el producto #285 🚀
Early pitch decks of 29 unicorns, The metaverse economy (and players), Zendesk acquired, Monetization roadmap for Meta, Netflix ads, Emotional products, & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend & welcome to a new edition of el producto
🎰 The week in figures
$10.2B: Zendesk has been acquired by an investment group for ~$10.2B; Zendesk 2022 Q1 revenue: ~$388M, Q1 net loss: $67M; Zendesk rejected a ~$16B takeover offer in February
$624M: Payments startup SumUp raised €295M equity and €295M debt at an €8B ($8.5B) valuation; SumUp has over 3.5M small business customers; the London-based startup’s POS systems compete with Square
$568M: Zomato, an Indian food delivery company, has acquired instant delivery startup Blinkit for ~$568M; Zomato market cap: ~$7B
$350M: Food delivery startup Wonder raised $350M at a $3.5B valuation; Wonder operates 19 mobile restaurants that feature exclusive menu items as part of partnerships it has formed with celebrity chefs, and currently operates in 22 towns in New Jersey; the company is planning on expanding to all parts of the U.S. by 2025
$270M: Singapore-based neobank Stashfin raised $270M at a $700-800M valuation; with a focus on Southeast Asia, Stashfin targets underserved segments of society: blue-collar workers and individuals aged between 23 to 38 making less than $500 a month, and armed force members; it provides its customers with credit line cards, which larger banks are unable to do because of high operating costs
$200M: Personio, a Munich-based workplace software suite provider for hybrid environments, raised a $200M Series E extension at an $8.5B valuation; the new price makes the startup one of the most valuable in Europe
$150M: Institutional crypto exchange FalconX raised a $150M Series D at an $8B valuation; this valuation increased from $3.75B in August 2021; customers including Fidelity, GIC and Blocktower use FalconX for trade execution, market making and more
$135M: Indian CRM startup LeadSquared raised a $153M Series C at $1B post-money valuation; over 2,000 customers including Pearson, Asher College, Kotak Securities and Amazon Pay use LeadSquared for marketing automation and sales management
$130M: Solana NFT marketplace Magic Eden raised a $130M Series B at a $1.6B valuation; the company was launched nine months ago and raised a $27M Series A three months ago; the company reportedly has 92% of all Solana NFT volume
$107M: Crypto API provider Prime Trust raised a $107M Series B; Prime Trust serves crypto exchanges, wallets, banks and more; customers including Kraken, Republic, Strike and Dapper Labs use Prime Trust for services including compliance, payment rails and custody
$101M: AI contract analysis software LegalForce raised a $101M Series D; the company claims 2,000 clients including Nomura and Nippon Airways use LegalForce to review contracts for potential risks
📰 What’s going on
Spotify revamped its concert discovery feature with the launch of a new Live Events Feed; the personalized feature will allow users to find favorite artists’ events in your area and will now include artist imagery and more tour details; local events will also be highlighted while streaming and soon, in other places in the Spotify app
Uber has relaunched shared rides in nine U.S. cities after pausing them during the pandemic; UberX Share, formerly Uber Pool, matches riders headed in the same direction; to encourage carpooling, Uber is offering an up to 20% fare discount and $2 in Uber Cash to those who use the service
Meta, Microsoft, and other companies formed a group to foster the creation of open, interoperable standards for the metaverse; the Metaverse Standards Forum is made up of 35 companies and organizations working to bring "real-world interoperability" to augmented and virtual reality, geospatial, and 3D technologies: notably absent from the list are Apple and Google, which are reportedly developing their own AR and VR hardware for virtual worlds
Mark Zuckerberg announced the creator monetization roadmap for Facebook and Instagram; the company will not take a revenue split until 2024; a subscription integration will be added for Facebook groups; creators will get paid for Reels out of the “Reels Play Bonus Program”; Instagram will have a creator marketplace to find partners; NFTs will be able to be displayed on Instagram
Meta has begun work on a digital wallet intended to function throughout the metaverse; Zuckerberg's post described a new kind of wallet that would hold digital currency as well as a digital identity; the wallet will eventually be interoperable with a full range of digital items ranging from cryptocurrencies to NFTs
Instagram is now testing an AI-enabled facial analysis tool offered by the company Yoti to verify the ages of younger users; U.K.-based Yoti says it uses a neural network trained specifically for facial age estimation; Instagram is testing other initiatives to very ages, including vouching from adult friends and providing an ID
Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger users will be able to buy virtual designer clothes for their avatars via the new Meta Avatars Store; the store will feature clothing from luxury brands such as Prada, Thom Browne, and Balenciaga; the products will range in price from $2.99-$8.99
Mexico City restaurants are using Facebook Groups as a workaround for high-fee delivery apps that take 20-30%; ~10K restaurants in Mexico City closed during the pandemic
Apple's AR / VR headset could release in January, analyst predicts; Apple’s long-rumored mixed reality headset, which will reportedly offer a combination of augmented and virtual reality experiences, will “likely release” in January 2023, according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo
Amazon launches CodeWhisperer, a GitHub Copilot-like AI pair programming tool; at its re:Mars conference, Amazon announced the launch of an AI pair programming tool that can autocomplete entire functions based on only a comment or a few keystrokes
Amazon is developing a feature that enables Alexa to mimic a person's voice based on less than a minute of audio recording; the synthetic voice feature, which has no rollout date yet, is advertised as a way for people to speak to their loved ones after they've died (!!) they couldn’t find a better use-case?
Stripe is making its bank transfer offering available to businesses in the UK, EU and Mexico; launched in Japan earlier this year, the Stripe infrastructure promises to take the friction out of bank transfers, saving businesses hundreds of hours on confirming transfers, reconciliation and accounting, and refunds; Stripe offers automated reconciliation, providing a virtual bank account number (VBAN) for each customer so that incoming transfers automatically map to the correct one
Microsoft said it will phase out facial recognition technology that's designed to identify a person's age, gender, emotional state, and other characteristics; the facial analysis capabilities are no longer available to new customers and will end for existing customers by June 30, 2023, unless for specially approved projects
Netflix is exploring advertising partnerships with Google, Roku, and NBCUniversal to bring an ad-supported tier to its platform; Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos said Netflix is seeking "a pretty easy entry to the market" that it will build on over time
Ikea launched Ikea Kreativ Scene Scanner, which lets users scan a room and create a 3D replica; users can remove their existing furniture and replace it with Ikea products so they can visualize how they would appear in their house
Coinbase announced that it will discontinue trader-focused Coinbase Pro services by the end of 2022; the Pro feature will be replaced by the Advanced Trade feature to migrate similar services under one app
eBay has acquired NFT Platform KnownOrigin for an undisclosed amount; the recent purchase signals the company's intention to continue being a marketplace known for collectibles
FTX’s US arm FTX.US acquired clearing and custody startup Embed Financial Technologies; the acquisition will expand FTX.US’ stock trading capabilities; FTX doesn’t plan on charging trading fees for equities
Shopify is launching NFT-gated storefronts for brands seeking ways to make their stores more exclusive; the non-fungible token gated stores include online and brick-and-motor locations, enabling shoppers to gain exclusive access to drops and collections; the e-commerce platform is adding Web3 functionality to its platform, including DeFi, NFTs, and crypto
Twitter is allowing Shopify merchants to launch virtual storefronts on its platform; the latest social-commerce initiative makes it easier for Twitter users to locate and buy products as they scroll through the platform
Twitter announced a long-form writing feature called Twitter Notes; this is one of Twitter’s more significant changes since doubling the character count from 140 to 280 characters, as it will allow users to write on Twitter directly, as if it’s a blogging platform; users are able to create articles using rich formatting and uploaded media, which can then be tweeted and shared with followers upon publishing
SNAP, and half the internet went down; Cloudflare’s Thanos outage this week saw a range of popular services go offline; a change that was deployed as part of a long-running project affected 19 data centers - 4% of the total network that handles 50% of all requests, affecting:
Canva
Omegle
NordVPN
DoorDash
Medium
Discord
& more
📚 Good reads
Nailing the pitch. CB Insights shares the early pitch decks of 29 unicorn companies (and exited unicorns), including Coinbase, Airbnb, Facebook, LinkedIn, Intercom, Brex, Monzo, N26, MySQL, Tinder, Uber, Revolut, WeWork, more
How to design for emotional product. The famous Jobs-To-Be-Done framework helps PMs and Designers figure out what functionality to design for a product, but not how to design the actual experience. For that, it helps to pair it with Emotions-To-Be-Felt
Thin platforms. Stratechery's Ben Thompson highlights the announcements from two major developer conferences that happened in the last few weeks (Microsoft and Stripe) and - contextually - the trend toward what he calls thin platforms. “in the PC era the monopoly that mattered was being the only operating system on a single device. This, to be clear, is a technical necessity — while a PC could dual-boot into different operating systems, only one could run at a time — but it was the foundation of Windows’ market monopoly.“ Then Microsoft shifted strategy, and we now have platforms like Teams proliferating across any kind of device and OS, and connecting 3rd party apps and services
Stop overcomplicating it: the simple guide to upping up your Management game, by Russ Laraway, author of the new book “When They Win, You Win”. When it comes to operating at a startup, with shoestring budgets and small headcount, folks frequently lean on the KISS principle. From your MVP to your GTM motion, keeping it simple often wins the day. But when we turn our attention to management, advice tends to get much more complicated. From hosting 1:1s and team meetings, delivering performance reviews, or setting OKRs, there are dozens of balls in the air for managers to keep a close eye on. Laraway removes the fluff and gets to the nuts and bolts of sharp management with what he calls the “Big 3”:
Direction: Good managers ensure that every member of their team understands exactly what is expected and when it is expected
Coaching: Good managers coach their people toward both short- and long-term success, helping them understand what they should continue to do and how they can improve
Career: Good managers invest in their people’s careers in a way that considers their long-term goals and aspirations, beyond the four walls of the current company
🔮 Emerging trends
McKinsey has estimated that the metaverse will reach $5T in value by 2030.
The report categorized the metaverse into five different activities: gaming, fitness, commerce, socializing, and remote learning
According to McKinsey's data analysis, 60% of surveyed consumers preferred to perform one of these activities virtually
The report anticipates that of the three categories, e-commerce will be the most lucrative
McKinsey predicts that the value of e-commerce in the metaverse will settle between $2T and $2.6T by 2030
As of 2022, investments into infrastructure supporting the metaverse exceeded $120B in the first few months of 2022 alone
So far, 2022 investments into metaverse infrastructure have already doubled investments in 2021, which amounted to $57B
The rapid growth in investments from the beginning of 2022 suggests that the growth of the metaverse is not slowing down as people return to the real world after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic
The report supplements its analysis of adoption trends with data drawn from two major surveys
One of the surveys gathered data from 3,104 consumers from 11 countries
The second survey from which the Mckinsey report drew insights focused on corporate executives. It collected responses from members of 448 companies spanning 10 countries and 15 industries
95% of the polled executives believe that their industry will benefit from the metaverse, while 15% believe the metaverse will represent a significant portion of their margin growth in the next five years
But who are the technology companies at each layer making the metaverse a reality? CBI made a map:
That’s all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email
Angel
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