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The Leaderboard
February 7th, 2025
Europe fires back

Happy Friday legends and welcome back to the Leaderboard! In today's issue, we're diving into what could be Europe's answer to AI, Apple's latest app that falls short of expectations, Product Hunt forums, our latest feature, and an AMA with a Founder that sold not one but two companies.

Not just bottle caps

Le Chat: Mistral's AI assistant for life and work

Mistral stayed quiet while OpenAI and Anthropic dominated the AI race, but Le Chat shows they’ve been busy. Europe has taken plenty of hits for lagging in AI, but watching Mistral’s models spin up apps in seconds—like this Kawaii calculator—makes it clear they’re not that far behind. Le Chat combines real-time search and document analysis, but the real question is whether it’s just a cool demo or something that can actually pull people away from ChatGPT and DeepSeek. Either way, it’s interesting to see the EU finally putting up some competition.

Falls short of expectations

Apple Invites: Apple's event planning app.

I was excited about Apple Invites—until I realized it only really works if everyone’s in the Apple ecosystem (and you’re paying for iCloud+). As a Spotify user, the shared Apple Music playlists are useless to me, and if I just wanted to share event photos, Shared Albums already do that. The only real perk is managing RSVPs, but for anything short of a wedding, I’d just use WhatsApp. If you already use Partiful, I don’t see a reason to switch—unless your entire social circle is on Apple. Feels like time that could’ve been better spent elsewhere.

A place to call home

Product Hunt Forums: A community for every product

The internet is a wondrous place where people share and converse over a range of Topics, however new products and makers have often had a hard time to find like-minded folks or break our from the noise to find others who would be interested in their conversations or products. Welcome, Forums. The new place for nerds like me to talk about the lastest products, ask questions to help get our feet off the ground, and just simply, nerd out. All moderated by a team that I've loved since 2014, Product Hunt. Honestly, has the makings of something really fresh and I'm excited.

Ask this founder anything

Dani Grant, founder of Jam, is hosting an AMA on AI for engineers, debugging, and startup building. Fresh off the launch of Jam AI—which is already writing ~30% of bug reports—she’s answering questions on AI-driven coding, bug reporting, and the founder journey from VC to startup.

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