el producto #279 🚀

A guide to validate startup ideas, Airbnb's new features, Web3 and a better internet, Meta's AR glasses demo, Instagram NFTs, OKRs towards PMF, Tech layoffs & more

🎰 The week in figures

$416M: Faire, an e-commerce marketplace for independent brands, raised $416M in an extension of its Series G round at a $12.59B valuation; the company, which bills itself as an "Indie Amazon," reported 3x YoY growth and had reached over $1B in annual revenue in its five-year history; it recently expanded to 15 markets in Europe, as well as the U.K., where it managed to reach $150M in sales volume in six months, a feat that took three years in North America

$384M: LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr LLC agreed to a SPAC with Tiga Acquistion Corp at a $2.1B valuation; Grindr will raise $384M in the merger; Grindr was last acquired in 2020 for $600M by San Vicente Acquisition Partners

$250M: Employee data startup Rippling raised a $250M Series D at an $11.25B valuation; founder Parker Conrad previously founded Zenefits before launching Rippling in 2017; customers including Chess.com and Highnoon use Rippling to manage their HR and IT

$225M: Palo Alto-based Inflection AI raised $225M; Inflection was formed earlier this year by LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, and former DeepMind researcher Karén Simonyan; the ML startup's main goal aims to develop new technologies that could enable people to speak to computers in plain language

$200M: Habi, a LATAM real-estate digital marketplace, raised $200M Series C at a $1B valuation, making it the first unicorn PropTech within Spanish-speaking countries in LATAM, and the only one to be founded by a female; Habi provides a full stack of real estate solutions, including brokerage, marketplace, and financial services; the startup currently operates in 15 cities across Mexico and Colombia

$200M: SaaS billing solution Paddle raised a $200M Series D at a $1.4B valuation; Paddle claims 3,000 software customers including MacPaw, RemoveBG and Fortinet; Paddle charges 5% + $0.50 per transaction

$200M: Indian grocery delivery app Swiggy announced plans to acquire Dineout from the Times Internet conglomerate; sources indicate the deal is $200M; the restaurant tech platform Dineout has a network of 50K+ restaurant partners

$170M: Crypto fraud tracking startup Chainalysis raised a $170M Series F at an $8.6B valuation; the valuation is 2x its June Series E; the company helps banks, business, and governments explore and analyze blockchains

$150M: Crypto exchange KuCoin raised a $150M pre-Series B at a $10B valuation, 100x its November 2018 valuation; KuCoin claims 18M+ users across 200+ countries

$140M: Payments provider Nexi acquired point of sale provider Orderbird for €130M to €140M; Italy-based Nexi has made several large acquisitions in the last year; Orderbird has over 14K hospitality customers

$120M: Japanese digital payments startup Opn raised $120M at a valuation north of $1B; Opn operates in Six Asian markets, including the Philippines, Singapore, and Indonesia; the funds will be used to expand into other markets across Southeast Asia

$120M: Amsterdam-based BI and analytics SaaS provider Pyramid raised a $120M Series E at almost a $1B valuation; customers including Hallmark, Siemens, VW and Sandisk use Pyramid to allow non-technical workers to generate insights

$111M: Berlin-based Choco, a foodtech making software to digitise ordering, supply chain and communications for restaurants and suppliers, has raised $111M at $1.2B valuation, making it Germany's latest unicorn, following Grover last week

$110M: Sao Paulo-based fintech Dock raised $110M at a $1.5B valuation; the company provides a digital banking and payments platform for the Latin American region; +65M users leverage the platform to facilitate over 5B annual transactions

$110M: Nigerian payments company Interswitch raised $110M; the startup has issued 35M+ debit cards and provides point-of-sale terminals and online consumer payment systems

$109M: Tifin, an AI-driven fintech platform for investors, announced a $109M Series D financing round that brings its valuation to $842M; the startup applies AI technology to an investment marketplace and a B2B arm, which works with advisers and businesses that provide financial services to consumers

13.8M: Chinese fast fashion company Shein recorded 13.8M app downloads between January-April, a 50% increase YoY; Amazon's shopping app was downloaded 13.3M times during this period, a 0.75% increase YoY; last month, Shein raised between $1B-$2B at a $100B valuation

---

📰 What’s going on

Airbnb launched its Summer 2022 release, introducing browsing across 50+ categories; home-categories include Chef's kitchens, Countryside, Yurts, A-frames and Golfing; Airbnb also launched a travel protection guarantee called AirCover

Netflix plans to roll out a cheaper ad-based subscription tier by the end of 2022 — faster than originally expected — as it seeks to draw in new revenue and subscribers, according to an internal note to employees

Google's biggest announcements at I/O 2022:

• a new mid-tier phone, the Pixel 6A, which will cost $449; available for preorder on July 21st; the company seems to be flipping its usual script for this phone — previous A models have featured a camera comparable to the one found on Google’s flagship Pixels but had weaker processors

• the Pixel Watch’s hardware was thoroughly leaked, so it’s no surprise that it’s showing up on this list, but Google’s finally given us a look at what the software will be like; the wearable will run an updated version of Wear OS 3 and will feature a Fitbit integration that lets you keep track of your health metrics

• the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro with a few renders, showing that the phones will have some slightly different camera cutouts and back panel; like Google’s current Pixels, the 7 and 7 Pro will have two and three cameras, respectively

• Google also announced its version of Apple’s AirPods Pro: the Pixel Buds Pro will cost $199, feature active noise cancellation, and have an estimated seven hours of battery life when you’re using ANC

• Google also showed off a pair of AR glasses that were capable of real-time translation during a conversation; there are no details on whether this will be a product people can buy, but it’s certainly interesting to see more hints of Google’s plan for joining companies like Snap and Meta in the race to put AR on your face

YouTube is testing the ability of users to gift paid memberships to one another; the feature, currently in beta, is considered YouTube's version of Twitch’s subscriptions

Amazon launched "Alexa Shopping List Savings," a new feature that will make it easier for consumers to discover rebate offers from brands and manufacturers;  consumers must activate a rebate in the Alexa app and purchase their desired product from a grocery, drug, or convenience store in the U.S.; they must upload a picture of their receipt and scan the product's barcode; the rebate will be added to their Amazon Gift Card account

Klarna launched a new Virtual Shopping feature that enables retail employees to provide shoppers with advice via live chat and video chat; more than 300 brands, including Hugo Boss and Levi's, have begun using the feature

Elon Musk said the Twitter deal is temporarily on hold while he confirms that spam/fake accounts represent less than 5% Twitter users; he remains committed to the deal. Meanwhile, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal fired Kayyvon Beykpour, the head of the consumer product and Bruce Falck, the general manager of revenue; both ousted executives said the decision came as a surprise; Agrawal also froze hiring

Apple has sent out developer invites for the in-person portion of its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC); Apple is expected to announce its latest software — including iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS 13 — during its WWDC 2022 taking place June 6 through 10

Apple was granted a new patent for a VR headset tailored to traveling in autonomous vehicles; the patent may mean Apple is also developing its own AV; the patent allows headset users to engage with people as avatars in a virtual meeting space or fight zombies encountered in the vehicle's environment; according to Apple's outline, the headset will also help prevent motion sickness

Mark Zuckerberg posted a video of him using the company's coming "Project Cambria" AR/VR headset; the demo also promised an app called "The World Beyond," coming to Quest 2; the app will give Quest 2 users a taste of the forthcoming AR/VR headset's capabilities

NFTs are coming to Instagram for select U.S. users; the social media platform will allow users to display their tokens on their stories, feeds, and messages with no associated fees; the NFT launch should be viewed as a pilot project designed to learn about community engagement and the overall user experience; Instagram's NFTs will be supported by Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and Flow

Tech hiring freezes and layoffs are increasing; Crunchbase looks at some of the recent measures taken by companies like Robinhood, Amazon, Meta, Netflix or Uber; Check also Layoffs.fyi, which tracks all tech startup layoffs since COVID-19 appeared; data is compiled from public reports

Grocery delivery company Instacart said it confidentially filed for an IPO on Wednesday; the company did not provide details on when it expects to debut, but analysts project the IPO could occur as early as September; Instacart was valued at $39B in March 2021 after it raised $265M from its existing investors

---

📚 Good reads

A guide to validating your startup idea, by Todd Jackson. Todd spent 2+ months interviewing the founders of Flexport, Vanta, Pinwheel, LaunchDarkly, Snackpass, Rec Room, Good Dog, and Cocoon about their ideation and validation process. Here's what he learned (also credits to Lenny Rachitsky and his amazing newsletter)

To build great products, ask enterprise questions. As product builders, we often think we need to find grandiose ideas in obscure places to "hit it big". Lisa Zane disagrees, and in this insightful article, she shares how to find great product ideas right under your nose

Using OKRs towards Product/Market Fit, by Martin Spinnangr. Defining success and measuring progress toward PMF is challenging. There are many great examples of how to use OKRs when you already have a product, but there are few usable examples of how to leverage the power of OKRs in the pre-product/market fit area. This article shows that using aspirational OKRs with key results metrics framed around confidence levels could be a good approach

The dangers of apophenia: not everything happens for a reason. Humans love patterns. Sometimes that’s helpful, but other times… not so much. Apophenia is the common tendency to detect patterns that do not exist. As Product professionals we always want to find patterns (of course!) to guide our decisions. Dr. Hannah England explains why and how it can be sometimes risky, and what we can do about it

---

🔮 Emerging trends

Working in the metaverse: what virtual office life could look like. Exchanges over email or Slack increasingly replace in-person conversations in real time, sometimes hampering communication. The metaverse 1.0 will see companies creating persistent VR workplace environments, in which employees can interact in real time as embodied avatars. VR versions of office spaces can be designed to encourage chance encounters and corridor chats

Web3 and our chance to make a better internet, by Li Jin. Web3 represents a chance to reimagine the internet and rebuild platforms from fresh principles. But in order to do that, we need to agree on what those principles should be and why. The social and political philosopher John Rawls’s thought experiment known as the “veil of ignorance,” proposed in his influential 1971 work A Theory of Justice, is an apropos exercise for this moment as we set forth to build a new internet and design new economies. Rawls’s principles of justice would have us approach this as if we don’t know our positions in society: which family we were born into, how much wealth we have, and the like. Lacking such knowledge, builders are more likely to design systems rooted in fairness and consideration for all

---

Have a great weekend!

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. 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)