el producto #293 🚀

Amazon vertical video feed, Airbnb anti-party features, Climate tech time, GTM for consumer apps, New Apple devices, Increase email sign-up rates, & more

Hey team,

Happy weekend & welcome to a new edition of el producto

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🎰 The week in figures

$1.8B: Just Eat sold its 33% stake in iFood to Prosus for as much as $1.8B; Prosus has been in talks to increase its iFood ownership since 2020, now on the path to fully owning the Brazilian food delivery company following the transaction; Just Eat plans to use the money to repay debt, strengthen its balance sheet, and potentially sell off Grubhub

$1.5B: In the nine months between September 2021-June 2022, Google led all public companies by participating in funding rounds for crypto-based companies, worth a total of ~$1.5B, about $300M more than BlackRock; investments included Dapper Labs, Fireblocks, and Voltage

$350M: a16z backs a new startup by WeWork’s co-founder; the investment in Adam Neumann’s new startup Flow, a residential real estate company, is roughly $350M

$250M: DANA, an Indonesian digital wallet provider, raised $250M

$170M: Guesty, a LA-based short-term rental platform, raised $170M; the round will accelerate Guesty's international business growth, expansion into new verticals, and enhance its property management technology and platform

$155M: AtoB has raised $155M Series B equity and debt; AtoB offers a fintech platform for trucking companies, including no-fee fleet cards, instant direct-deposit payroll, and bank accounts and savings tools

35%: Airbnb is testing anti-party features in the US and Canada after announcing a ban on all events at host properties globally in June to support social distancing restrictions; the feature considers elements of the booker in order to flag high-risk reservations, like how far the listing is from their home address, reviews from previous stays, and how long they have had an Airbnb account; during a test in Australia conducted last October, unauthorized parties were reduced by 35%

-17.8%: Fintech funding declined by 17.8% QoQ in Q2 to $24.1B, according to Pitchbook; this marked the largest quarterly decline in fintech funding since Q3 2018

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📰 What’s going on

Amazon is internally testing a vertical video and photo feed for sellers and users to show off products on its app; the experimental TikTok-like feed is only visible to a small number of Amazon workers, according to AI product intelligence platform Watchful

WhatsApp has released its native Windows app out of beta, which no longer asks Windows users to link a phone to send, receive, and sync messages

Meta partnered with DoorDash to have orders placed on Facebook Marketplace be delivered by the latter's drivers; items that can fit in a trunk are eligible, and DoorDash drivers will travel a maximum of 15 miles to deliver orders, which will be fulfilled in 48 hours

Google announced an update for Search that's meant to surface more helpful and educational content rather than "clickbait," or content created to rank high in search engines; the company says it will launch the "helpful content update” next week for global English-language searches

Google DeepMind's new Transframer AI model can generate 30-second videos based on only one image; the neural network's name is a play on the Google Brain-developed ML model known as the transformer

Klarna adds a shopping tracker, making a big step forward in its long-term strategy to become the sole shopping app consumers use; the BNPL giant has updated its app so consumers can use it to keep track of all online shopping, not just Klarna purchases; Klarna says the move will help UK consumers save time and manage their online purchases more convenient

YouTube is developing a "channel store" for users to subscribe to individual streaming services through its app; the online marketplace, to be located in the main YouTube app, has been in the works for 18 months and could launch this fall

YouTube will begin adding watermarks to downloaded Shorts videos (as TikTok does); the update will ensure that the short-form videos are labeled when cross-posted to TikTok or Instagram Reels

TikTok is launching a commerce ad suite called "Shopping Ads" to make it easier for brands to advertise; it is testing three forms of the feature, including video, catalog listing, and live shopping; the news comes as the social media giant announced 56% of its users say ads lead them to discover new products or brands

TikTok has added a feature for users to create their own background art for videos; the "AI greenscreen" effect lets users type in words to generate abstract imagery for their backgrounds

Apple issued emergency security updates for iPhones, Macs, and iPads after finding operating system vulnerabilities that may have been "actively exploited" by attackers; the vulnerabilities could potentially allow attackers to completely assume control of the devices; the flaws were discovered in the Safari browser engine WebKit and the core of the operating system, affecting iOS, iPadOS, and macOS Monterey

Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 14 line during a September 7th event; the event will include the unveiling of low end and high end iPads, new macs, and three Apple Watch models; also coming in September, Apple will be releasing iOS 16 and watchOS 9

Apple employees will return to the office in September under hybrid model; Apple has informed staff that they will be expected to return to the office three days per week starting September 5th

Apple could introduce advertising in its Apple Maps, Podcasts, and Books apps; Apple has already tested ads in Maps that would show recommendations while searching for nearby businesses

Brazilian e-commerce giant Mercado Libre will allow 80 million users to make payments using cryptocurrency; the company rolled out its cryptocurrency in Brazil called the Mercado coin, which can be used to make purchases

Shopify rolled out Shopify Collabs, which is designed to introduce merchants to content creators; Shopify says once a creator has applied and been granted access to a Collabs account, they can start looking for brands that are relevant to their audience

Revolut is switching crypto provider from Paxos to Apex Crypto

Meal delivery rivals Grab, Foodpanda, and Deliveroo created the Digital Platforms Industry Association to shape guidelines that protect the health and safety of delivery workers; the move comes as gig economy companies face growing government pressure around raising wages and providing benefits to contractors

Reddit announced the beta of its Developer portal, a platform for developers to create and launch programs and apps to run on Reddit; Developers can sign up for the waitlist here

Tencent stopped selling NFTs due to regulatory scrutiny; the company's Huanhe NFT platform, which was launched last August, will no longer sell NFTs; customers that currently own NFTs will be able to hold, display, or request a refund; China banned all crypto activity, including trading and mining, last year

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📚 Good reads

How to increase email sign up rates. Another great visual case study by the folks at Growth.design

How second-movers can win. This week, a couple of posts on the overtakings of Disney+ vs Netflix and Teams vs Slack went viral. Aakash Gupta made a great summary of lessons from the Teams vs Slack case

GTM motions of today’s biggest consumer apps. Lenny Rachitsky walks us through popular growth strategies and presents an overview of how today’s biggest consumer businesses kickstart their growth, and their primary growth engine

The impact of the downturn in fintech, and current trends. Isabel Richardson makes a great analysis of fintech market trends, and how some successful companies are keeping afloat by partnering (or selling) despite rapidly changing circumstances. Complement with this summary of Nubank’s Q2 earnings. Not all is bleak, as their 57% YoY growth to 65M users, and incredibly fast adoption of crypto and investment products show

Bad product feedback doesn’t always mean your product is bad. A nice reflection by Noa Ganot, sharing her personal story on why the product strategy is so important — “it helps you ensure you solve a good problem for the right audience. The problem and the audience always come together — a problem doesn’t exist in a void, and a problem that is relevant for “everyone” is never specific enough”

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🔮 Emerging trends

It’s time for climate tech

$1.4B was invested in climate tech startups in Q2, contrasting with other sectors finding it difficult to obtain funding. "VCs are not asking for the highest ROI anymore. They’re asking for a mix of profitability, but also positive impact,” managing director at Techstars Paris Accelerator Raphaele Leyendecker told Bloomberg.

• Investments in climate tech startups increased by 47% YoY in H1 2022

• Carbon management startups raised $212M, while climate modeling companies obtained $184M in Q2

• The leading sector within climate tech was negative-emissions technology, with $912M in the second quarter

• "Institutional capital is starting to ask questions to their managers on how to be more responsible around all of this that’s embodied and operational," said Ryan Freedman, general partner at Alpaca VC, concerning the downstream effects on startup funding

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That’s all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email

Angel

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