My 25+ favourite product launches in September 2021
I really like product launches and I always get inspired when looking at all sorts of product launches to derive experiences for the products I am currently working on. I actually think competitor research and staying up to date with the newest developments or trends in the product space is an important aspect in the work of a product manager.
Recently, I started to do this in a more structured way and created some lists with the product launches that were particularly inspiring for me for various reasons. I think the ideas and comments about the launches I describe can also be inspiring for everyone else and thus I might just share this list and maybe even create some discussions around it.
Have a look at the August 2021 Edition, too!
The products here are in no particular order. However, if you are interested in the categorised Airtable list that can be sorted and copied, I am happy to share this with you. However, as I am building an audience it would be great if you could also follow me on LinkedIn and Medium in order to support me in exchange ;-).
1. Maillocals
Find Emails and other ways to contact businesses based on location, keywords or from social media.
I think there is so much potential in the lead list building space. Maillocals goes in an interesting direction to make this super local. An approach like this can help many B2B sales agents to improve their targeting.
2. E-Commerce Checklist
E-commerce is a long and arduous journey, and you need proper direction and tools to start and grow your business. We analySed 200+ hours to find the perfect tools and frameworks for your ecommerce business.
Very nice tool for the eCommerce space but even more nicer how this is actually presented. This is really textbook presentation via landing page, twitter account, etc. Very good inspiration for other content creators.
3. Analytics Pack
A curated directory of the best startup metrics.
Very important topic for startups. There are many creators that already approach this topic but analytics pack does it in a very nice design, good examples and categorisations.
4. Context
Context helps product teams stay close to their real customer experience with an automated production change-log, annotated history of decisions, performance reports, and notifications.
Very interesting approach to keep product teams aligned on when things were shipped to production. This would certainly solve many difficult discussions and misunderstandings within many teams.
5. EmailWritr
Emailwritr will allow you to create high converting emails just by answering a few questions about your products/service.
Content writing automation is really helpful especially if you do not have dedicated copy writers that can help you to generate original content for your emails. With Emailwritr you can get inspiration and save a lot of time that you would need to ideate new content.
6. SheetHacks by Polymer Search
Discover the best tips & tricks for Google Sheets & Excel Great idea to summarise this via Polymer Search.
Ultimately, we all keep using spreadsheets in our daily work and there are so many shortcuts and tricks that many of us do not know about.
7. Classdoor
Teaching is always better together! We are an online community for Australian teachers who discuss ideas, share successes and support each other.
Nice example to form a super specific community. Certainly creates value for the participants.
8. AdSets
Browse Active & High-performing Ads from the top companies in each domain to gain insights against your competitors.
It is always difficult to get nice swipe files especially for ads. Adsets help to get inspiration for both designers and marketers in terms of how to generate ad sets with a good conversion.
9. Better Product Manager
There is a lot of hype around the role of product manager — ”CEO of product and more” But not all they say is true. And you may never find that out unless you become a PM one day. These tests are designed to give you a little taste of what the PM role is like.
Testing your knowledge as a product manager is interesting in many aspects. The tests on Better Product Manager can also give good inspiration for lead generation quizzes.
10. Card Generator
Our Credit Card Generator tool’s primary purpose is for software testing and data verification purposes. It allows you to validate all payment testing scenarios such as credit card number length, format, type, issuing network etc.
Always helpful if you want to test something in production. Keep in mind that this might confuse your data analytics to some extent.
11. kbar
kbar is an open source, fully extensible cmd+k interface for your site. With Spotlight, Linear & Vercel’s cmd+k experience in mind, kbar aims to be a simple abstraction to add a fast, beautiful, and extensible command center to any of your projects.
This is a really nice tool and any product manager should think about if it makes sense to use this tool in the SaaS app they are working on. If it makes sense it can make users happy with very little effort.
12. Open Startup 2.0
OpenStartup is a collection of open startups along with their MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) we regularly update all open startup numbers.
Nice collection to get an overview on what to expect in the startup journey.
13. Marketing for Startups
47 practical tactics to get customers and achieve hockey stick growth. Lessons that helped startups grow from zero to over $100,000 MRR.
Amazing book for everyone who is working on an idea and wants to generate traffic or test things out without spending tons of money for ads. All the tactics are really state-of-the-art.
14. Financial Low‑Hanging Fruit Checklist
Get a personalised checklist of financial suggestions based on your life stage, income, savings and more! maybe.co has many good calculators on their webpage.
The financial low-hanging fruit checklist is similar and can easily provide value for users interested in sorting our their personal finance situation.
15. eData Library
eData is a data visualisation library, made for Figma, containing 87 unique charts and graphs from all the most popular types and categories. The library is easy to update and customise to fit your interface design and style guides.
Once you start using Figma for designs there is not really a way back. Of course you would still need calculations in spreadsheets but adjusting the spreadsheet or the slide graph appropriately might as well takes as long as actually creating the file in Figma.
16. Illustration Library by DotYeti
This multi-purpose illustration library is 100% for free. Every illustration is available in the following styles: outline, base, flat & gradient.
New illustration library. Always nice to have.
17. Parade
Build your own Style Guide without hiring a designer. Describe the brand personality you want and pick from AI-recommended fonts and colours. You’ll get a free word mark logo, font stack, and extended color palette, plus a Style Guide to show it all off.
Quick and easy brand generator is always good to have. The one from Parade is a super nice approach to solve this for startups and personal branding in early stages as well as later stages. It addresses a clear pain point and therefore is supported by Y Combinator as well.
18. Listr
Listr lets you explore some of the best lists on Twitter, curated across your favourite categories. Just hit follow, pin them to your timeline and stay organised with your content consumption.
Nice enhancement to your content consumption via twitter.
19. SuperParents
Being a parent is hard. Hence, we need Coaches who have been there, explored the best possible solutions and can guide us. SuperParents is a platform to book a session with certified and experienced parent coaches to have some help in the parenting journey.
Again, very clear nice and obviously something that many parents are looking for when trying to improve their parental skills.
20. Bill’s Bookshelf
The best way to find books to read is through recommendations, what better if we could get it from the reading machine himself.
Super cool way to use softr and create a product with it. Everyone knows that Bill Gates has great recommendations and is a big reader. Definitely worth to have a look at this.
21. Product HQ
Product HQ is an actionable dashboard that details the journey from designing your product, to talking with suppliers, to purchasing and receiving a bulk order. Product HQ provides actionable tasks for each sub-page and dozens of databases and templates.
A Notion setup for product is a very nice idea. Probably, it is hard to make this work for any organisation but it can definitely be a good entry point for PMs.
22. Hey.Cafe
Hey.Café is a social network built around communities called cafés. Using the social network requires beans. You can earn more based on the time you are on the app.
Another way to approach online community creation. Many players are now in this space. Hey.Cafe comes with no ads.
23. Workflows by Anvil
Anvil Workflows empowers you to streamline and scale paperwork processes without extra resources. No-code interface for creating dynamic Workflows that handle complex data-collection and PDF forms. Powerful APIs and Zapier support for customised integration.
Imagine any government organisation could just use this and we could fill out all the forms online instead of using pen and paper. The advantages are obvious but when it comes to implementing this it is of course hard to consider all regulatory issues and make sure everything is compliant. Workflows by Anvil, however, shows how easy it could be.
24. Noto
With this illustrations pack, you can create your own Notion-style avatar. No design skills are required. There are 120+ items to mix and match, including hairstyles, eyes, and many facial expressions. You can create more than a million possible combinations.
I was waiting for this for so long. I know so many people that used a designer to create their Notion profile avatar. Nice to see that there is a more or less scalable solution for this now.
25. PoP illustrations
Build great looking products with these 300 modern illustrations made in outline style with overprint colours. This is the essential pack for startups, we also included 100 mind blowing Avatars!
More illustrations!
26. LetterHunt
LetterHunt connects you to 10,000+ niche, active newsletter writers to promote your product. Find and partner with newsletters in your niche and unlock a new avenue for marketing your product/service.
Super good summary of newsletters that can be used in many ways. Guest blogging and cross promotion plays such a huge role in SEO and audience growth. Really nice summary.
27. Mini Course Generator
The fastest way to create mini courses for marketing
Perfect tool for generating small courses that can be used for lead gen.
I hope you enjoyed this compilation. If you are interested in receiving my Airtable list containing all those products with preview, additional comments and sortable categories just follow me on LinkedIn and Medium.
