Forward Thinking Roundup (Week of July 20th, 2020)
A family habit app, a Wren competitor, and Slappin' Da Bass (Kinda)
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. But first, a message from our sponsor.
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Top 3 potential venture scale products
Joon - A habit and routine building app that's easy for you and fun for your children.
Mental health is fairly misunderstood, as stress often feels like anxiety and sadness often feels like depression, even when often neither conditions actually exist. I think the solution is building a strong base of habits early in life to handle difficulties to come.
COVID-19 is forcing families to spend an unusual amount of time together. This is a new behavior that they will want to fill with something. Maybe the answer is better habits/routine.
For the first time, kids at the youngest ages are on their phones and it’s okay. This app never could have existed 10 years ago.
Capture- The Capture app makes it easy to track, reduce and remove CO2 emissions from everyday life.Â
Lowering carbon emissions has been a top priority for many for years, and is now becoming a top priority for some of the industry investors, like Chris Sacca and Union Square Ventures. Tens of millions will go into this space in the years to come.
Right now, the primary seed stage leader in the space is Wren (who I like a lot), but the more companies competing in this space, the better for the planet.
They are based in Singapore, which usually would be a negative signal, I think it’s positive seeing that they have a view on the world USA companies don’t, as this is a global problem. Multiple perspectives means the planet wins.
Slap  - Slap is the new creative way to live your best life with friends or make new ones. Slap is for people who don’t like to plan, but are always down to do something fun.
One of the severe challenges of SIP is taking away the element of spontaneity from our lives. Slap’s primary value prop is delivering this, over the cloud.
Slap is combining many headwinds to make their own. They are taking features from Snapchat as well as Icebreaker to build the new social app for 2020. The website is also very well designed.
The team has experience running companies in the past and have found decent success. There is a combination of youth and experience on the team, which is needed for an app like this.
Honorable mentions
Reploy - Reploy is the easiest way to generate unique production-like environments for every feature, complete with a shareable link.
Jemi  - Make money selling interactions to your audience.
Here’s everything I wrote this last week
For everyone
Venture Capital Need New Filters - In a world where 80% of the capital goes into 20% of the deals, I break down why this is and how we can change this dynamic with a simple expansion of filters investors use.
Listen to last week’s Forward Thinking Founders podcast:
247 - Jean-Luc Martineau & Ashley Belleau-Dame (Bagsort) On Airbnb For Luggage
246 - Gaby Goldberg & Dheera Vuppala (Hiatus) On Building TikTok For Ideas
245 - Ankith Harathi (Macro) On Building Superpowers for Zoom Meetings
244 - Jonathan Cottrell (Journeyage) On Building & Training Teams
243 - Andy Chen (Sidekick) On Solving The Remote Productivity Problem
First time founder? Read these posts:
Don’t raise too little money - Why raising a $50k pre-seed round hurts you much more than it helps you
How to pick a good startup idea - How to evaluate your idea like an investor would: Timing, assets, and conviction.
How to take an investor intro as a founder - When you get an intro to a great VC, how do you make a fantastic impression out of the gate?
Wish you could work in person with your team, even while you’re remote? Check our our sponsor, Sidekick.
Thanks for reading! See you next week :)