Compostable fashion: Starting with footwear 🩴
How are you and your *awesome* teams doing? 😉
Here’s what we’ve put together for your weekly Spark News:
The votes are in: Golden Kitty Awards 2022 Winners 🏆
Get email-productive with Spark Mail 📩
Compostable fashion: Starting with footwear 🩴
Germany’s hydrogen-powered trains 🚆
The Venture Building Playbook: Feedback wanted 🌱
💙 NEWS FROM OUR MATESThe votes are in: Golden Kitty Awards 2022 Winners 🏆
Product Hunt ended their voting period for the Golden Kitty Awards 2022 last Friday - and received a whopping 150,000 votes on products we all love! Can you guess the winners for Product of the Year? Yep - ChatGPT, followed by Notion AI, Dall-E-2 and social media app Be Real.
As all these products bring remarkable value to various types of markets, Product Hunt also set up a product “Hall of Fame” page to highlight all winners, including winners from previous years since 2015! (Perfect for some research on how markets, demand on types of products have evolved.)
Go ahead and take a look, give your buddies a congrats if you see them! (We’re congratulating Folk [The best CRM we know, use and love] for being a Runner-Up in category Productivity.)
🤸♀️ FUN PRODUCT WE LOVEGet email-productive with Spark Mail 📩
(No, this is not a product of ours haha 😉)
Do you use any apps to knock out emails more productively? You’ve probably heard of apps like Superhuman, well Spark Mail is a similar app (Dare we say… better?), but for a fraction of the price!
Features:
Focus
Smart Inbox: Separates priority email from non-priority email
Smart Search: Filter email using natural language search
Newsletters & Notifications: Bundles non-priority emails into separate folders
Push Notifications: Manage emails from your homescreen
Filter
Gatekeeper: Accept or block incoming email accounts.
Priority Sender: Highlights priority senders for quick identification.
Pin: Pin important emails in a location of your choosing
Mute, Block or Group: Threads, or by sender
Refine
Done Marker: Moves completed email to an archive folder
Set Aside: Set aside email for a more convenient time, or send schedule to emails later
Command Center: Lists actions and quick keyboard shortcuts
Reminders: Add a reminder to prompt you to follow up
Collab
Shared Inbox, drafts: Manage email and team roles under the same address
Assignments: Assign tasks to colleagues and track their status
Team Comments: Turn email into chat with private comments
Shared Templates: Create, use and share email templates with your team
Who it’s for: Productivity addicts 😛
Price: FREE ⭐️ Until you need more of its pro features - Pricing then starts at US$4.99 per month (billed annually). They have a 7-day free trial anyway, so why not give it a shot?
💭 TECH FOOD FOR THOUGHTCompostable fashion: Starting with footwear 🩴
Fast fashion generates around 92 million tons of textile waste each year - with only 12% of materials being recycled. Israeli startup called Balena (they focus on material science) says that recycling alone won’t solve the problem though, it needs to become a circular economy model.
So in their quest to build that, they’ve been pioneering a plastic they call BioCir to create the world’s first fully compostable footwear! It maintains its shape until it is exposed to specific types of bacteria, with conditions of a compost facility. So no, you won’t have to worry about your shoes melting as you wear them.
They’ve already put to market 1,000 pairs of men’s and women’s slides (with a cinnamon scent!) in Tel Aviv. We wonder how far this could be taken for other items of clothing?
🌱 TECH FOR SUSTAINABILITYGermany’s hydrogen-powered trains 🚆
Mid last year, Germany introduced a fleet of 14 trains powered entirely by hydrogen - and was launched in Germany’s Lower Saxony state (connecting the cities of Cuxhaven, Bremerhaven, Bremervoerde and Buxtehude near Hamburg). An amazing “zero emission” mode of transport, decarbonizing the rail sector more to replace diesel!
The trains mix hydrogen on board with oxygen present in the air, through a fuel cell installed in the roofs - which produces the electricity the train needs to be pulled. You’ll be shocked that these trains cost $93M, but is preventing around 4,400 tonnes of CO2 being released to the atmosphere each year!
💥 WHAT’S ON @ SPARKMATEThe Venture Building Playbook: Feedback wanted 🌱
Working with countless entrepreneurs and innovators, and being in the trenches for years, have taught us that building successful ventures don’t require any secret sauce - just the right knowledge, skills, hard work and pure obsession 🚀
So we wanted to help you get there too, without having to go through years yourself. Just in-depth lessons we’ve put together on everything you need to know!
We’ve been building the Playbook, and are finding ways to make it even more comprehensive, highlighting topics you or any other entrepreneur would find helpful. Could you give us some feedback/thoughts on it, if you have the time?
You can find the Playbook in our Vault - where you’ll also find many other resources, playbooks (i.e The Hardware Startup Playbook) and even perks we’ve negotiated for founders like you 💎
Exciting things are happening every day ⚡️ Follow us on social media to stay tuned!