The Leaderboard

This week at TechCrunch Disrupt ambitious startups took the stage and shared their vision of changing the world™. Meanwhile, potential investors care about a variety of things, like genius, courage, and using tabs over spaces. As well as...

Dave McClure reveals the metrics he looks for at the seed stage

Aileen Lee on growth you need for your pitch to stand above the rest

Robert Herjavec on his top 3 attributes when deciding to invest

Lauren Kolodny cares most about these qualities in founders 

Mark Suster has advice for startups raising money in this day

For more, read our new Medium post on what investors look for when evaluating a startup, and Startup Metrics: Which Ones Matter Most. 💸

Slack, the GIF-sharing app with team collaboration and bots, has a new beta for Windows and Mac! It's completely rebuilt on Electron so everything is lightning fast (and just better overall). You're invited. 💌

Popular Slack bots you gotta try:
🐤 Birdly is a  Slack bot that does you expense reports
👥 Gotta Slack ‘Em All will distract your team with Pokemon
🕓 Timezoner is the time zone calculator for distributed teams
🌮 HeyTaco rewards your teammates with Tacos when they're 🔥
🌥 WorkBot lets you command all your cloud apps from Slack

Explore more Slack bots, but first download the new Slack Beta.

Transportation is so hot right now. GM bought Cruise for over $1 BILLION and last week Ford acquired this SF-based commuter service.

Now Uber is rolling out self-driving cars. On the streets. With pedestrians and everything. Can't wait to try it. 👀

Starting today you can upgrade to iOS 10! Make sure to backup to iCloud prior, and use the new Google Photos app when you run out of space (which stores all your photos for free). Go cloud.

One of the big additions (other than emoji-text replacement) is the introduction of the 'App Store for iMessage' — now developers can create tiny little apps that live your iMessage conversations. Follow the new iMessage Apps topic to discover things like:
• Smileys: Apple's new emoji app
• Rock-Paper-Scissors: Without the silly hand gestures
• Guggy: Adds expressive GIFs to your text
• Voo Plan: For quickly coordinating plans with friends
• CalcKey: A calculator within iMessage
• Super Mario Run Stickers: 🏃💬🏃💬🏃💬🏃💬

Back in April, Gary Vaynerchuk stopped mid-keynote to call The Next Web's Europe conference “unbelievable, f*cking awesome." In November 5,000 attendees will gather in Brooklyn to recreate the experience from Amsterdam.

If you're looking to kickstart your career in tech, attend this conference. We're giving away 2 free tickets + $850 towards airfare and lodging.

Menu Bar Apps do one thing very well, they're a click away, and always on. For many of us they've become an essential part of the Mac. Here are some useful ones that launched in the past few months:

🙇 Look Up helps you relax by blurring your screen for short breaks
💾 Pastebot is a clipboard manager from the creators of TweetBot
🛡 AppLocker lets you password protect individual apps on your Mac
🎩 Arthur helps you easily change those hidden OS X settings
🌃 NightTone makes your screen more comfortable (like f.lux)
🌐 SmartApp keeps track of your 3G/4G, Wi-Fi, and roaming usage

For more, follow the Mac Menu Bar Apps topic on Product Hunt, and if you find yourself with a crowded bar, Bartender can help with that. 😊

Apple showed real courage yesterday getting rid of the dated 20th century technology that made listening to music as easy as plugging headphones into a 3.5 mm jack. 

With the launch of the iPhone 7 and 7+ Apple made some nice upgrades, like DSLR quality photos and resistance to accidental contact with toilet water. But the real breakthrough was removing the headphone jack.

Without that 3.5 mm 🕳 the iPhone 6s & iPhone 7 are basically the same device, except the latter comes in two new colors: Jet Black, and Black.

Plug yourself into the future with Apple Plug.

The leaks and rumors leading up to today's Apple Event suggest that the iPhone 7 will look similar to the current design and sport a dual-lens camera system that will create DSLR quality images. It may also be waterproof, and come with a white rose to mourn the loss of the 3.5mm headphone jack.

In other news... Some of the coolest  products are not made by Apple:

👻 "Okay, this is literally the coolest present of all time."—Evan Spiegel on Uncover

🍏 "There are no word to describe the joy and happiness these little green jewels bring to your life."—Amazon review on Apple Jolly Ranchers

🔋 "Putting the battery in the wallet is very smart idea"—Maxence on Wallet for iPhone

🔌 "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LI-I-IFE?"—Nik Sharma, on Rihanna's reaction when seeing this product

Today is Fight Procrastination Day (really), a day that we celebrate by getting 💩 done.

Now, procrastination (and #HashtagDays) may be the bane of our existence, but we have the technology to combat our natural inclination to put things off with these:

🏃 Escape tracks all your unnecessary trips to distracting websites
🎩 Jarvis is a Messenger bot that reminds you to get stuff done
🙇 One Big Thing makes sure you'll focus on your biggest task 
📻 Radio Silence blocks apps that make unwanted network connections
👥 HazeOver dims your background windows so you focus on one task at a time

Also, today is the day to test out Go F🙈cking Work.

Happy Labor Day, if you're in the United States. For everyone else, happy Monday! As summer comes to an end, it's time to celebrate this summer's most loved products:

• Copper: A dream for developers who want seamless signups
• Lacona: Command your Mac using natural language
• Google Fonts: The best place to find your favorite font
• Sans Francisco: An incredible resources for designers (*bookmark*)
• Dropbox Paper: This Evernote competitor is a beauty
• Prisma: Since launch, this magical app has been downloaded by millions

For more, check out our new Medium post on the 44 Most-Loved Products Launched This Summer. 🚀