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If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em?

Yesterday, Adobe announced that it’ll acquire its rival, Figma, for a whopping $20B. The decision was met with mixed feelings from the design community, with many fearful that the deal will have a negative impact on Figma’s direction. Despite confirmation that Figma will remain independent, some people are still not entirely sold (see: the response from our community).

Whether you hate it or are celebrating Figma’s big exit, this pending acquisition has the potential to shake things up in the design space. Adobe has been struggling to compete—even its closest bud, Microsoft, was becoming a Figma fan, potentially threatening a well-known bromance in the tech industry. Now that Adobe and Figma are set to join forces, that bromance is likely saved, but the competition isn’t going anywhere.

Say hello again to Canva, the graphic design tool that wants you to know it’s not going anywhere. If you recall, we recently covered the launch of Canva Whiteboards. A month later, the company’s still in the spotlight and just announced Canva Visual Worksuite. The new products go beyond graphic design and offer the ability to design documents, data visualizations, websites, and more. It’s making Canva look more like a competitor for Google Workspace and Microsoft Office than a graphic design company, although co-founder Cliff Obrecht claimed the company's “entering a new era of Canva” and not trying to “compete head-to-head with Google Docs.”

With post-pandemic inflation woes, more tech companies are struggling to tread water, but Canva’s still going strong off its profitability—last year, it raised $200 million and grew to $40 billion. So while the Adobe-Figma deal makes some question what’s next for its competitors, we wonder how Adobe will utilize the acquisition to set itself apart from high-growth companies like Canva.

Keep the conversation going and let us know what you think.

Not too long ago, we touched on the future of higher education and the growth of online learning. Demand in that space continues to grow, but existing solutions may not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Started by the co-founders of Udemy, altMBA, and Venmo, Maven is a spin on the online learning format most of us are familiar with. The makers were frustrated by what they saw as repetitive learning models—aka video-based courses with low completion rates.

“15 years ago, online education was considered a dead industry. VCs literally told me not to work in online learning. We started Udemy anyway and it took almost 5 years for anyone to take us seriously. [We feel as if] there's been almost no innovation since then,” says co-founder Gagan Biyani, who also co-founded Udemy.

Taking inspiration from co-founder Wes Kao’s altMBA experience, the team took a different approach to online learning and developed cohort-based courses (CBC).

The CBC model provides live courses and lets you learn alongside your peers, as opposed to sitting through pre-recorded videos by yourself. If you don’t have the time to keep up with the live class meetings, they’re recorded for you to watch later. While most courses are built for full-time professionals with busy schedules, instructors still put a heavy emphasis on the benefits of an interactive learning environment.

Maven instructors come from different industries and companies like Yelp, Meta, and Google. Prospective students can sign up for different “cohorts” and enroll in courses that are anywhere from 10 days to a few months long. Course topics for the fall cohort include leadership, marketing, product management, and more.

Low competition rates for online courses, which hover around 5-15%, make us wonder if this CBC model will be picked up by existing online learning platforms. BloomTech, an online coding bootcamp (formerly Lambda School), already utilizes a similar model and has a 70% graduation rate.

What do you think—could this format be a game changer for the online learning space?

Let’s face it– many things in life are about who you know, not what you know. Unfortunately, not everyone’s a bubbly extrovert or a natural-born LinkedIn star.

Online networking isn’t a one size fits all philosophy and what works for someone else may not work for you. Maker Peter Johnston had his own gripes with the online networking space, so he created Polywork last year and the word even landed a spot in the dictionary. Today, it’s officially out of beta. ”We started Polywork because we were frustrated by the limited ways existing professional networks allow us to express ourselves (i.e. they focus on job titles and schools attended),” says Johnston.

The Polywork team wants to empower professionals to represent who they are beyond their job titles. They believe that “by empowering people to tell their story and connect with others, we might be able to make the world more productive.” The platform’s features reflect that.

On Polywork, you don’t have to rely on vanity metrics to succeed (they don’t exist). Its “highlights” feature allows you to showcase a timeline of your proudest projects and its profile setup lets you tell the world that you’re both a software engineer and a bookworm. It also caters to the professionals that haven’t found any luck with existing tools and helps them explore more than just full time opportunities. If you’re only looking for a founder to speak on your podcast or you just need mentoring, Polywork could help.

With 28% of job seekers reporting that the job search has negatively impacted their mental health, having new players in the space doesn’t feel like a bad idea. 🤷‍♀️

Let’s keep it a buck—recruiters are often vilified, and a lot of the time, it’s out of their control. Imagine having to maneuver around an outdated hiring technology and an indecisive hiring manager... it can’t be easy.

The good news? Recruiting software is abundant and continuously developing.

Maker Benjamin (Benji) Encz and his team faced trials and tribulations when it came to hiring, which is why they created Ashby, an all-in-one recruiting tool used by companies like Notion and Deel. “Ashby was founded by my co-founder Abhik and I after we struggled hiring large engineering teams with existing applicant tracking system [ATS] products. Recruiting has become a lot more sophisticated over the last few years because competition for talent has become fiercer and we felt that products had not kept up with that,” says Benji.

Recruiters can view things like monthly hires and open job postings, without having to create spreadsheets manually. The candidate experience is also accounted for with its relationship-building email tools and automation that takes the back and forth out of interview scheduling.

Outdated recruiting software is not only an internal problem but one that makes life difficult for the jobseeker too. Candidates often wait a long time before receiving a job update—about 44% hear back after two weeks when applying online. A common complaint from job seekers is that they feel their online applications are ignored, and that’s especially true for underrepresented groups. To combat that issue, tools like Ashby help you track and measure your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals.

With stressed out recruiters and frustrated job seekers, it’s not a bad idea to find different ways to make hiring a breeze. If you are a frustrated job seeker, ICYMI, we’ve redesigned profiles, so make sure to go and update yours here. You never know who might be lurking. 👀 Plus, we’d love to get to know the community better.

From Coinbase to Better, Fintech has been no stranger to mass layoffs this past year. Critics question how the industry went from leading VC fundraising in 2021 with $131.5 billion across 4,969 deals to leading tech layoffs. Despite a year of downturns, would it be shortsighted to say that Fintech’s future is obsolete?

Back in January, Fintech company Wealthfront announced that it would be acquired by Swiss bank UBS for $1.4 billion. That plan has since fallen apart amid “regulatory concerns.” Bank-fintech acquisitions often fall victim to regulatory issues, with many bank regulators wanting to keep the two entities separate.

Although Wealthfront’s failed acquisition doesn’t exactly put Fintech in a positive light, the fact that the acquisition even happened could be a positive indicator of the value Fintech companies present to banks and larger institutions. The industry is set to grow to $300 billion by the end of this year. Last week, we touched on YC S22, and how Fintech was the second most popular category. Here on Product Hunt, Fintech start-ups continue to launch and gain momentum too.

Plasma Wallet launched today and there’s a lot of buzz in the comments. The mobile app lets you manage, trade, and store crypto assets and NFTs. Plasma gives users the ability to view different wallets and balances all in one place.

Beanvest launched last month and helps you track more than 250,000 assets including stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and crypto. It functions as an alternative to manual spreadsheet tracking and helps you measure your portfolio performance.

Peachy Patients is a healthcare platform which helps you manage your medical expenses. It connects with your providers, lets you earn points on the money you spend, and negotiate medical bills.

From Apple’s event to Y Combinator’s Demo Day, there’s been much to talk about in the tech world this week. Demo Day, a two-day event where YC’s summer 2022 batch pitched to a (virtual) room full of investors and press, especially drew our attention to popular YC S22 launches on Product Hunt.

This summer’s batch was 40% smaller than winter’s, which is a likely reflection of what’s currently happening in the VC market. B2B and SaaS still take the cake for most popular category, but Fintech also deserves a notable mention. And what really stands out? This batch sets a record for more Web3 startups than ever before. Creator economy startups? Not so much.

Here are some of our community’s YC S22 favorites:

Popsy, a Notion-inspired no-code website builder, launched last week and won Product of the Day. The makers set out to create a website builder that combined everything they loved about Notion and everything they saw was missing. They added the “ability to change fonts & colors, alignment, add navbar, buttons, icons, custom backgrounds and publish to a custom domain.”

Metafi Wallet SDK, a blockchain infrastructure for Web3 games, launched this week and also won Product of the Day. Makers Raimie Tang and Arvind Ramesh are both avid gamers and created Metafi after poor UX experiences with existing Web3 games. The tool helps game developers by letting them quickly embed a non-custodial wallet in their game, customize their in-game wallet theme, and insert a feature that lets their users buy crypto from the game using a credit card.

Poly, an AI-powered design tool, launched in August and ranked as runner-up for Product of the Day. As designers themselves, the makers channeled their frustrations and built Poly. An issue they noticed? The long process of finding assets and often having to create them from scratch. Poly helps designers “get unlimited customizable, high-res, commercially-licensed creative assets that match their color and style.” It’s also equipped with Figma and Canva plugins to help designers finish their cycles quicker.

The beginning of September marks a special moment for fall lovers and Apple connoisseurs alike. Apple’s Far Out event took place yesterday, and it unveiled the iPhone 14, new watches, and the AirPods Pro 2.

There’s always much debate around Apple’s yearly iPhone releases and whether or not they’re worth a purchase or upgrade. But this year, there’s a bit more buzz around some of the smallest feature updates. Here are some of the highlights:

The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max—the stars of the show—packed in lots of excitement for a few reasons. For one, the notch that many dreaded is now gone and replaced with what Apple calls a Dynamic Island. The notch replacement consolidates your notifications, alerts, and activities and lets you multitask without changing between apps. Other features include an Always-On display that makes your lock screen “always glanceable,” crash detection calls, a camera with 4x the resolution, and a new colorway with “deep purple” and “space black” additions.

You won’t get a Dynamic Island with the iPhone 14, but you can snap better low-light photos and take advantage of the same safety features as the Pro. For those who want a tablet-like phone but can’t afford the Pro Max, the iPhone 14 Plus is a cheaper alternative but comes with fewer features. And as always, Apple’s base-level iPhone comes with vaster color options.

The Apple Watch 8’s major update is its new temperature sensor, which supports ovulation and menstrual cycle tracking. Geared towards athletes, the Watch Ultra is equipped with a durable titanium case and a bigger display. Both the Watch Ultra and Watch 8 are swim-proof and have similar “always-on” displays and safety features as the iPhones. The Apple Watch SE comes with the least new features, but it does share the same water-resistant capabilities and safety features as the others. With a new price drop, it’s also the cheapest option.

Music lovers are excited by the H2 chip that powers the AirPods Pro 2’s advancements. The new chip enhances sound, bringing more clarity and two times more noise cancellation. Apple also says that the buds come with personalized Spatial Audio for a more immersive listening experience. Touch control now lets you manage playback functions from the earbud’s stem and battery life is longer than the first generation of Pros.

Are you feeling any of these upgrades? We asked our Twitter community, and so far, the new iPhone has people most excited. Let us know what you think!

If you’re an online shopaholic, chances are you have all of your information saved into Safari or Chrome autofill. But what if the process could be even sleeker?

The founders of Sleek Pay, a YC S21 company, launched a new Chrome extension that promises to do just that. Maker Daniel Baum noticed that “‘fast’ checkouts aren’t [always] available at big retailers,” and that “autofill [can be] clunky and frequently wrong.” Sleek Pay’s solution? Enter your address and credit card information into Sleek Pay once and then check out with “1-click” at 50 different retailers.

As a browser extension, Sleek Pay pops up on the right-hand side of checkout pages and a “start checkout” button prompts the 1-click checkout process. Once that’s clicked, users can watch as their personal information automatically gets filled out and then place their order.

While 1-click checkout isn’t yet available everywhere, Sleek Pay also has a cashback integration that’s currently available at over 1500 retailers. Whether or not it’s a 1-click purchase, users can earn money back when they use Sleek.

For online shoppers that are tired of losing the high-demand item in their cart to bots or scalpers, it also makes us wonder if Sleek Pay could eventually make snagging hyped products a little easier. Sneaker bots are especially notorious for swiping hot releases from avid sneakerheads—in 2019, streetwear shop Bodega released a limited-edition New Balance 997S sneaker, and 60% of sales went to shoppers using bots.

Could Sleek’s promise for 1-click checkout change the game? While this year’s abrupt shutdown of Fast caused a lot of noise in the startup world, we’ve continued to see plenty of new launches in the eCommerce space that could point to a need for an easier checkout solution.

Still, Instagram’s recent announcement that it’s scaling back its shopping features might be a telltale sign that folks are shopping less amid the current downturn. What are your thoughts?

This year has been particularly interesting for folks interested in AI, especially when it comes to image generators. After OpenAI’s release of DALL-E 2 a few months ago, we’ve continued to see similar products spring up.

The latest one making the rounds on Twitter is Stable Diffusion, an image-generating AI from the DreamStudio team. What makes Stable Diffusion different is the fact that it’s open-source. That alone has brought up a lot of concerns as to how the tool could be used in harmful ways. But something that’s been even more controversial is how these types of AI tools might abolish creative jobs and stock image websites.

An interesting article from Washington Post tells the story of how maker Jason Allen, who runs a tabletop fantasy games company, submitted an artwork generated by Midjourney (another AI tool) and won a fine-arts competition. It’s hard to tell how this will play out in the long run and whether technology like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion will completely remove the need for creative jobs or will simply be used as a tool to enhance creativity.

Expert opinions seem to lean towards the former case. Back in April, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, shared his thoughts on the matter: “Although I firmly believe AI will create lots of new jobs, and make many existing jobs much better by doing the boring bits well, I think it’s important to be honest that it’s increasingly going to make some jobs not very relevant (like technology frequently does).”

Safety concerns around the ethics of AI could be what delays the process though. And just like ATMs replaced bank tellers, change is inevitable as technology advances.

Which camp are you in?

Ask any maker who’s been through it – fundraising is hard. In some cases, outright brutal. Still, it’s a necessary evil for those wanting to build and scale large companies. Many household brands you see today likely wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for some outside help.

That’s not to say lifestyle and bootstrapped companies can’t be successful. In fact, we’ve seen plenty prove external funding isn’t the only way to build a business. Just last year the biggest-ever exit by a bootstrapped business happened. Hint: it’s MailChimp, which sold for a whopping $12B to Intuit.

If you’re in the process of raising a round or are thinking about it, we’ve got some resources you may want to check out.

ScaleUp features fundraising templates and resources you need, in ClickUp.

Fundraising Template 2.0 includes an investor CRM, pitch deck content builder, templates for your email communication, and a due diligence checklist as part of a Notion template.

Venture Roof is a collection of fundraising guides that consists of a 20+ investor list, 500+ accelerators, and 7k+ start-up advisors.

Funden™ is a fundraising platform that helps you perfect your pitch, target qualified investors, and receive warm intros to a global network of 500+ partner VCs.

Fundraising Questions is a curated collection of 120+ questions VCs will ask you and that you can ask them.

deck.rocks uses GPT-3 to generate pitch decks from one-liner ideas.

And if you’ve already got the cash in the bank, check out how this company is helping founders get more from their investors.