Product Hunt Roundup (Week of May 17th, 2020)

Glam cams, watercoolers, and metaverses

May 25, 2020

For those who don’t want to scan every product launch of Product Hunt, don’t worry. I do, and I include the most interesting potential venture scale startups here, with bullets on why I think they could be be big.

Top 3 potential venture scale products

Jiff - Jiff is a virtual camera for your computer that works with any app that uses a webcam.

They are platform agnostic , unlike most other solutions. They are a layer on top of Zoom, Around, or Google Meet, etc. Really smart strategy.

#Techtwitter has been focused on making their video setup look good, proving that Jiff doesn’t need a behavior shift to work. People are already optimizing their set ups and their look
Their name and domain is actually very good. if this gets big, Jiff will be very hard to forget.

Watercooler- Hang with coworkers in audio-based rooms

This seems very similar to Clubhouse, yet the GTM is a different persona. They look to be targeting companies with a bottoms up approach, meaning the path to monetization for Watercooler is clear, where I can’t say the same for Clubhouse.
It’s an impressive team (Product lead at Medium + founder of Facemoji), but not so impressive they will coast on their prior successes. They are still hungry for their BIG win.
They are ahead of the curve, being the 2nd major player in the audio app space in the current wave. There will be dozens more, so I do believe they have first mover advantage

Splash for Roblox - Perform to cheering crowds and become a famous DJ in Club Splash! 🎧

As I talked about in Rise of The Avatars our digital beings will become as important as our physical ones in the next decade or two. Roblox is playing to this trend
Roblox is already an obscenely popular game/social network, so they will have an easy time pushing this out to the all of their users.
With Roblox coming off of a fresh $150M in funding from a16z and co, this is one of their first major launches since. They have all the momentum in the world, and I would not bet against a game at this scale

Honorable mentions

Remote students - The online professional community for college students

Command E - The faster way to navigate your workspace

Here’s everything I wrote this last week (Subscribers only)

The Garyvee Model is Business Model Is Dead - Gary made a fortune on betting on opportunities that were undervalued. It’s time we find the new opportunities/

Tune Into My Podcasts, Live - Here is a post on how current subscribers can tune into podcasts I record, live.

3 Reasons Why COVID-19 Wasn’t VR’s Moment - VR is getting a lot of flack for not rising to the occasion and being the main platform to dominate the COVID era. I defend VR and give some color to why it didn’t perform as many wished it did.

Want to read these posts? Subscribe today for $10/mo (Goes up to $15/mo starting in June)

Listen to last week’s Forward Thinking Founders podcast:

On June 1st, I will go public with my subscription of $15/mo, and I am considering this my Seed Round. I will write a few pitches about why I think I’m worth your $15/mo investment. If I have already sold you with my writing so far, please consider subscribing and being a part of Forward Thinking’s Pre-Seed round. I set up a 33% discount for anyone subscribing before June 1st, which is $10/mo. I will write a blog post about my pre-seed round and will include you in it if you subscribe, and there will never be another chance to be a pre-seed investor in Forward Thinking. A pre-seed investor in me. I never forget my early backers.

The Seedscout Daily