el producto #273 🚀
Apple payments tech, Amazon drone delivery, Big tech AR/VR rush, Spotify podcast discovery, Google AirTags, Misused metrics, Best platform strategies, & more
Welcome to a new edition of el producto
🎰 The week in figures
$3.3B: HP announced it will acquire remote conferencing hardware maker Poly at an implied enterprise value of $3.3B; HP said the acquisition will help meet customer demands for hybrid work setups; Poly makes cameras, headsets, voice and supporting video conference software
$1.1B: GoTo,Indonesia’s largest tech company, raised $1.1B in one of the year’s largest IPOs to date; the company was valued at $28B after the offering, making it the country’s fourth-most-valuable company listed on its stock exchange; the debut was the third-largest in Asia this year, following LG Energy Solution and Jinko Solar Co
$1B: Gopuff is on the verge of securing $1B in financing; it was previously reported that it was considering a public offering later this year, but IPO plans appear to have been shelved due to the market downturn; the financing news comes on the heels of Gopuff’s announcement yesterday to lay off 3% of its 15,000-strong workforce
$620M: Fintech company Cross River Bank has raised $620M at over a $3B valuation; Cross River provides payment rails, APIs and banking services to companies like Affirm, Coinbase and Stripe
$200M: Nova Labs, formerly known as Helium, raised $200M for its fast-growing Helium blockchain; the California-based company was valued at $1.2B; advertising itself as "The People's Network," Nova provides a decentralized telecommunications network based on crypto incentives; it provides hotspots through which owners provide spare bandwidth in exchange for HNT tokens, currently trading at $24.68 each; there are currently 680,000 hotspots in 50,000 cities worldwide, with approximately 75,000 new hotspots and 5,000 cities being added each month
$166M: French PropTech startup Deepki raised $166M (€150M) Series Cfunding; the startup provides a SaaS platform to monitor ESG (environmental, social, and governance) objectives, including carbon emissions targets, set out by respective real estate clients
$105M: Docker raised $105M Series C on a $2.1B valuation; Docker develops an open platform for building, shipping, and running distributed applications; its platform allows developers and system administrators to create and run applications as a collection of containers that work across laptops, data centre virtual machines, and public cloud instances
$100M: London’s Builder.ai, which offers low-code tools for building apps, raised $100M in Series C, bringing its total raise to date to $195M; the company claims to have increased revenues by 300% over the past year
$100M: One-click checkout startup Fast is in talks to raise $100M at a $450M valuation; Fast's revenue in 2021 was $600,000, and CEO Domm Holland said it would cut its staff by over 50% by the end of this year to ~200 to reduce costs; Fast had set a target of processing $1B worth of transactions in 2021 but only reached $30M
70k: An estimated 70K computer specialists left Russia since the Ukraine invasion; this week, Putin responded by approving legislation to eliminate income taxes from now till 2024 for employees of IT companies
1,300: Amazon is looking to partner with 1,300 customers in California and Texas to deliver packages via its Prime Air drones as part of a pilot; customers can order products (<5 pounds) from various categories, including pet supplies and beauty; Amazon wants to fulfill orders within 1h and will deliver one item at a time. Amazon's delivery drones experienced at least 8 crashes in the last 13 months; the company performed over 2,300 tests last year, and there were no injuries; the cause of the crashes ranged from motor failures to software glitches.
📰 What’s going on
Spotify is testing a podcast discovery feed; the explore tab allows users to swipe through samples of different podcasts; AI generated dynamic transcripts are shown on the screen
Data.ai (formerly App Annie) launched a new product called App IQ, which offers competitive intelligence about app features, from monetization methods to social features, so businesses can identify both competitive threats and partnership opportunities
Uber received its 30-month license to operate in London, ending a 5-year battle with the city's transportation agency over concerns that it lacked enough safety protocols; London is Uber's largest market in Europe
Google is working on its own AirTag detection features; Google Play Services 22.12.13 includes code referring to “unfamiliar device alerts” and “unfamiliar tag detection notifications”
Google announced its new Retail Search tool designed to combat search abandonment; Google says the tool "will produce better results from even the broadest queries"
YouTube TV finally added support for picture-in-picture viewing on iOS 15 and higher; as for the main YouTube app? still in the works for “the coming months,” the company said.
YouTube is also working on a plan to ingest RSS feeds to build out a Podcasts homepage on its platform and likely help power podcasts on its streaming music app, YouTube Music
Barcelona-based Glovo is running its food and grocery delivery app in Ukraine as a nonprofit; the company has 2,000+ couriers in the war-torn country running groceries, restaurant meals and prescriptions to people in need; Glovo said it decided to reopen in cities after finding some couriers were already donating their time to ad hoc groups that were working to help keep supplies flowing; this way, those couriers can get paid for that work
Alexa will now give Prime members advance notice when a product in their wishlist, shopping cart, or that has been "saved for later" is going on sale; notifications will be issued up to 24 hours before the deals begin; customers can place an order by saying, "Alexa, buy it for me"
Twitter has been testing a feature that would allow two users to co-author a single tweet; sources provided new screenshots and details about “Collaborations," which may get a wide release in the future
Twitter added “Professional Accounts;” the feature allows users to convert their accounts to include business information, and provides access to pro tools, like Twitter Shopping and the Ads Ecosystem, including Quick Promote, + other things
Instagram upgraded its DM inbox with over a half dozen new features, including the ability to share music previews in DMs, the ability to send a message silently, the ability to see who’s online to chat with, the ability to reply to messages while you browse your feed, a quick send feature for sharing with four friends with a tap, plus a new theme and polls
WhatsApp upgraded its voice message functionality with several new features, and announced that people are now sending 7B voice messages on the platform daily
Meta Platforms kicked off a new Spark AR competition, ending April 19, that will see winners receiving up to $25,000 for effects that take advantage of the group AR functionality on Instagram and Messenger video calls
According to Facebook engineers, a Facebook bug led to increased views of harmful content; instead of limiting posts from serial misinformation spreaders, their News Feed was giving harmful posts distribution; this error spiked views by over 30% over the past six months; their systems also failed to demote certain content containing Russian state media which they recently pledged to stop recommending in light of the Ukraine invasion
Apple is said to be building its own payments technology to reduce its reliance on partners; the project is dubbed “Breakout” in-house and indicates the company’s interest in expanding into fintech beyond Apple Pay, Apple Card and the transactions it processes across the App Store and iTunes
Apple’s Senior VP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, responded to a user’s email asking why there was a delay in receiving iOS software updates automatically; the exec explained that Apple incrementally rolls out new iOS updates by “first making them available for those that explicitly seek them out in Settings, and then 1-4 weeks later (after we’ve received feedback on the update) ramp up to rolling out devices with auto-update enabled.” (So, I guess if you want updates sooner, go hit up Settings!)
Apple this week announced it will begin to allow a subset of applications sold on its App Store to link to an external website where users can create or manage their accounts with the app developer; the change to Apple’s App Store Review guidelines only applies to what Apple calls “reader” apps — apps designed primarily to provide access to some sort of digital content, like magazines, books, audio, music or video
Apple launched Apple Business Essentials, designed to help smaller businesses manage devices without necessarily having IT expertise in-house
NFT exchange OpenSea will add support for Solana NFTs to the platform in April 2022; the company previously only supported Ethereum NFTs; Magic Eden, the largest Solana NFT marketplace currently accounts for 80% of Solana NFT volume
Latin American neobank Nubank has announced the launch of its proprietary online payments solution; with NuPay, the digital banking giant allows customers to complete their e-commerce purchases with a few clicks within the firm’s app; the firm’s new solution allows for payment with account balances or interest-free installments through the Nubank app
Waymo is launching its driverless ride service for its employees in San Francisco; the Alphabet-owned company has operated a driverless service in Phoenix’s East Valley since 2020; Waymo will also expand its service to Phoenix downtown
Robinhood will extend its equities trading window by four hours, now ranging 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET; the company cites customer demand for extended hours trading and wants to eventually reach 24/7 trading; Robinhood had 22.7M net cumulative funded accounts as of its last quarterly report
TikTok is is partnering with image and video content platform GIPHY for its newly launched in-app creation tool called TikTok Library; TikTok creators will be able to use GIPHY’s content library for video creation; Facebook (Meta) bought GIPHY for $315M in 2020, but was ordered to sell GIPHY by the UK Government’s antitrust authority in Nov 2021; Meta is appealing the ruling
📚 Good reads
3 most dangerously misused metrics in tech. Short but insightful LinkedIn post by Head of Growth at Amplitude Elena Verna
Jobs To Be Done and platform thinking, by Michael J. Lever. Applying the JTBD framework in the context of relational ecosystems, transactions, and - overall - in the context of platforms can be a powerful way to make research more accessible
Bootstrapping Web3 networks: the limitations of token incentives. Sameer Singh shares a reflection on the dangers of using passive financial utilityas a driver of network adoption to overcome liquidity and create long-term engagement in Web3 networks
The best marketplaces run on commission - the best strategies to moentize platforms. Amazing data research from Sharetribe + Lenny Rachitsky: this comprehensive report covers monetization strategies at the top 100 marketplaces
Two-way writeups. Coda’s secret to shipping fast: the evolution after slides and long memos
[Podcast + transcript] John Cutler on becoming a catalyst for change. When people think about a product evangelist, they tend to think of someone who knows the product like the back of their hand, who sings its praises and leaves a trail of loyal fans anywhere they go. Someone whose job it is to create a cult surrounding a product. They’re not wrong, of course. But there’s more to the role than meets the eye
🔮 Emerging trends
From Apple to Google, big tech is rushing to build VR and AR headsets. Why they are betting on the next big platform after the smartphone, by The Economist
Have a great week ahead!
Angel
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🇺🇦 Help Ukraine - I will re-direct 100% of el producto earnings from this and upcoming weeks to the UN Crisis Relief Fund for Ukraine. I am also offering 1-1 consultations with Product professionals affected by the conflict (whether need help finding a new job abroad, pivoting a product, etc)