The Startup Ideas Podcast - [DELETED ON YOUTUBE] Best Products of 2025 (Apps, Video Games, AI)

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

Join me as I sit down with Jonathan Courtney to host the second annual “Sippy Awards,” the most prestigious award show in tech for the products, games, and tools that shaped 2025. We crown our most-hyped products for 2026, favorite games of the year, best productivity tools, and best products under $100. We also dive into analog tools like Traveler’s Notebook, hi-fi systems, Japanese porcelain, and simple clothing uniforms as ways to make everyday life better and de-fragment your brain. Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 03:23 – Most Hyped Product of 2026 14:43 – Game of the Year 2025 19:49 – The Way to Innovate 25:41 – Premium Domains 29:56 – Best Productivity Product 42:02 – Favorite Product of 2025 54:10 – Best products under $100. Key Points The Sippy Awards are a playful but serious way for Greg and Jonathan to highlight the products and games that genuinely improved their lives in 2025. They argue that cult classics (Wind Waker, Pinkerton, Kid A, Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring) come from creators who put the audience last and follow their own taste, even at the risk of initial backlash. Distinctive visual identities and premium dot-com domains are framed as both trust builders for users and commitment devices for founders. Their favorite productivity and lifestyle tools—ChatGPT, Things, Endel, Traveler’s Notebook, YouTube Premium, Japanese porcelain—show how small, well-crafted tools reshape daily workflows and rituals. Analog practices (morning pages, notebooks, hi-fi listening) and simple clothing uniforms are presented as ways to de-fragment your brain, reduce decision fatigue, and focus on what matters. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: thevibemarketer.com Startup Empire - get your free builders toolkit to build cashflowing business - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire-toolkit Become a member - https://startup-ideas-pod.link/startup-empire FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND JONATHAN ON SOCIAL Unscheduled CEO Podcast: https://www.unscheduledceo.com/  X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jicecream  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-courtney-4510644b/

In this episode, I share what are my favorite products of 2025? What is the best productivity product at 2025? What is the best product under $100? What is the most hyped product of 2026? This is an award show for some of my favorite products in 2025 and what I'm looking forward to in 2026. I bring on my friend Jonathan Courtney to bring some of his favorite products in 2025. This episode will give you some ideas, physical products, AI products, non-AI products. And it's just kind of a fun conversation that I hope you enjoy because I had a blast doing it. This is called the SIPI Awards of 2025. Enjoy the episode.

And if you don't mind, if you got this far, like and comment. So I know that you enjoy this stuff. See you in there. All right, we are here, Jonathan Courtney. This is the second annual SIPI Award Show Baby where we, We are going to give away awards in 2025. What awards are we going to give away, J.C.? First of all, this is, if anyone hasn't seen this before,

this is the most prestigious award ceremony of the year for tech companies, product companies. Everyone's been waiting for this. It's like one of the most hype things on X. And getting one of these awards is bigger than getting something like a red dot award or a Nobel Prize, Nobel Peace Prize. Those things are kind of like the kind of low-level stuff. and this is the high level stuff.

So I think it's important that people know that this is not just sort of like a, you know, quick, we're just making it up on the fly sort of thing. There's a whole jury. Like it costs billions of dollars to put this thing together. It's completely objective. And as for the awards that are coming up just to give a few previews, we have our, I mean, of course, we're going to reveal our favorite product of the year. Both of us will probably have different answers there.

Most used product of the year. Best productivity product. I'm just making stuff up now. So, like, oh, best most best product for under $100. Like the product that improved our lives the most for under $100 award. And also, I think one of the rules we have to clarify is that the products don't have to have come out in 2026. They're just like the Nobel Peace Prize.

The people weren't born in the year they got the Peace Prize, right? So by that logic, we are pulling from products from all through time, but we have to be using them. We have to have used them this year and benefited from them this year. Also, our most hyped product of 2026. that's a big one and that's kind of it cool so Nobel Peace Prize for technology

basically basically exactly we prepared a ton we aren't doing this on the fly it's going to get crazy here we go all right where do you want to start favorite product of the year I think fever best product of the year

favorite product of the year might be I mean do we want to start with like the best thing basically. No. That'll be the end. How about most hyped product of 2026? Okay. Let's do it.

Okay. Do you want me to go first? Yeah, go for it. My most hyped product of 2026 is Half-Life 3. It is a video game from the company Valve, who are my favorite video game company in the world. They are also launching three physical products next year in approximately March, which is a new controller.

a new product which is called a Steam Machine and a new VR headset called a Steam Frame which I'm super excited about. So the whole Steam Machine product launch last week was in my opinion a masterclass on launching products. But the rumored but still not

confirmed most hyped thing about all of this is the idea that there'll be a new Half-Life game. And so for me, Half-Life 3, which obviously encompasses all of these products because I'm going to buy all these products, for me as someone who plays video games, that's my most hyped product of 2026. I'm very excited about it.

So it's, so your most hype product is Half-Life 3, but you're also excited about Steam Machine. It's the software that's going to play on the Steam Machine. I'm the most hyped about. Yeah. And that'll just kind of, that all goes together with the whole Steam Machine as a product itself. Okay. And what's the difference between the Steam Devon? and the steam machine. Yeah, I have a steam deck right here, actually, which I love.

Steam deck is, so basically the simple answer to it is that the Steam deck is a portable PC video game player, basically. A completely customizable, open product. It runs Linux, but you can also run Windows on it. If people are wondering, what's the difference between a Steam machine, or a Steam deck and like a Nintendo. though switch, the steam deck is just a completely open platform. You can do whatever you want on it. The difference between the steam deck and the steam machine is the steam machine is number one.

It's six times more powerful because it's not a portable product. And it's made for playing 4K things on a big screen. It can play them natively. That's a whole thing. But whatever, we're all good. But the steam deck cannot do that. It just doesn't have enough power because it's built to conserve of battery. So basically, it's the same platform running across all of these products, which is called Steam. By the way, do you know, do you know Valve is a private company and has like 300 and something employees and has the highest revenue per employee for almost any company on Earth? They make about $16 billion per year. Not only that, did you know that they're bootstrapped? It's insane. Did you know that? Yeah, I know Gabe Newell basically put all

his own money into it. It's insane. He just got himself like a massive new yacht, by the way. He's like the only billionaire that people are okay with having a yacht because this is him. Yeah, this is Gabe Newell. This is Valve are my favorite company in the world. And if there's any company that I copy and like try to recreate the most for my business, it's been Val from day one. Dude, is that like, is he drinking like a Mai Tai out of a pineapple right there. Yes. That was like a screenshot from the launch of the steam deck.

This company is like, I don't think, no, it's just, there isn't another private company that, first of all, garners this much attention, makes this much crazy amounts of revenue, but also then just really pushes the entire industry forward. Like the fact that, you know, Sony, which is so much bigger, Nintendo, which is so much bigger, Microsoft, which are like billions of times bigger, can't create as much excitement or as much love as a very tiny company as Valve, even though they still are huge. They're so impressive to me. Gabe Newell caps off Steam Machine Week by taking delivery of a new $500 million super yacht with a submarine garage, onboard hospital, and 15 gaming PCs?

Fuck yeah. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's doing it right. He's doing it right. He's got the pink t-shirt with the pink the pink sunglasses with the Mai Tai. He's doing it right. And one of the things I really respect about this company and the Half-Life 3 meme, if you go on X right now and type in Half-Life 3, this is the most hype that's ever happened around this product. You'll see a lot of people posting this meme called Hopium. It's a picture of the main. character getting, yeah, there you go. The hope he's getting like injected with hope.

That's the meme. So because everyone basically, so this game came out 20 something years ago. And the rumors for the third half-life two came out 20 something years ago. And the rumors that a third one will come out have been going on for, well, since 2017 or 2007 or something. And this week, a lot of different things have happened, including the announcement of the steam machine. and a lot of insiders. It's the first time it actually feels like it's going to happen. Yeah, this guy's been posting every day for eight years about whether there's news for Half-Life 2. I've been showing my girlfriend the whole Half-Life 2 thing because I've been looking at this

for years. I've been waiting for this for years. And she's just like so into it now. And she's asking me like, did Half-Life 3 get announced? I'm like, don't worry. If it does, I'll be on top of it. So anyone else in your audience, if you're waiting for Half-Life 3 like me, if you've got hope, if you're excited, let me know in the comments.

This is a good one. I will never forget the time I saw the Half-Life 2 video before it came out. Do you remember that? The leak. The leak. Oh man, there's a whole two-hour documentary which goes into like how damaging this leak was to the company and their morale. It was a German guy who leaked the game. I think he's in prison.

For leaking? He didn't just, so he downloaded it, so he hacked it to get the game. Then he also, like, hacked loads of other companies, like banks and stuff, and he was doing, like, fraud stuff. I know he got charged and, like, caught in Germany for this. So I remember the leak. It was huge. You know, it was, like, in high school, I think.

And it was such a big deal because of the physics. Yeah, the physics of Half-Life, too. So crazy. It was crazy. Like the idea of real physics in game didn't really exist back then, and that was such a big deal. Half-Life 3, I don't know what will be that equivalent. So that's my only kind of question I'm thinking about.

That's the exciting part about it, because Gabe Newell, the CEO, specifically said the reason they're not going to release another Half-Life games are like, what he says is like, they're products that can show off a new, innovative way- of playing games, like a new way to interact with a video game world. And the last Half-Life game was this VR game called Half-Life Alex, which is a prequel. So it still wasn't Half-Life 3, but it was a prequel. It's still the only AAA VR game.

There isn't another VR game with this level of quality and also the length of it and just the detail. It's amazing. But why everyone's excited about Half-Life 3 is that if Valve is launching a game under the Half-Life brand, it means something really big for the game. industry. I mean, they always come up with crazy shit. Like portal, the portal guns, that was just such a cool, crazy, weird innovation. So I'm just excited to see. I mean, more than anything right now, I'm just enjoying the silliness of being on X during this week. Well, everyone thought it was going to release on Tuesday and it didn't. Now everyone thinks it's going to release during the game

awards, which is in a couple of weeks. So, yeah. Cool. So, I mean, I I can speak about half-life for an entire episode. This episode should just be about half-life. Because it's so good. But I'll give my sort of most hype product of 2026. It's also in the gaming sector. And it's also kind of a meme. Could you guess what it is?

A GTA-6. GTA-6. Aha, of course. I mean, these are the two most hyped video games of all time ever. Right. So I think what's interesting about GTA 6 is it's been delayed so much, right? How many years has it been delayed? Has it been like, well, how long has it been since GTA 5?

Is it like over 10 years now? It's around, I would say it's around 10 years. Yeah, 2013, so 12 years. Still not Half-Life 3 levels, but yeah, it's crazy. I think it's going to be. I mean, the cool thing about Valve, or Rock, who's making this game is that also everyone expects them to not release something unless it's essentially the best game of all time. And there are not so many, there are not so many

franchises where you just, the expectation is so high. I think Zelda and like mainline Mario games and mainline Zelda games from Nintendo have the same general thing where if it were not to get a nine out of 10 in all of the, at least a nine out of 10, people, would consider it to be a massive failure. They're just, they, GTA, Half-Life, Zelda, Mario, these all have very different standards to everybody else. And I mean, Red Dead Redemption, too, I don't know if you played that.

It's pretty, pretty amazing, pretty, like, crazily detailed. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do. I'm also excited. I've never finished a GTA game, but I'm always excited to play them. Yeah, same here. It's actually, I, the type of games I love is actually, like, I love my Switch too. Like, I love the idea of, it's just no murder, no violence, just like, good music, happy, warm, fuzzy, cozy games.

And so, like, this is the opposite of that, obviously. So I don't know if I would play it to the end, but I'm just hyped to actually. just see how do they push the envelope forward? And what does it look like? Yeah, you want to see like what does a company that's obsessed with perfection has crazy high standards and an infinite budget.

What does a company like this do? Actually, maybe one of the awards should be our game of the year for 2025 since we went in a gaming direction. Okay. Like most played game maybe. Yeah. Go for it.

I can go. My most played game of, of 2025 is called Ball X-Pitt, which I've been playing on the Steam deck. It is a kind of like a very fun combination of about 10. It's like a Frankenstein of about 10 different games pushed into one. Ball X Pitt. It's so addictive, so much fun.

The mechanics of this game are just perfect. And yeah, this game is super addictive. Really easy, especially, I mean, if you've got a kid, just to pick it up and pay for 10 minutes, play for 10 minutes or 15 minutes. If you don't have time to get into some big story, this is a great game to just play on the couch. On the Switch 2, it's also on Switch 2. Ball X. Pit, super fun. And shout out to Amher at AJ and Smart, who recommended that I check it out. It's really great.

So what's the concept here? Like, what is the gameplay? Honestly, it's really hard to describe. So you're a little dude in the middle. and all of these things are coming towards you a little bit like space invaders like all of these things are getting closer and closer these enemies and you're shooting balls at them

and as you shoot balls at them you're sort of upgrading your balls and as you do there you go and it's just this very satisfying ball management game kind of like normal life but the balls are even more fun and it's very

the art style, everything, the music is great. And it is a combination of a couple of different games. It's like a rogue-like, it's a puzzle game. It's really addictive, really fun. For people who listen to my Logan Kilpatrick, Gemini three episode, we talked a lot about building video games and how you can use Gemini to build video games. So people listening, like go and play some of these games.

get inspiration, and then go build your own video games. Another thing, just on that Gemini thing, if you're looking for video games that, like, GTA6 would probably be a hard game to replicate and learn about how to build games using something like Gemini 3. But Ball X-Pitt being one of these indie games

that's a little bit more confined. I can imagine that that's, if you're looking to replicate something, looking for ideas of things to try out, that's probably a better starting point than trying to make a massive, open world crazy thing. Love it.

Okay, on my end, I've been playing the most a game called a Zelda game that I think is underrated. Can you guess which one it is? Underrated, okay, an underrated Zelda game. The only underrated Zelda game I can think of would be like Skyward Sword. No, not close, but it's Wind Wager's Mask. Oh, Wind Waker's not underrated. That's one of my favorite.

That's one of the best ones ever. Are you playing it on the GameCube emulator thing? Yeah. Did you get the GameCube controller? No, I didn't know they had that. You can get the GameCube controller to play along with it. Wind Waker is really great. Yeah.

So, okay. So I played it when I first came out. We've got the graphics on screen. This was a game changer. And you're sensing a theme. I love games that push it to the limit that show something new. This was a cell-shaded video game. That was the visual design style.

And when it first came out, people hated this game. Yeah, they were so angry about it. So angry, right? Because they were used to, you know, Ocarina of Time, Major's Mass, like realistic Zelda. And this felt like super kiddie, right? People were super, super annoyed about it. And I remember they were also irritated that you were playing as the young link because they wanted like the story to continue after Majora's Mask

and people thought it was going to stay as adult link and kind of dark adult themes. But then it went to this and yeah, people were so irritated. So irritated. And I just remember playing this full game and being like, wow, what an incredible experience and so bold of the team to actually, you know, produce something like this. Now, over time, people realize, wow, this is actually an incredible game, and it was brilliant that they actually explored the visual design style this way. So now, yes, I agree. Like, it's, you know, I wouldn't say it's under underrated.

It's probably not one of the most well-loved, but it is, you know, if people listen to music, the way I think about it is, Weezer came out with an album called Pinkerton. When it first came out, people hated it, but now it's like a cult classic. If you're hitting on, yeah, you're touching on something that I'm a really big fan of, which is, so what Nintendo does and what Weezer did in that case is something that people, there's different ways of saying it, but the audience is always last. Like designing things, ignoring the audience and basically ignoring their wishes is one of the only ways to actually make innovative things that are special that people are excited about. I think like you know the Henry Ford thing is if I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. And I think the extension of that is being willing to make things that you are excited about and want to come out of you versus making things that are you know people will like. And I think like Radiohead in a music example, one of the biggest albums of all time, one of the most famous albums of all time, OK computer was Radiohead's like, like, like, like, like, It was crazy. Everyone loved them.

They were the biggest band in the world. It was like the best reviewed rock album. It's always in the top 100 best albums of all time. And then instead of doing what you would expect, which would have been making a follow-up album that was also an amazing rock album. Radiohead just were like, we don't do that anymore. And their next album was Kid A, which barely had guitars, barely had drums, barely had vocals, barely had any normal verse chorus structure. A lot of people were super pissed. when they did this.

And now it's seen as like, you know, a cult classic and Kid A is one of, also now in those lists of best albums of all time. But Radiohead, Nintendo, Valve, they keep doing that over and over again. They keep subverting expectations. Like Breath of the Wild, which was the big new Zelda kind of format,

when that came out, people were like, there's no dungeons. Like, we have this big open world game and now there's no dungeons. And dungeons were always the core, of a Zelda game. And Nintendo was like, yeah, we're just trying to, we're just, we want to do something else.

And I think thinking about building businesses, thinking about making art, thinking about making things and producing things, the best companies, the best bands, which have the most longevity, are absolutely not the ones who care about their customers and obsess about their customers, obviously care about the customer service, but they don't care and obsess about, they try to insulate themselves from what the customers want and are asking for so that they don't end up just making something that they want or doing the even more stupid thing, which you saw with maybe the ending of Game of Thrones, where the showrunners were reading all the Reddit posts about what's going to happen. And they were like, we're just going to do

the opposite. So without thinking about something better or without thinking about something special, they just did the opposite, which also nobody liked. So I think that's a really creating something, creating something, and Hideo Kajima, the game designer also says this. He doesn't want his video games to be loved immediately. He wants them to grow on people. And I'm a big fan of creating things that people don't immediately love and grow on them because usually my favorite albums,

favorite movies, I didn't maybe love them or even understand them the first time. I mean, Eldon Ring is one of my favorite games of all time. I hated the first 10 hours. I thought it was a stupid, crappy video game. So, yeah, I'm really the cult classic thing. It's a huge thing. It always starts out with something that's just a little bit too far ahead of its time.

And then everyone else catches up, like the iPhone with no buttons. Yeah. Yeah, I will say for people listening, like one of the takeaways I have is, you know, know, if you're building anything, you're building a product, you're building art, you're building a mobile app, you're building software, you're building a Mac app, if you dare to be different in this case, like a Winwaker, a Pinkerton, a Kid A, especially visually, and you post it to social, you're more likely to be scroll stopping if it's just a completely different visual language. I think one of the reasons why, you know, even you had success on your IRL event series. What was it called? Already there.com. Yeah, it completely hurts people. When people look at it, they're either like disgusted or they're either disgusted and intrigued or disgusted and not intrigued.

Like I almost didn't, I know you. Like you're one of my good friends and you sent me this link. And I almost didn't want to click show me over here because I was like scared. you know, but that was kind of like a part of the brand I felt like, right? You're supposed to feel a little bit scared. I wanted to make something. I mean, I have companies that are very easy to digest like facilitator.com and I wanted to make something that was harder to digest,

but really just like, I don't want this to sound too woo-woo, but like coming from my soul, I just sat down and I was just making it in the middle of the night. I was just writing the stuff, and I was just like, this is the vibe I want to go for. And I knew it, my sense was that it was going to turn a lot of people off. But the goal for that was to be also a thing that sort of grows on people. And maybe, you know, the second version of it, people are talking about it more. And the third version, people are talking about it even more.

But yeah, I was. I want to go to the next category. but before we move on, how much did you pay for already there.com? Already there.com. It wasn't that expensive. I think I paid $12,500, maybe. But I did it on a whim.

I was just like sitting there, like sitting, journaling. And then I was like, Laura, already there.com. That's something, that's something, isn't it? And I always ask her first. And she was like, oh, that sounds, yeah, already there. That's something. I got to get it.

And I just like immediately started negotiating and bidding using GoDaddy or whatever. And yeah, they asked for like 30 something K first, but I got it down to like 12 something. But the funny thing is, that's nothing, dude. That's like a price of a latte. The funny thing is I'm using already there.com for this one-off funnel. Oh, yeah. Oh, man.

You're so relatable, you know, $12,500. I'm not using my, I'm using the money generated. by my businesses. I'm not just like pulling 12,500 out of my pocket and paying for it. It's like it's part of the holding company machine, the reservoirs. I mean, I think the way to think about it is, you know, will you make an additional $12,500 from having a great domain and great brand? I think so. Yeah, I think so too. I think it gives you, it makes, for anyone who knows how expensive domain names are, like with facilitator.com, I know that just by somebody seeing that they're on that website, facilitator.com, they kind of know that must have been expensive. And that

already does some of the trust building for us without them even having to know us. Yeah. Cool. By the way, for 2026, I want to buy some baller.coms. My thesis is that dot coms are just going, you know, I mean, this isn't, what I'm going to say is in rocket science, but dot coms are only going to get more and more value because they, you know, it's waterfront property of the internet, right? Like dot com is the best. And I think that when you're trying to get people to scroll stop and you're trying to get people to trust your brand, dot com just is a little more of, it's a little more trust. It's a little more. Yeah, people trust it more.

So I think, you know, when you look at especially, I would say, you know, $2,500 to $15,000, that range. if you can get like a one or two word domain that that rips worth it. I also think there's another side of it and that when I buy an expensive domain name, I mentally commit myself to the project. So when I bought already there.com, I was like, okay, I have to do this now. Even though I kind of was, it was going to be easy for me to not take on that project because it's not as big as the other things I'm doing. But just by buying that domain name, I was like, you know what, fuck it.

I'm going all in. This is me mentally committing to making this happen. So, yeah, there's that element as well of your own confidence and your own, like, energy being put into something. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, a lot of people don't know this, but you can lease to buy domains or just lease. Oh, I didn't know that.

Yeah. Yeah. You can lease a domain name? So, like, I'm on this website and I've never been on it, Adam.com. No affiliation. but like you can pay in installments right yeah it's a new thing even go daddy i think on some of them have it makes sense yeah i almost lost already there dot com because i bought it from some dude and then like the transfer kind of broke and there was like there was like two months where i had no

access to it and i was like oh come on that was uh yeah i have a lot of i still have a lot of unused domain names a lot dot coms well let's move on to the next category. All right. What is the next best productivity product of 2025? I think that's a good one. You want to start? I'll start because I have a boring and obvious one, but...

Are you going to say chat GBT? I actually am. It is... Chat GBTGPT is my most used productivity product of all of 2025 by... I wanted to do some... I wanted to choose something more niche and that would prove that I... I'm like really more into the AI topic.

But the true answer to the question is chat GBT. And do you use chat GBT? Like, do you have like GBT set up or are you kind of just brute forcing it? I am like boomer level. I just use chat GBT raw. I mean, I downloaded their browser. I'm testing out all the agent stuff, et cetera, et cetera. But most of the time I'm just going, even though I have the desktop app,

I'm going to chat TVT straight to the website. typing in my query, mostly on my phone. And I just, it is just the most useful tool ever. It's amazing. Even just in its replacement of Google's simplest format, even just like the voice mode, sometimes when my daughter has a question for me that I'm kind of not able to answer and we can talk to it back and forth and it has this natural sort of sounding voice. I think chat TPT is just excellent, and we've probably all become very accustomed to it.

I'm using the other ones. I'm using Gemini. I'm using Claude, and I just keep coming back to Chat Chubit. Maybe just because I'm used to it, but I've heard Gemini 3 is better, but I'm really in the whole year, if you just look at the pure amount of hours

that I've put into Chat ChbT, that is my most used productivity product of the year. Have you looked at ChatGBTGBT Atlas, their new browser? Yes, yes. I've used it, and it's cool, but it's slow. Like a use case, I think these companies need to be better, by the way, at showing use cases. Because the use case that I needed, when I showed it to people, they were like, holy shit, now I get it. I needed to find gluten-free, a restaurant that serves gluten-free stuff.

on their menu that was available for a specific date for a specific time for a specific amount of people in Berlin. And even though it took long, it took like 15 minutes, I was able to just walk off and do something else while the agent went around and clicked shit. And that was a huge aha moment for me. Or like also just for other people who I was trying to show it to, that's an amazing functionality. It's really cool. I think it's cool. Also, by the way, the setup, the animation, they created this like weird visual when you're setting it up on the Mac before you install it, like the installation screen. I don't know, no one's talked about that on X, but when you move around the little installation box before you install it, it like warps your

screen with like this kind of rainbow effect. And I've never seen that while installing a product. That was really cool. I'm going to, I didn't see that. I'm going to, I feel like no one's You have to write installing chat or Atlas. It's like light coming through a glass rainbow effect. There's no way that this is how to download. Maybe it's in here. Yeah, I saw nobody talking about it at all. So it's the next step, I guess.

No, it's here, isn't it? Yeah. No, just maybe it's only on certain. I think it was. this, I think it was the screen where you like drag the little that thing into the Mac folder. You sure you weren't on drugs?

I promise you, I wasn't on drugs. It was like a really beautiful animation that was very confusing because I've never seen one of those and it was outside of the app product. By the way, is this guy's MacOS? Is this like the updated MacOS?

That looks like the updated version, yeah? Yeah, mine doesn't look like this. I got an update. You got update, man. I'm just updating Atlas to see if I can, maybe in the settings or something. Someone will know. Someone who is listening to this will know. Anyway, check it out, people, Atlas.

Although I will say chat GPT has not posted about Atlas in like 35 days, which leads me to believe, like, they're creating a B2 or I don't know what's happening. They're probably not happy with the product. So it was very slow. And it kept getting stuck on the privacy pages, like the accept the privacy terms pages, which are full of them in Europe. It kept getting stuck on those. Totally. Europe, full of privacy pages and not full of air conditioning.

Did you see that the Cookies banner thing is going away in Europe? No, I didn't see that. It's going away. All right. So you guys, I know you have like, oh, there it is. There was the effect. Go back. There right now on his screen, you can see it. Just let it play. Look, look outside of the box. These like beautiful light effects that are coming off the little box. I don't see it, bro. Dude. All right, just go back. Go back. Yeah. Stop here. Yeah. Now just look, look at his tabs. You'll see the little lights going over the tab. The tabs, like, up here? Yeah, just look up there and you'll see an animation that's going to like do something. Oh, wow. Yeah. See?

What? I told you I wasn't imagining it. I've never seen something like that on a product on a Mac. That's cool. Yeah. And when you drag it around, they moved with the thing. And it was really, those types of small little touches really. Details. Yeah, I loved it. Anyway, ChadGVT is my favorite fucking productivity product of 2025. Couldn't be more boring. People listening to your podcast, which is all like hardcore AI, people who know about everything. And I'm like, guys, have you heard about that? this thing. So yeah, I'm sure that the chat ChbT team will all be watching this and being like, thank you so much for this prestigious, prestigious more than the Nobel Prize award. I'm going to give a, my favorite product of the year, which has been actually my favorite product for the last few years, but I continue to love it. I'm going to give a non-AI answer. Oh, wow. And you know this project, Things to-do list out. Oh, yeah, it's a German company.

Is it? Yeah. Culture code, I think. Culture code? Yeah, they're German. You've chosen a European product. That's crazy. I will say, I would love to disrupt this company.

Honestly, I don't think that I don't know if it would be possible because there are already a million identical competitors. And there's just something about this product that just feels so robust and clean or something. Yeah, it feels so clean. It feels like I'm taking a shower. So it's a to-do list app that really is clean. That's all it is. Spotless. Spotless.

That's what the product is. It's a one-time fee. So it's not a monthly fee, which I love. I don't like to-do list apps. I find them clunky. And then I end up not going into them. And then I'm using my calendar to do things. And it's a bad situation.

and things is the only thing that gets me to stick to a to-do list. That's really cool. It's also probably the first app I ever paid for. Like back in the day when I got my first iPhone or something, they were like the company that all the designers were really excited about kind of copying because they were like making these beautiful, really clean, like perfect, pixel perfect designs. and yeah, this was the first product I purchased. And the reason I bought it was to like copy design stuff like animations because my job was a designer.

And then I was just like, oh, this is actually a beautiful product. Do you remember around the same time a to-do app called Clear came out? Oh, my God. That was big red bars. Yeah. I was like to-do apps were just going crazy back then. Oh, it's still around. Yeah, I still have it.

I don't use it. I still occasionally open it just to look at it. So this is a great example of, you know, it's such a competitive space. People thought that the category was done. But from a visual perspective, like we talked about with Windmaker, this just hits. Yeah. It's different, right? So you might not like it.

You might be like, oh, my God, I can never see myself using a to-do list app like this. But for a lot of people, they're like, wow, this is so interesting. interesting, so cool, I'm going to give this a shot. What happened with these guys? Did they get acquired? I have no idea. I have no clue. You got to think they got acquired. Let's see. Yeah, it was inquired by impending the company behind heads up in 2024. I don't know who any of, I don't know who heads up are impending.

Do you remember the, the app readable for iOS? Yeah. That was another German team. They got acquired by Dropbox. Mm-hmm. Man, it was crazy here. Tell me more about Germany. Do you know the product, Endel? Endel, like the music app?

It's actually one of the most beautiful iOS apps. It's really, really beautiful. Also one that I pay for. They're based in Berlin, so I'm very happy about that. So they also have really good, they have really great marketing. Like, their upsell tactics are like 10 out of 10. right now when you open the app it's like if you live in the northern hemisphere chances are you felt the seasonal blues and then you continue oh man I love it

their their visual style is also they've managed to like not fall into all the trends of different visual styles and yeah I love the app it's great I'm not an investor or I'm just like the product very cool yeah I need to check this out I there's like a theme here, right? This is also different visually. It's very, very different. And again, these are things that, these are things that if you would just look at it on paper,

people would be like, yeah, but can't you just play those sounds on YouTube? It's like, yeah, you could just play those sounds on YouTube. But they've created, they've packaged this up in a way that just feels convenient, feels delightful, and it just, I just love it. It just feels great. They also have like loads of, you know, every so often, the last time they got me to do a yearly thing was, I told you, I think they did that they had this MIFki, aka a free gift, which is one of my favorite,

favorite things ever. Actually, I have to remember to come up with a good Mifke for Black Friday next week. But they had a really good Mifki, which was just a bag. And because I was like, I like how that bag looks and I can only get it during this sale, I just bought myself another year, annual renewal, even though I hadn't used it in about three months. I was like, I need the bag, so we got to get it. Got to get it. Yeah, Endel is cool.

All right, what's the next category? Do you want to do best product under 100 or most used product of the year? Should we do most used product of the year? So basically best our favorite product of the year essentially? Well, then what's the difference between fav product of the year and most used product of the year? Do we have favorite product of the year? Oh, yeah. I think we should just combine them into.

Our favorite product of the year, which is likely to be the thing that we got the most use out of or most love, I don't know, something. Okay. What do you think? You got something? I do. My most used product of the year and my favorite product of the year, which also happens to be the best product under $100, is this notebook, which is called a traveler's notebook from a company called Traveler's Company, which is also like, you. Yeah, a lot of people will know this. The big thing about this product is that if you've ever been one of these people who keeps buying notebooks,

but then you kind of write a few pages of it and then you're like, I don't know if I should open this other one. And then you start another notebook. And then you just pile up loads of notebooks because you don't want to use them and you don't know what they use them for. The traveler's notebook is basically a system where you can buy the leather outside part of it. and then you can keep refilling the internals of it with different little booklets of paper, which are all really nice because it's the company, what is the company's name again? Not Midori, whatever, one of those really famous Japanese companies.

Yeah, Midori. Is it Midori? Midori's Travelers Notebooks. Okay, yeah, Midori's Travelers Notebooks. So they sell the inlays, all the inlays for the paper, and you basically just keep the same thing. And when you're done with one of those inlays, you just add it to one of these little folders. This is my 2025 one.

And you can see them like building up in here. And so for me, who's been one of these notebook hoarders and I keep buying notebooks and I'm like, you know, I just, I still keep buying notebooks. Field notes. I've got a subscription to them, all of that kind of stuff. But now I'm like, I've got one notebook, one source of truth. Every time I finish one of the little notebooks inside it, I put it into it. a folder and I replace it with a new one. And the cool thing is you can also put multiple notebooks inside. So my front notebook is my like actual work notebook and my back notebook is my

art notebook, which is just where I do like paintings and drawings and like non-practical stuff. You can also put like calendars in there, to do lists in there, all of that stuff. So if you're someone, if you're someone, by the way, we should definitely do like affiliate links or something because we're talking about all this stuff and we never, just to be clear for people listening, this is not an actual sponsorship or something. These are just things we like. And so for this, I bought this one in Japan, but you can buy it online in lots of different stationary shops. It's also what I've realized while looking into it, it's more of like a, this, I hope this is not controversial to say. These products are actually marketed more to women. And so when you look on

YouTube, it's like almost only females talking about this product and talking about scrapbooks. And so I also thought, if I ever wanted to start like another content company, I'd be like one of like four guys on the planet talking about this product in just a different way. So if any of you are out there who are guys who love the Travelers Notebook as well, fist bump to you over there. Because yeah, it is, I think it's an amazing product. You don't have to use it for scrapbooking. It can be used for just your daily work. And it comes with loads of cool customizations and stuff. So yeah, my favorite product.

I got it in March. I've been using it every single day since then. It's the Traveler's Notebook. So I'm not a guy who writes down anything. Like the last time. Like, period. Yeah. You write it into your notes app or something.

Yeah. You know, since school, I've been like, all right, I'm not writing down anything. It's like the last time I did calculus was the last time I wrote something down. You know what I mean? And what is your advice to someone like me? Like, should I be writing things down? Or if I have a system that works for me, just continue going. First of all, everyone should just do whatever they want.

I think there's no right way. I would say if you're thinking about writing stuff down as a way to remember things, that's not the ideal way to think about it. I'm not thinking about this, even though I am storing them, and even though I have gone back to them for ideas and stuff, I'm mostly writing to get things out of my head. And so I'm not, for me, writing stuff down.

If I really want to remember it, I'll probably also put it in the notes app or something. So this is for me sort of like a stream of consciousness thing when I'm in a meeting or when I'm in a session or when I'm just having like a stream of consciousness of ideas, I'm just writing stuff down. It's more like a right now scratch book or something. And so it's basically I'm using it as short-term memory in the moment.

So like while we were talking right now, I wrote this while you were talking. The audience is always last because I wanted to remember to say that when you were finished talking without interrupting you. And so I'm using it as like a short-term. memory and this little place to scribble ideas while I'm talking to people on the fly. I always have it with me. And the other thing is there's there are kind of studies around and there's a lot of things around creativity. I don't know if you've ever heard of morning pages. It's a really powerful exercise. We do it at some of our events. We do this exercise at our events. And even when people know about it, it's always like unbelievably powerful. The exercise, anyone who's,

listening to your podcast right now will know it's from uh um julie cameron or julia cameron i hope i'm one of those names is correct um and she wrote a book called the artist's way julia cameron and the idea of this exercise is you sit down in front of your notebook or in front of just like in you know paper and you fill three pages and you're not journaling that's the important part it is not journaling it's stream of consciousness writing So you're just writing essentially anything that's coming into your mind. And this is a really amazing way to dump what's kind of spinning around in your subconsciousness and kind of eating up your brain power onto a page.

And often just writing is a really great exercise to solve problems that you don't even, that somehow are locked inside your head and spinning around. And so for me, I'm not going to show you what's written than them because you'll think I'm insane. But I use this as well for morning pages, not all the time. But when I'm feeling like my brain needs to be defragmented, when I need to just get some blah out onto the page. And so that's, if you don't want to write stuff down, I think an exercise that can be fun to try

if you haven't written so much before is something like morning pages. Yeah, this is cool. I'm going to try this out. I'll let you know how it goes. I never heard about this. It's really cool. Cool. My product, let me get the name. So I heard about this product just walking around in Tokyo. You actually gave me this idea to give a Japanese sort of product recommendation. It is called Yomiko Ihochi porceles. So it's a dinnerware line that is absolutely stunning.

And I love their mugs. I love their T-sets. It's so clean. And it's my favorite product of the year because it, the website's not loading. That's how much they don't care about. I love companies that don't care about this stuff because they're just like, we want to make our products really good.

Exactly. And everything else just gets ignored. Okay, here it is. Look at it. It looks very nice. Oh, it looks beautiful. It's so calming. It is so calming.

Every time I pour myself a cup of coffee or some tea or I have a little pastry or something like that. The other thing I like is I love in America, as you know. And in America, bigger is better. It's all about, right? And what's cool about Japan is, you know, you see people in Japan. having pastries every day and having sweets every day. But they're not having like huge portions of it. They're tiny portions, yeah.

They're super tiny. It's like literally a couple bites. So it's also a reminder to have just a, you know, not to overindulge, but to indulge. I think this, I'm really glad you chose this because I think a lot of people, one of my, I guess, values or philosophies in life is to optimize for your day to day and not for like, so you buying this, you get to see this product

and use this product every day. And so on a random Tuesday, this thing is making your life better. And I think a lot of people are a bit confused sometimes when they come to my apartment and they see something like I bought a new hi-fi system and they ask me how much it is and I tell them. And they know I could have also bought something else more practical or like I could have had a I could have a better car or something else. I could be investing in getting a house, whatever it is. But I'm like, I am looking at this thing every single day. Every day I wake up, I use this thing.

And that is more incrementally making my life better than if I were to have spent the same amount to get a better car, which I'm, which is down in the garage and I'm using it every so often. And so something like this I love because I don't know how expensive it is. I would imagine it's more than like an IKEA plate. but you probably care about it and think about it when you use it, which improves just your basic every Tuesday. I don't know if you know what I'm trying to say, but I like investing in things that make just... You're speaking to my core right now.

You're speaking to my core. This is exactly like why I chose this as my favorite product. It's because every day I see it. I also love that it's like there's no USD prices or euros, right? It's like this is what it is in the end's. Yeah. It's super cool. I love things like that.

Yeah, look how nice it is. It's beautiful. That's what I also, this notebook is just feels beautiful. The paper in it is beautiful. I like to hold it in my hand. I recently oiled it. Like I oiled my notebook. Whoa, now you're taking it too far, my friend.

My old is my notebook, baby. By the way, when I use this voice effect, does it, do you hear me speaking weird now? Yes. Oh my God, I didn't know I could bring this into your podcast. amazing. Anyway, wait, I oiled it. Yeah. How do you do that? I have the roadcaster down here, which is also a great product, and you can kind of build voice effects into it.

Roadcaster. Are we, are we done? Can I give like a, because I mentioned the, the hi-fi system, can I give like a... Wait, your best product down at 100 is... I think that's the traveler's notebook. Okay. I'll give my best product 100 and then we'll go to... Oh wait. So wait. I did my best product as Traveler's Notebook, but it's also best product under 100. So I'm just going to use my two on that one on Traveler's Notebook. Okay. My best product under 100 is if you're not on YouTube premium, I don't know what you're doing.

Oh my God. You've got to have YouTube premium or else you're just going to see nonstop ads of me. It's really good. started in 2025 to use YouTube music. So with your YouTube premium, it comes with YouTube music. And YouTube music, like, you can see some of the stuff I'm listening to here. It's great because you have these long compilations. A tip for YouTube music, if you want something like this.

So you can search for people doing live sessions. Like if you search live, Japan, vinyl, jazz, you can watch like a three-hour recording of someone and then go to videos instead of oh yeah videos and then go to like the third one okay for example and you can what's really nice about this is it's not a i it's just a dude playing music for like three hours and i really like that these videos are great i play these in the background so good man so good so i'm i find myself just spending less time on spotify putting this on. And I use DIA browser most of the time.

And, you know, when you minimize on DIA browser, it puts it in like a small corner. Oh, DIA browser. I've never used it. I thought you were saying Idea Browser. Everyone should check out Idea Browser, though, I think. If they haven't already, I mean, that's, come on. Ideabrowser.com, go get your startup ideas. Yeah.

But, you know, that's one of the beauties is you get like the screen. on screen on DIA. So I could be like on on X or answering emails and I can still kind of see this in the corner of my screen and I just really, really like it. Yes, I 100% agree with that. I kind of decided earlier this year that I want to go more all in on music. So I just bought an entire hi-fi system. I went crazy on it.

But sometimes I still will open up YouTube to one of these videos and stream it to the high-fi system. Obviously, it's not the right. bit rate for any of you hi-fi people, but still, it sounds great. It's something enjoyable to listen to in the background. I can definitely recommend if you want to just like have like a, I don't know, it's, it's, it's pure, it's purely just for the fun of it and the love of it, but I got a vinyl player, I got the hi-fi system. And I, it is a fun thing to do. It's, it's like a kind of cliche thing to do. But whenever I'm traveling now, I'm like buying a shit ton of vinyl, it's like

something to do in a city that gives me a target to go somewhere. I'm like, I'm going to that final store and then on the way I'll go and get a coffee and then on the way I meet people, whatever. But I'm definitely, the more AI stuff that's happening on YouTube or Spotify and all these products, the less I'm interested and the more I want to just have humans curating stuff for me. 100%. 100%. I'm with you. Yeah, man. Maybe that's it. Did we just, give out all our Nobel prizes? I would say so. I think let's go back to the doc.

Fave product of the year, we gave it. Yeah. Best productivity product, we gave it. Hell yeah. Best product of 100 we gave it. Most high product of 2026. We went crazy. You talked about oiling some stuff.

I think we covered it. Oiling the book. I'm wearing nothing underneath this. Like from here down, if you're watching on YouTube, nothing. just oil. What are you actually wearing? Do you want to actually see?

It's pretty funny because it's just... Should we do a reveal? I was in a fucking like holotropic breathwork session five minutes before this podcast. And I was like in like a meditative state and then I'm like, aren't I got to go put on the top half of a tuxedo

and do tech awards? So good. It's great. What are you wearing? underneath. I thought you'd never ask. Show me. The truth is, you came onto the pod and I saw you wearing a suit and I said, oh my God, that's such a good idea. Give me one second.

And then like literally one second later. So I'll show you what I'm wearing. And actually I'll show what I'm wearing and then it ties into a bonus product under $100 that I recommend. Actually two bonus product. I'm wearing shorts. You have to go back a little further. Show us that sweet little butt.

Oh, yeah. Are they Bori shorts? These are Lulammon shorts. Oh, man, you got to go Vori. You got to upgrade to Vori. I don't even know. I've never heard of that. Are you fucking serious?

Dude, Vory is like, Lulu Lemon is like done. We're all on to Vorey now. That's why I bring you out to the pot. It's like the slight step up higher class. class Lulu Lemon, you know? V-O-U-R-I. Yeah, it's an American, it's a California company. Like, they have the nicest shorts and like, Vori's amazing. Okay, what are they going to put on something from Vori? You're going to burn everything from Lulu Lemon. I don't want to say anything bad about Lul-L-L-L-Lamon, but I can't go back into one

of those stores up. I like, first of all, they're not the same price as Louie Lemon. Okay, well, then you definitely need to just do Vori. These shorts are great. The, uh, up into the right. Down. Down one. These are black ones on the right and the left there. The bestsellers, the core shorts. I just bought crap tons of these. They're great.

I mean, I don't look as good as this guy when I'm wearing them, but you know. Yes, you do. Because I don't really exercise. I actually love my Lou Lemon shorts. I think they're great. I don't spend a lot of money on clothes. And I'll recommend you'll think this is crazy. but I'm going to recommend my Lou LaLumin shorts.

I think they're great. I'm also going to recommend my Fruit of the Loom T-shirts. Ah, classic. I haven't seen that friend for a while. So I started buying these, basically, Fruit of the Loom shirts. They're literally so cheap. Six-pack for $19. It's a joke.

Is that made out of like poison or something or just rats? I mean, here. look. It's like 100% rat skin. I find the fit to be perfectly good. And I don't, I have it, I have like, like, literally like 15 white T's and 15 black teas. And I don't worry about, you know, staining it with coffee or, or whatever, miscellaneous fluids. I don't, I don't have to worry about it. And I could get new shirts every, you know, four or five, six months. and to me it's been a game changer and highly recommend it. I think what you're doing makes a lot of sense.

And unfortunately for me, in the last four or five years, I've got a taste for more expensive clothes. And it's very fun. It's a fun process, but it's also it's addictive. It's bad. Yeah. Well, you have expensive taste. I mean, I don't know.

Some things I do. Look at you right now. I'm wearing for this. Did you notice I keep opening the buttons? All right, dude. That was great. Thank you. Thank you for the time.

If you like this, please let us know in the comment section. If you haven't liked this video already, that is a darn crime. I'll include some show notes where you can actually go and check out some of these products and also where you can find Jonathan Courtney and his podcast, the unscheduled CEO. Thanks again. I want to be extremely disappointed after listening to this. This was fun.

I appreciate you. Bye.