el producto #227 đ
PM salary guide, Clubhouse launches Android, TikTok job recruiting features, Structuring Product teams, Coinbase growth, Bird IPO, Gojek funding, & more
Welcome to a new edition of el producto!
đ° The week in figures
$2.5B: Bill.com, which produces back-office automation software, will acquire Divvy, a Utah-based spend management platform, for $2.5B
$2.3B: Bird Rides, a company that offers shared electric scooters, is going public through a SPAC acquisition at a $2.3B valuation. The company currently operates in 100 cities across three countries
$2B: US podcast advertising revenue to reach $2B by the end of next year; a study indicated the market would grow as much over the next two years as it did over the previous 10
$1B: Flipkart, the biggest player in Indian e-commerce, is seeking to raise about $1B at up to a $30B valuation in a pre-IPO funding round
$300M: Indonesian ride-hailing and payments firm Gojek raised $300M from the country's largest telecom operator, TelKom. Last month it was reported that Gojek and e-commerce platform Tokopedia would merge. The new company will be called "Goto" and have a valuation of $18B
$300M: Bullish Global, a crypto exchange platform, raised a $300M round. Block.oneâs subsidiary was backed by Peter Thiel and others. The company is set to offer automated market maker (AMM), lending, and portfolio management tools for users while also providing liquidity to its provided asset
$250M: Mobile gaming group Zynga will acquire adtech platform Chartboost for a reported $250M
$225M: MasterClass raises $225M Series F at a reported $2.75B valuation; the company plans to launch courses in French, German, and Spanish over the next year; MasterClass also plans a B2B business, enabling clients to offer subscriptions as a benefit and to use the platform as a learning management and development tool
$130M: Ada, an automated customer experience platform, raised $130M Series C, raising the company's total valuation to $1.2B. Ada offers a no-code personalizable, drag-and-drop AI chatbot. Customers include Facebook, Zoom, Shopify, Medium, Square, and more. Ada is currently hiring across a range of departments for remote positions as well as roles in Canada, the U.S., and Singapore (Product roles in Toronto)
$100M: YouTube announces a $100M fund to support those creating content for short-form video platform Shorts; the company expects to launch the fund in coming months and to distribute money over the next year; the program does not require creators to be enrolled in the YouTube Partner Program
$75M: WorkBoard, which tracks enterprise OKRs, raises $75M Series D for an $800M post-valuation led by Softbank; enables clients to track and chart performance, and to run in-person and virtual meetings
$55M: Lili, a neobank that combines personal and business financial services for freelancers, raised $55M Series B. The new financing will be used to enhance the product offering after seeing usage growth of 1,500% in the last year
$50M: Stampli, an accounts payable automation provider, raised $50MÂ Series C. The startup claims to have about 1k customers and has managed $20B in transactions since its inception in 2015
11M: Twitch's non-electronic sports category, TwitchSports, claimed 11M hours viewed in April; though the live-streaming platform has featured physical sports since 2017, its July launch of a dedicated section marked the beginning of rapid growth in the category; TwitchSports includes live sumo events in Japan, an Italian talk-radio show focused on soccer, more
940%: Coinbase announced $1.8B revenue for Q1, up 940% YoY; ~94% of net revenue came from transaction fees; $771M net profit, up ~2.4k% ; 6.1M transacting users, 56M verified users; this was the company's first quarterly earnings report since debuting on the Nasdaq in April. Coinbase also announced it will start offering dogecoin and more currencies soon, and reached the top position on the App Store chart for the first time since late 2017, when the crypto market spiked
68%: ransomware cases are trending up, with a 66% YoY increase in cases reported to the FBI in 2020
12%: The vast majority of iPhone users running iOS 14.5 have left app tracking disabled,; in the US, ~4% have opted into app tracking; globally, 12% of iOS 14.5 users have opted in; Apple released the software update, which added App Tracking Transparency, on April 26
đ° Whatâs going on
Clubhouse launches Android app in open beta more than a year after launching its iOS app; initially limited to the US, but the company expects to launch more broadly after collecting user feedback, addressing any problems, and rolling out more features; people outside the US can pre-register in the Google Play Store
Substack acquires People & Company, which helps clients to build communities; terms undisclosed; Substack said the deal would enable the company to provide writers with legal support, insights, guidance on community projects, more
TikTok is testing a job recruiting program in which applicants submit video resumes; companies reportedly can list open positions on a dedicated website, accessible through the TikTok app; a TikTok executive recently wrote on LinkedIn that the company decided to explore tools for job seekers after seeing young people use the platform to share career advice. TikTok is also testing in-app product sales in Europe
Microsoft to shut down its Azure Blockchain as a Service offering on Sept 10; as of May 10, the company no longer accepts new deployments; Microsoft suggests users migrate to ConsenSys Quorum Blockchain Service; the product has claimed GE, JP Morgan, and Starbucks as customers
Priceline acquired Flyiin, a German B2B airline distribution and booking startup, for an undisclosed amount. This acquisition will allow Booking Holdings, the owner of Priceline, Booking.com, Kayak, and Agoda, to expand and apply its global strategy of offering a full array of products along with a payments platform
Philadelphia-based rapid delivery platform GoPuff will enter the European market with the acquisition of small, U.K.-based delivery outfit Fancy for an undisclosed sum
Online bank Simple shuts down, transition to parent BBVA leaves customers unable to access accounts; BBVA acquired Simple in 2014
ServiceNow ($92B market cap) acquires app performance monitoring company LightStep; terms undisclosed; according to ServiceNow, the integration could enable clients to build and operate software quicker; founded in 2015, Lightstep raised $70M and counts GitHub, Spotify, and Twilio as customers
MACH composer is a new opensource framework that helps to build modern MACH (microservices, API-first, cloud-native and headless) architectures
Postmodern. is new app designed for ephemeral, one-to-one, anonymous conversation. It works by enabling timed conversations between strangers that last from 5 to 60 minutes, depending on the prompt you choose to discuss
đ Good reads
Structuring Product teams. Casey Winters offers a peek into how to structure product teams in a high growth organisation. More notably, team and unit structuring emerges once more as a key design and organisational development choices. Short but to the point
Ask why it wonât work, and other lessons while building from 0 to 1, by Rick Song for First Round Review. At an early-stage startup, you'll be just bombarded with advice. You'll hear that X company did Y and it was so successful, or this strategy works so unbelievably well, whether that be OKRs or frameworks for product decisioning. âWhat's much more interesting than figuring out how to execute this framework perfectly is discovering when it does not work and finding that saddle pointâ
Identifying and managing Product constraints: the RIVER framework, by Microsoftâs Lead PM Nirav Patel
Apple is holding back the Creator Economy, by Li Jin. What happens when a product company tries to run a platform?
Crunchbase examines the rise of restaurant automation startups over the past few years as restaurant owners report a shortage of cooks and servers; as pandemic restrictions loosen and the public gets vaccinated, more restaurants are attempting to resume pre-pandemic business, but a lack of applicants could drive more customer-facing automationÂ
The question to expect in every UX (or Product) interview, and how to prepare for it: how would you improve your favourite product? By Chris Lee
Global Product Manager salary guide for 2021, by Jeff Solomon
Have a great weekend.
Angel
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