the emotional turbulence, the highs and lows that can be triggered by almost anything, whether it’s team growth or dysfunction, fundraising success or setbacks, product traction or lack thereof, press, competitors, or honestly, really anything."
Julia Enthoven, Maker of Kapwing, recommends staying action-oriented. 👏
“Do. When it comes to products, you’ll almost always learn more by trying the create it than you will by talking to experts, asking for advice, planning, etc. Engineers are analytical people who study the best solutions, but entrepreneurs know that perfection is a waste of time. To maximize your learning and the quality of your work, make with urgency and launch prolifically, even if you feel vulnerable.”
Abadesi Osunsade, Maker of Elpha, emphasizes the power of community. 🤗
“It can be tough to identify blockers when you're building a product or growing in your career, that's why community is so important. Having like-minded people around you who can relate to your experiences gives you the clarity to design solutions and next steps that make perfect sense for you.”
Today’s Daily Digest was crafted by Product Hunt and sponsored by our friends at Hotjar.
Here’s a thought: What if you could consistently make people go “WOW” whenever they visit your site?
And what if you could understand what ultimately makes them leave your site — so you can give them what they want and make them stay?
Enter: Hotjar.
Hotjar is a user behavior and feedback tool that allows site owners to see how people are actually using their site, and collect feedback to understand why they behave the way they do. 🙌
While traditional analytics tools like Google Analytics provide a bird’s eye view of website traffic, Hotjar goes beyond the numbers with visual heatmaps, session replays and on-page surveys that help answer questions other analytics tools can't. Let’s call it the qualitative side of quantitative data.
What the Product Hunt community thinks:
“I love using Hotjar and have used it in conjunction with Google Analytics for years! I am able to gain so much insight from watching the recordings of people interacting with the site. This is something I would recommend to any digital marketing professional” - Rebecca
“This is a much-needed out-of-the-box product that gives us the heatmaps we want — all for a price and ease-of-use that isn't prohibitive! I was intrigued, and literally had this product spun up in a live web application and recording data in under five minutes” - Nick
The value of this type of feedback loop
Traditional analytics tools can tell you what your users are doing (e.g., 60% quit before completing their purchase), but only website feedback tools like Hotjar can help you understand why this is happening (e.g., the slow delivery rate is making them pause). Once you know the customer experience, it’s easy to see where you can improve.
Over 30,000 companies use Hotjar, including InVision, Microsoft and Nintendo, to name a few.
