el producto #271 🚀
Getir and GoTo funding, Spotify x Barça, Assumption testing, DAO challenges, Metaverse as a Service, Netflix account sharing, PLG at Typeform & more
Welcome to a new edition of el producto
🎰 The week in figures
$8.5M: Amazon has finalized its $8.5B acquisition of MGM to boost its IP catalog two days after it was approved by EU regulators; MGM has more than 4,000 films and 17,000 episodes of TV; blue-chip franchises include James Bond and Rocky
$1.3B: Indonesia’s largest startup will raise 1.3B in an IPO on the Indonesia Stock Exchange; GoTo was formed in 2021 by the merger of the ride-hailing, delivery and payments company Gojek (founded 2010) and ecommerce shopping portal Tokopedia (founded 2009); GoTo’s last private round rasied $1.3B at a $28.5B post-money valuation in November 2021; GoTo claims 55M annual users, 2.5M drivers and 14M merchants
$768: Rapid grocery delivery startup Getir announced a $768M Series E at an $11.8B valuation; the Turkish company has raise over $2B to date; Getir claims over 40M app downloads and 1,100 micro-fulfillment centers across 9 countries (81 cities in Turkey, 48 cites in rest of Europe and U.S.)
$700M: Indian food delivery startup Zomato will acquire 10-minute grocery delivery startup Blinkit for between $700-$750M; in recent months, Blinkit had scaled back operations in some markets; India has the highest global penetration of instant grocery delivery at 13%
$550M: Doctolib provides SaaS for medical workers to mange communications and bookings, organize patient documents and facilitate billing (comparable to the U.S. based Zocdoc); the French startup announced a $550M funding round of debt and equity at a $6.4B valuation; 60M patients have used Doctlib to see 300K healthcare workers and 250 hospitals
$450M: Consensys, MetaMask’s parent company which has a suite of Ethereum-based products, has raised a $450M Series D at a $7B valuation; MetaMask has over 30M MAUs; Infura, another Consensys product, is a developer toolkit for building on Ethereum and has ~430K users
$307M: Spotify has signed a four-year contract for FC Barcelona’s stadium naming rights in a effort to increase brand recognition worldwide; the stadium will be rebranded Spotify Camp Nou; Spotify’s logo will also be on Barça’s training uniform; the partnership is worth $307M total
$200M: Aptos, a new Layer 1 blockchain built by ex-Meta employees who previously worked on Diem/Novi, has raised $200M at a $1B valuation; Altos’ developer platform is scheduled to launch in Q3; the founders left Meta in December, and CTO Avery Ching was the lead software engineer on Meta’s Novi product
$150M: Optimism raises $150M Series B; the Ethereum Layer 2 scaling platform was valued at $1.65B; Optimism's use of roll-up technology helps it to process transactions faster on the Ethereum chain; it claims to have saved over $1B in gas fees for users; Optimism claims its network gas fees are 10 times cheaper than Layer 1 solutions
$135M: Akeneo sells software that helps e-commerce and retail businesses improve product experience and acquire more customers; the startup just raised a $135M Series D; customers include John Deere and 1-800-Flowers
$125M: African B2B marketplace Wasoko (formerly known as Sokowatch) raised $125M at a $625M valuation; Wasoko's platform connects retailers with suppliers so they can order products that are delivered by its logistics unit; its buy now, pay later offering lets retailers pay for their purchases in installments; Wasoko has more than 50k customers, and its revenue grew by 500% YoY in 2021 to an undisclosed amount
$120M: Webflow raised a $120M Series C round at a $4B valuation; Webflow claims its revenue from selling to enterprises such as Univision and PwC has accelerated from $1M to $8M over last year
$120M: Talent.com raises $120M Series B
$100M: Xiaomi led a ~$100M funding round for Aibee, a China-based startup developing "AI total solutions;" the company says it specializes in computer vision, speech recognition, natural language understanding, and more tech to help organizations improve their efficiency, productivity, and value; Aibee became the latest AI unicorn
📰 What’s going on
Netflix tests a feature that will raise prices for account sharing; Netflix will soon launch a test letting primary account holders pay an additional fee for users outside their households — a new attempt by the company to address illicit password-sharing.; the company last year ran a limited test prompting users to enter their account credentials as a way to nudge freeloaders into paying for their own accounts; now, in an upcoming test launching in three countries — Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru — Netflix will let members who share their accounts with people outside their household do so “easily and securely, while also paying a bit more”
Meta says it will bring its Ray-Ban smart glasses to more markets; the company will update the software to double the amount of video recording time that the glasses can handle, from 30 seconds to a minute; the Ray-Ban Stories, debuted in the U.S. and other countries in September and will now roll out in Austria, Belgium, Spain, and France
Mark Zuckerberg confirms NFTs are coming to Instagram; Speaking at SXSW, Mark Zuckerberg confirmed that digital collectibles would be arriving on Instagram “in the near term”
Adobe wants to help companies develop the metaverse by making more tools and integrations available across Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Experience Cloud; the creation tools will help fuel the metaverse creation and delivery of immersive experiences; Adobe supports the idea of an open metaverse and offers 3D and immersive collaborative content creation products, including Adobe Substance 3D and Adobe Aero
Coinbase Wallet will now support Solana ($SOL) and Solana tokens ($SPL); Coinbase cited the growing Solana ecosystem as cause for on-boarding: ~$7.3B in TLV (total locked value) and 1400 launched projects; Coinbase also plans to expand integrations with Solana, allowing users to access Solana-based NFTs and dapps directly in their Coinbase Wallet
Apple released iOS 15.4, including:
Face ID with mask: iPhone 12 and 13 users can turn on a setting in Face ID & Passcode to unlock their phones while wearing a mask
Tap to Pay: NFC-compatible iPhones can accept contactless payments through Apple Pay
New emoji: The update adds 123 designs to the emoji keyboard including melting face, pregnant man, and heart hands
Siri voice: the voice assistant no longer defaults to a female voice; Apple also added a fifth Siri voice option for American users that's more gender-neutral
AirTag safety warning: a setup message warns that using an AirTag to track someone without their consent is a crime
Universal Control: this iPadOS 15.4 feature allows users to drag and drop files between an iPad and a Mac, and control them with the same keyboard and mouse (Mac needs to be running macOS Monterey 12.3)
Amazon launched a metaverse-centric game that may help train people to use AWS; AWS Cloud Quest is designed to help people understand cloud computing skills and build basic cloud solutions while playing a game
PayPal is now letting users send money into Ukraine, and has temporarily waived fees for Ukraine-based accounts; PayPal previously was only letting Ukrainian users send money, not receive it; earlier this month, PayPal paused service in Russia
Buyk, a Russian instant grocery delivery service, has filed for bankruptcy, citing sanctions making it impossible to raise more money from non-Russian entities; Buyk launched in New York last year, had raised ~$46M in capital, and recently furloughed ~900 employees
To address the high cost of fuel, DoorDash is offering drivers 10% cash-back on gas purchases made through the DasherDirect Visa cards; weekly bonuses of $5 will be given to drivers that finish 100 mi of trips and $15 for 225 mi; related: Lyft and Uber have added fuel surcharges
Instacart launched a new Shoppable Recipes service that lets TikTok creators add shopping lists to their videos; currently, creators can link recipes from a limited number of partners, including food network Tasty and Hearst Magazines-owned publications
German instant delivery startup Gorillas acquired its French counterpart Frichti for an unspecified price; Frichti has over 450,000 customers in eight cities in France and Belgium. Gorillas now has a 17.1% share of Paris' same-day grocery delivery market, the second-most behind French retailer Groupe Casino
Google announced that its annual I/O developer conference will take place May 11 and 12; the event will be completely virtual and available to watch at io.google through YouTube
Android announced the release of Android 13 Developer Preview 2 with new features and updates, including POST_NOTIFICATIONS (new runtime permission for sending notifications from an app), and new API enables apps to protect user privacy by downgrading previously granted permissions
Snapchat unveiled its Custom Landmarkers feature that allows creators to build AR experiences for landmarks. Using the Lens Studio, creators can now build AR experiences featuring landmarks within their own communities; the AR platform has a community of 250,000 lens creators from more than 200 countries that build new AR experiences to enhance the way users can learn, create, and explore new ideas; they have created 2.5 million lenses with 3.5 trillion views
📚 Good reads
Product Led Growth lessons by Typerform. As Typeform closed Series C, Pietro Bezza shares what took the company to make such a successful product
The vibe shift in Silicon Valley. Interesting notes on where tech power is moving in the Biden years by The Verge
Why DAOs don’t work, by Joost Schouten. Insightful view on why most DAOs don’t really get running, and why they often are a collection of systems rather than Organizations. “Let us use DAO’s for what they are good at: new ways of accounting for equity & compensation and membership back-stops in case of power abuse, and lean on self-organisation systems to allow for effective purpose manifestation”
How to execute the perfect design-to-developement handoff, by Denislav Jeliazkov. “Collaboration between developers and designers is always a source of friction, and the difficulties usually come down to communication. Which is all the more reason to make it your mission to build confidence and trust among the different teams and team members, and to establish a better way of working as one united team with a shared goal. The end product will inevitably result from a linear equation (y=x), and it will reflect how well developers and designers have managed to work together and collaborate”
Consent over consensus, by Jason Yip. “Consensus” means everyone is for the decision, “consent” only means that no one is actively against the decision. Reaching consent is much easier than consensus while still enabling buy-in and multiple perspectives. Consent over consensus shifts the burden to objectors. If the proposal is safe enough to try with no reasoned, substantial objections, then our default position is to proceed.“
Assumption testing and discovering solutions - quickly determine which ideas will / won’t work, by Teresa Torres. “To shift from idea testing to assumption testing, we have to become cognizant of the assumptions we are making in the first place. This is harder than it sounds“
🔮 Emerging trends
Metaverse as a service (MaaS) may be the upcoming solution to help enterprise customers leverage their presence in 3D virtual worlds:
Some of the areas where MaaS can be applied are support collaboration, business processes, investments, cryptocurrency, and other related use cases.
MaaS won't help companies build virtual worlds but will allow them to gain access to existing infrastructures in the same way that we use Software as a Service.
Here are some projects that showcase how MaaS is currently being utilized:
Lovelace World
Propel MaaS
Touchcast
MetaVerse Books
A benefit of using MaaS is that companies with no experience with virtual worlds can participate in the metaverse economy and open doors to investment in an emerging space.
A con of MaaS is that organizations can get locked in with one vendor, which might make it difficult to move to other virtual platforms.
Stay safe
Angel
el producto is free, but if you enjoy reading it, you can support my work and buy me a coffee 🙌
🇺🇦 Help Ukraine - I will re-direct 100% of el producto earnings from this and upcoming weeks to the UN Crisis Relief Fund for Ukraine. If you want to help, see resources from the tech community:
Real ways you can help Ukraine as a foreigner: Extensive list of resources, from hosting refugees, to donation and volunteering opportunities
Help Ukraine Win: A collection of resources and info on how foreigners can help
Help Ukraine: Another detailed resource for how those outside Ukraine can help
Help Ukraine | Crowdsourced List: A list of resources to help Ukraine with crowdsourced info
We Stand With Ukraine Website Badge: A simple website badge to show support for Ukraine
Pro Ukraine Website Banner: A website banner that directs Russian users to Help Ukraine Win — for Russian civilians who want to support Ukraine
I am offering 1-1 consultations with Product professionals affected by the conflict (whether need help finding a new job abroad, pivoting a product, etc)
More here. These resources provide various ways to help, from suggestions on where to donate (if you are able) to petitions that you can sign and more to support Ukraine