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Your doctor is now downloadable on the App Store. 👀

A wave of startups has arrived to make getting prescriptions for difficult health issues as easy as answering an online survey. Similar to Warby Parker and Casper, these new direct-to-consumer medtech startups make it easy to buy their product by issuing prescriptions online and shipping direct to your door.

Meds for men: Ro just raised $88M to help men get the medications they need. Ro's first product line focused on erectile dysfunction medications. Instead of going into a doctor's office and talking to people, you can get a prescription online and the medications delivered to your door for free.

Yesterday, they dropped their second product line, Zero, an all-in-one medical kit, designed to help you quit smoking. It includes medication, nicotine gum, an app to track your progress, and digital counseling from their on-staff physicians.

"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 Ohanian, Reddit cofounder

They're not the only competitors in the space. SF-based Hims is focused on the same market, with their line of stunningly-branded meds for hair loss, ED, and cold sores. They've raised $98M from Forerunner Ventures (and others) and even launched their own skincare line two months ago.

Meds for women: Nurx has raised $41M from YC and Union Square Ventures to help women get digital prescriptions for birth control and HIV medications. While there are a number of startups that offer HIV medication online, Nurx is one of the few to offer at-home testing kits as well, making it easier for them to treat more afflicted women. They're hiring for 10+ positions in SF.

"Holy crap I just ordered birth control in < 5 minutes. Hands down most useful product I've found on PH to date."– Kelsey Whelan

Modern Fertility, backed by Y Combinator last year, makes it easy for women to test their fertility at home, no visit to the clinic required, for a fraction of the price. They've raised $7M to make sure all women get the fertility data they deserve. Currently hiring for 6+ positions.

Online shopping is coming to Augmented Reality.

Shopify just launched a magic tool for online sellers to build augmented reality experiences into their stores. Soon, you'll be able to test out your next bike in AR or visualize your next sofa directly inside your house before it arrives.

This feels like a natural extension of the Shopify platform (which launched their App Store a few weeks ago). We can't wait to see AR pop-up shops all around San Francisco (and the world). 🌉

The timing is perfect. Just last week, Apple announced the inclusion of the new A12 Bionic chip in every every iPhone Xs and Xs Max. It's nearly as powerful as the processor in a brand new Macbook Pro, making previously impossible AR experiences possible.

Shopify isn't the only e-commerce giant to dip their toes into the augmented reality water. Amazon's AR view lets you try products in your house before you order. Lululemon competitor Outdoor Voices launched an AR shopping experience for their new running line. IKEA took things one step further with a completely VR furniture shopping experience.

We’ve seen a toooon of apps explore augmented reality this year, as you’ll discover in the AR topic on Product Hunt (followed by 34K+ people). ✨

"This fall’s must-have accessory for billionaires: An esteemed publication that‘s recently had a rough go of it." – Laura Nelson

Time Magazine just found a new $190M home. 📰

Salesforce founder Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne Benioff, just acquired the publication, less than a year after it was acquired by American media conglomerate Meredith Corporation.

Benioff isn't the first billionaire to purchase his own media publication. Jeff Bezos purchased The Washington Post in 2014, Patrick Soon-Shiong purchased the Los Angeles Times earlier this year, and Laurene Powell purchased a controlling interest in The Atlantic in 2017.

"The power of Time has always been in its unique storytelling of the people & issues that affect us all & connect us all. A treasure trove of our history & culture. We have deep respect for their organization & honored to be stewards of this iconic brand." –Marc Benioff

Lately, tech CEOs have been under heavy scrutiny as their platforms (read: Twitter, Facebook, Google) heavily influence the spread of information. They control the pipes and now more of them are owning the the content as well. Which publication is next? 🤔

It's easier than ever to start monetizing your own #content. Substack and Revue let anyone build their own paid newsletter list in minutes. Although they won’t help you sell to a billionaire CEO. 💌

Yesterday, Microsoft acquired a small AI startup less than 6 months after their launch. That was fast. 😮

Lobe launched in May to make building machine learning models easy. Backed by Chris Sacca's Lowercase Capital (and others), the small team is making machine learning as easy as putting together LEGO bricks.



Their app is super simple to use:

1. Label your training set with your desired results. For instance, you could upload pictures of dogs labeled with their breed, or houses listed with their architectural style.

2. Watch as the algorithm builds itself, automagically.

3. Ship it. Export your model into Google's TensorFlow, Apple's CoreML, or directly into your app on iOS or Android.

"A holy shit moment in tech from our company Lobe. Full AI capabilities that you can put in your app but without having to write any of your own AI code! Watch the demo. It's bananas." – Chris Sacca

It's absolutely bananas. Lobe’s landing page might be the best product landing page we’ve seen since Muzzle. 🤐

TL;DR: Ship 2.0 is here, with powerful new tools for makers.

We originally launched Ship to help makers ship better products. Makers that build an audience, discuss their product vision publicly, and listen to their users before their launch stand a much better chance of success.

After seeing over 100,000 products launch over the years at Product Hunt, we noticed a pattern. Makers that built an audience early on and gathered feedback from their users, often found more success than those building in a vacuum. We launched an early version of Ship a year ago - over 2,000,000 subscribers have been collected so far.

A lot has changed since its original launch a year ago. Thousands of makers have used it to build an audience and communicate with over 2,000,000 early adopters. A few popular projects (like this one) use Ship to build a waitlist of more than 55,000 subscribers.

Today's big update includes:

✅ New tools. Now you can create a Chat room with your community, useful for managing a small beta group or gathering feedback.

✅ More customization. The most popular feature of Ship is our landing page creator, but some makers wanted to personalize their page even more. You can choose from three templates and customize everything from the background image to the button color to match your brand.

✅ AWS and Stripe perks. Pro users can unlock up to $7,500 in free AWS credits and instant access to Stripe Atlas + zero fees on the first $50,000 of transactions processed on Stripe.

✅ A powerful new dashboard. Quickly glance at the health and growth of your community, with powerful insights powered by Clearbit. Check subscriber location, open rates of messages, and deep-dive into your best users' backgrounds in an instant.

We’re here to help you build an audience, speak with your community, and ultimately ship better products. This VR for cats video explains it all. 😉

TL;DR: The first episode of PH Radio is here. Listen on TechCrunch. 🎙️

In our inaugural episode, we're joined by two notable investors, Alexia Bonatsos and Niko Bonatsos.

Alexia is the former co-editor-in-chief of TechCrunch and founder of a new venture fund, Dream Machine, where she helps founders “turn science fiction into non-fiction.”

Her husband, Niko, is Managing Director at General Catalyst, a leading Silicon Valley venture firm with investments in companies like Airbnb, ClassPass, Snap, Gusto, Warby Parker, and others.

In this episode we talk about:

• The rise of voice. As Google Home, Amazon Echoes, AirPods, and other voice-enabled devices continue to proliferate, we’ll see user behavior shift — the same way touch screens have influenced young kids — and new opportunities arise for creative founders.
• The corrosive nature of behavior online, in part influenced by today’s advertising model, and potential solutions.
• The evolution of venture capital, with the rise of micro VCs and accessibility to large amounts of capital.

Of course, we’ll also cover some of our favorite products that you might not know about, including an app to help end mobile phone addiction, a new anonymous social network (the next Secret done right?), and app that reminds you that you’re going to die.
 
We’ll be back next week, so subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Also big thanks to our sponsors: Airtable, GE Ventures, Intercom, and Stripe for their support. 😸

Justin Kan launched a new company, with a fresh $65M round led by Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and YC's Continuity Fund.

This isn't Kan's first startup: he launched and sold live-streaming and gaming startup Twitch to Amazon for a cool billion dollars in 2014. Kan's been building for years as part of the first class of famed startup accelerator Y Combinator with Reddit's Alexis Ohanian, late internet-activist Aaron Swartz, and current YC President Sam Altman.

Kan's new startup, Atrium, wants to automate lawyers using machine learning. Since going through YC last winter and raising $10M last year, they've acquired 220+ customers, including bird-themed companies, MessageBird, SendBird, and Bird. 🐦

Many law firms are notoriously inefficient, charging clients by the hour to complete tasks that could easily be automated. In addition, most firms pay out any annual profits to shareholders, leaving nothing behind to invest in software or internal tools. "For example, one of its apps automatically turns startup funding documents into Excel cap tables," from a recent TechCrunch article.

Atrium isn't alone. DoNotPay, founded by then-19-year-old Joshua Browder, automates common legal needs using their chatbot. The bot was initially built to help people fight traffic tickets and has since expanded to handle 1,000+ legal problems. They've already beaten 375,000 traffic tickets worldwide.

Most legaltech startups are focused on selling software to existing law firms: Klarity just launched out of YC to help lawyers analyze contracts using AI, and Ravel lets lawyers compare firms, quickly search millions of case files and decisions, and even predict how judges will rule. 😳

Atrium isn't selling software. They're launching a completely new law firm. Only time will tell if they'll be able to beat the big firms at their own game.

A #1 top paid app in the Mac App Store has been stealing your data. 😳

Adware Doctor, which promised to "prevent malware and malicious files from infecting your Mac" actually created a locked history of your personal data, including Chrome, Firefox, Safari browser history... then uploaded it to a server in China. Not good.

The developers avoided Apple's detection for months by pausing their data collection when the app was run for the first time. The app has since been pulled from the Mac Store. 🤔

Now is also a good to chance to protect yourself from future hacks:

😱 Have I Been Pwned? will inform you if one of your accounts was compromised. They've cataloged over 5.3 Billion hacked accounts.

🦊 Mozilla's Facebook Container just launched to block Facebook from tracking you around the internet. Don't tell Zuck. 😳

🔍 Alphabet's Outline is an open-sourced VPN builder for anybody. Instead of trusting some shady company with all of your traffic, build your own private network to protect all your data.

🔐 1Password is better than storing your passwords on a post-it note on your desk, integrated into literally every browser.

💳 Privacy.com is the Snapchat of credit cards, generating a new (potentially ephemeral) credit card for every transaction online.

What's missing? Share your favorites and explore 20+ other tools that might save your butt. 😅

Sonos is taking on Amazon, Apple, and Google... all at once.

The Santa Barbara-based hardware startup known for their premium speaker systems just launched a powerful developer kit for their millions of devices.

Within the past few years, millions of homes have adopted Amazon Echos and Google Homes. Even babies are learning how to use the voice assistants to play music, ask about the weather, and explore the internet. 👶

Last year, Sonos launched the Sonos One – a self-contained, Alexa-connected speaker to compete with the Amazon Echo. Previously, all of the Sonos systems required an Echo Dot or Google Home to let people control their speaker with their voice. Apple also launched their own Siri-powered HomePod in February.

This is Sonos's first large foray into opening their hardware to developers. Before, they've relied on Amazon and Google's massive suites of Alexa/Google Home skills to expand how users can speak to their Sonos devices.

This isn't a trivial battle – the ultimate winner(s) of the battle to own your voice assistant will heavily influence where your voice purchases are routed, which streaming service plays your music, and your newborn's first words. 😂

Coincidentally, Twitter just launched Periscope Audio, a new feature to broadcast just audio. Think of it like a live podcast for your Twitter followers. We're hoping the next update will let you jump into a friend's live Periscope audio broadcast from a separate phone. Anchor, the popular podcasting tool, already supports this feature for non-live broadcasts.

We can't wait to see what makers build on Sonos. Share your thoughts – the Sonos team will be around all day answering your questions. 🔈

Jack Dorsey and Sheryl Sandberg testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, almost a year after they divulged that Russia had used fake accounts to influence the 2016 election.

Google declined to send anyone. Some lawmakers are threatening to subpoena the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. 😳

Questions yesterday ranged from data privacy to fake videos that have spread on the platforms, especially as machine-learning tools like Lyrebird and Facehub let anybody impersonate's voice and likeness with less than a minute of audio.

Coincidentally, Vanish launched yesterday to help you delete all of your social accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest, Gmail, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and more. Warning: click delete, and all of your data and dog pictures will be gone forever.

Vanish isn't the only pro-deletion app: Phototrash lets you quickly delete old photos by swiping left and right (just like on Tinder!), and this Message Deleter for Slack will clear through your old work messages. Please ask your boss before you run the app. 🙏