Email's Not Dead

Introducing the new Product Hunt Daily Digest. Get yours here. ??

In early 2013, I shared some thoughts on Email-First Startups, highlighting successful businesses like AngelList, Timehop, and Thrillist that began as an email newsletter. I’ve always admired the simplicity of email and perhaps the irony of building a business in this day on such a seemingly archaic medium.

8 months after that post, I started Product Hunt, a daily email of new tech products. Within the first week, hundreds of folks subscribed.

Since then, the platform has expanded quite a bit. We’re on the web, on your iPhone, in your Mac’s menu bar, inside your Slack, and in your Chrome browser. But email has always been core to Product Hunt, a morning routine for hundreds of thousands of people. Today we’re introducing a big update.

Now with friends (and more)

As the community’s grown, so has the diversity of apps, sites, services, and products. You’ll find everything from Google’s new custom keyboard to aplushie goat. There are also thousands of collections and topics to follow, including everything Pokemon, super useful Mac Menu Bar Apps, and popular Slack bots.

But we all have different interests. If you’re a developer, you should probably check out Dash (and follow the Developer Tools topic). If you live on your Mac, you need to download f.lux. If you’re obsessed with Pokemon GO, you might find Snorlax with the help of Pokecrew.

We also have different friends and people we follow. There’s a lot of great discussion and opinions shared on Product Hunt every day.

Until now, everyone received the same email digest. Starting today, you’ll receive a daily digest created just for you, created by the people and things you follow on Product Hunt. Here’s a recent digest I received:

Email, first

This is a preview of where Product Hunt is heading and like the beginning, email is the first step.

We’re rolling out the new email digest over the next few weeks to everyone, but if you’d like to get yours early, subscribe here. ??