el producto #251 đ
Udemy IPO, Meta-products, The future of e-learning, Bitcoin's network effects, Uber bets on Tesla, Q3 financials, Product positioning & more
đ° The week in figures
$1T: Tesla saw its total market value surpass $1T for the first time on Monday, as its share price exceeded $1k for the first time
$4B: Customer service platform Zendesk ($14.28B market cap) to acquire experience management firm Momentive ($3.68B market cap), parent of SurveyMonkey, for $4B in stock; both companies' stock prices dropped following the news; Zendesk expects its largest acquisition to date to close in the first half of next year
$1.2B: Rent the Runway closes down ~8% in its NYSE debut; the firm priced shares at $21 each; trading closed at $19.29 per share, leaving the firm with a $1.2B market value; the company saw its active subscriber base double from February to 112k as of Sept 30
$421M: Shares of San Francisco-based Udemy, which sold for $29 in the IPO, opened Friday at $27 and fell as much as 10%, raising $421M and giving the company a market value of about $3.7B
$400M: Digital physical therapy firm Hinge Health raises $400M at a $6.2B valuation; investors last valued the firm at $3B in January; the company provides motion-tracking sensors and software enabling people to do physical therapy sessions at home
$251M: Groww, an investment platform targeting millennials, raises $251M Series E at a $3B valuation; investors valued the Indian company at $250M in September 2020 and $1B in April; Groww enables users to invest in stocks, mutual funds, futures and options, more
$250M: Andreessen Horowitz led Blockchain infrastructure provider Alchemy's $250M Series C at $3.5B valuation. Alchemy specializes in node management, which handles communication points within a blockchain network. Alchemy's revenues have increased 15x since its $80M Series B in April
$200M: Micro-mobility firm Tier announces the first close of a $200M Series D at a $2B valuation; investors valued the Berlin-based startup at ~$1B for a $250M Series C last November; the company rents e-bikes, e-mopeds, and e-scooters
$200M: Fabric, which operates micro-fulfillment centers with robots that pick and pack orders for same-day delivery, raises $200M Series C at a $1B+ valuation; customers include FreshDirect, Instacart, and Walmart; the company plans to help grocery operators run marketplaces and more
$188M: Yugabyte, which provides an open-source distributed SQL database, raises $188M at a $1.3B+ valuation; the company serves ~50 commercial customers, including Kroger and Hudson River Trading; Yugabyte offers a free product, a self-managed product, and a fully-managed product
$135M: Logicbroker, provider of drop-ship and e-commerce fulfillment software, raises $135M; the company also operates a curated marketplace and plans to grow it into a lead product over the next year; customers include Coca-Cola, Samsung, and Walgreens
$100M: Crypto exchange Coinlist has raised a $100M Series A at $1.5B valuation. Coinlist's platform offers early access to new tokens before theyâre available on other exchanges. Over the past year, Coinlist has expanded its user base 40x to 4.5M users across 170 different countries. The platform's number of monthly active traders has increased 8x in the past year.
$78M: Edtech firm Teachmint raises $78M Series B at a reported $500M valuation; sources said the round followed a $400M acquisition offer from another Indian edtech firm; Teachmint enables teachers to create virtual classrooms via smartphone
$75M: Fintech firm Clear (YC W14), known for its ClearTax e-filing service, raises $75M Series C at a $700M valuation (Stripe participated); the Indian startup also offers investing services, invoicing, and more; Clear claims 30k enterprises, 1M SMBs, and 6M individuals as customers
$60M: Attest, which provides a no-code research survey solution promising faster, more accurate results than its competitors, raises $60M for a reported $273M post-money valuation; the machine learning-powered system enables customers to survey a pool of 110M consumers across 49 countries, with a 24h turnaround
$45M: Embrace, a platform providing insights from end-user mobile sessions, raises $45M Series B; the startup helps customers including Cameo, Monster, and Wish to analyze customer interaction data to inform marketing, new products, and more
$40M: Zolve, a neo-bank targeting Indian immigrants in the US, raises $40M Series A; the Bangalore-based firm has launched its credit card for 2k users and claims a waitlist of 70k; Founder Raghunandan G previously sold TaxiForSure to Ola
50k: Uber to purchase 50k Teslas by 2023 and make them available for platform drivers to rent through a partnership with Hertz; Hertz announced this week it ordered 100k Teslas for $4.2B, to be delivered over the next 14 months;Â Uber plans to electrify its entire US fleet by 2030
25%:  around 25% of Sequoiaâs latest investments have been crypto-related. That totals 10 deals, 5 of which have yet to be announced. The figure puts the firm in a league with Lightspeed, Accel, and Bessemer for top firms with the most crypto-heavy portfolios this year
đ¸ Q3 financials
Amazon ($1.75T market cap) Q3 misses: $110.81B revenue, up 15% YoY ($111.6B expected); the company saw 37% YoY revenue growth in Q3 2020; Amazon projects $130B to $140B in revenue for Q4 ($142.1B expected); the firm expects billions in pandemic-related extra costs during the next quarter
Apple ($2.52TÂ market cap) FQ4 misses: $83.36B revenue, up 29% YoY ($84.85B expected); $38.87B iPhone revenue, up 47%; $18.28B services revenue, up 25.6%;Â $9.18B Mac revenue;Â $8.79B other products revenue; $8.25B iPad revenue; 42.2% gross margin (42% expected); Tim Cook said supply chain issues cost the firm $6B in FQ4
Next weekâs:
Lyft (Tuesday). Expected Q3 Revenue: $860.76M, +72%
Roku (Wednesday). Expected revenue: $680.84M, +51%
Uber (Thursday). Expected revenue: $4.4B, +41%
Airbnb (Thursday). Expected revenue: $2.055B, +53%
Pinterest (Thursday). Expected revenue: $631.5B, +43%
đ° Whatâs going on
Facebook rebrands as Meta; Mark Zuckerberg said the change reflected the firm's position as a metaverse-first company rather than a Facebook-first company; the organization has announced multuple metaverse-related investments this year, including $150M for VR learning experiences, a $50M fund for research, and a $10M creator fund. Related updates:
Meta to launch a high-end standalone VR headset next year; the product, known internally as Project Cambria, will not be part of the Oculus Quest line; the headset will support eye and face tracking, as well as video passthrough for mixed reality experiences
Meta announces Project Nazare, an AR headset prototype the company plans to commercialize in a few years; Meta released a video of a simulated scenario with remote friends, represented by avatars, playing an animated board game at a real kitchen table
Meta's coming smartwatch likely leaked by the Facebook View app, which allows people to manage and share photos and videos taken with the Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses; the watch features a square face with rounded edges, a camera notch in the display, and a detachable wristband
Amazon's Project Kuiper, which plans to launch a constellation of ~3.2k satellites to provide data connectivity in rural and underserved areas around the world, partners with Verizon; the deal will enable Verizon to deploy cell towers without the expense of building traditional infrastructure, like fiber
đ Good reads
The future of e-learning (and teaching). Educational content is now cheap and abundant on YouTube, blogs & newsletters. In this content-rich world, what's scarce in online learning is community. Wes Kao unpacks the research behind cohort-based courses: the case for learners & draw for creators
How Netflixâs choice engine drives its business, from the book The Elements of Choice: Why The Way We Decide Matters, by Eric Johnson, published on October 12, 2021. âInstead of AI for making choices, maybe we need to think about IA, intelligent augmentation, where choice architecture assists choiceâ
Fundamentals of A/B testing by Netflix: false negatives and power, false positives and statistical significance
Bitcoinâs 7 network effects, and its defensibility against competitors / alternatives, by James Currier
Using April Dunfordâs positioning method to define Product strategy, by Marc Noguera. An actionable step-by-step exercise to help you make a diagnosis of your strategy and define your positioning. Complement this read with: Product positioning: a framework to simplify how Meesho makes decisions about what to build and what not to build; âDecisions which are tough and ambiguous, seem quite straightforward to make with this approachâ
Have a great weekend
Angel
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