Product Hunt, you might've noticed, is everywhere. Since launching in late 2013, the site, which highlights cool new digital products, has rapidly risen to huge prominence in the tech world. And plenty of D.C.-area startups have been in the mix, often gaining a significant boost in interest and customers as a result of being featured on it. There's no easy way to find companies on Product Hunt based on location, but we did some digging and put together a list of some of the most intriguing and interesting D.C. tech companies that have been on the site. Check them out.
Zoobean - Zoobean is a curation service for helping families find books and digital entertainment appropriate for children. The company became well-known last year after appearing on Shark Tank and earning $25,000 from Mark Cuban, which was quickly followed by another $400,000 from other investors. The company is now connecting with libraries around the country under the name of Beanstack.
Encore Alert - Encore Alert is a marketing company with a focus on social media and other digital methods. The name comes from its unique alert system, which keeps an eye on social media trends and mentions of client brands and alerts the client in real-time with suggestions on how to leverage the event to help boost awareness and interest in the company.
Jack of All Skills - A subscription box service, Jack of All Skills is, like the name suggests, not focused on any one discipline or area. Instead, each box has a mix of physical and digital products like books, online courses and vitamins related to physical health, mental and emotional wellbeing and career advancement.
Urban Stems - Urban Stems is an on-demand platform to deliver flowers and occasionally other gifts via bike messengers. The company has its own popular gimmicks like sending pictures of the flowers upon delivery to whoever ordered them in order to assure the customer that they've arrived in good condition. Urban Stems has grown rapidly since it launched last year in D.C. It's expanded to Manhattan and Brooklyn of late.
Callr - Callr is a tech service for conference calls designed to make it so people don't accidentally miss calls. It hooks up with your calendars and uses the information to call you and connect you to the conference call directly, rather than having do so manually. It basically acts like an automatic secretary, which can be useful for those who have a lot on their plate and might miss something like a conference call without the help.
Social Tables - Social Tables creates event planning software to help event planners carry off events as seamlessly as possible. Its cloud-based event management and planning software has become popular with a long list of universities, hotels and business organizations, and helped it raise $8 million last year. The software includes planning diagrams, seating charts, check-in systems and everything else necessary to arrange and run events.
Techy - Techy is an on-demand laptop repair platform. Users can either ship their computers to Techy or actually have a technician come and pick it up from them, although pick-ups are only in the D.C. area for now. Once it's repaired it will be returned, and payment is only due after the repair is proven effective. Repairs are $70 for software and $100 for hardware repairs and are usually same-day.
