el producto #294 đ
Twitter & Youtube podcasts, Instagram copies BeReal, Strategies to grow your product, Reddit free NFTs, Creating a startup's roadmap, TikTok local content & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend & welcome to a new edition of el producto. And a special thank you to the 18 new subscribers that joined this week!
đ° The week in figures
$8B: Amazon is one of the bidders for home-health-services provider Signify Health; Signify, which is for sale via auction, will potentially be valued at more $8B+; Amazon recently agreed to pay $3.9B for One Medical, which was the first major acquisition under healthcare focused CEO Andy Jassy
$1B: Munich-based Celonis raised $1B at $13B valuation; Celonis helps companies spot and fix inefficiencies using âprocess miningâ tools
$295M: EBay Inc. is set to acquire TCGplayer, a marketplace for collectible card games, for $295M; the deal is expected to close in Q1 2023
$199M: AI startup Anyscale raised an additional $99M in Series C funding, bringing the total round to $199M; the startup's Ray software and related tools help businesses streamline and scale AI projects and applications
$185.3M: Nike has made $185.3M in revenue from NFT drops, the most of any brand; Nike's NFTs have collectively been sold for $1.3B in the secondary markets
$130M: NY-based mental health startup Alma raises $130M; Alma assists therapists in managing their practices
$100M: Tamara, a buy-now-pay-later startup in Saudi Arabia, raised a $100M Series B
$60M: Texas-based Happy Health has raised $60M in Series A funding; the company has designed a wearable ring that measures stress levels and other health parameters
$60M: Zilliz has raised a $60M Series B; the company offers an AI platform that enables others to create applications using AI and Machine Learning
$56M: Estonia-based Web3 startup Ready Player Me recently raised $56M Series B; the startup is building metaverse-facing 2D and 3D avatars for its 3,000 partnersÂ
+39%: Buy now, pay later (BNPL) company Affirm's revenue rose by 39% YoY to $364.1M; the company's net loss increased from $123.4M in Q4 2021 to $186.4M in the latest quarter; Affirm's revenue rose by 55% YoY in Fiscal Year 2022 to $1.3B. Its net loss was $707.4M, up from $441M in the fiscal year 2021
+39%: Instacart's revenue rose by 39% YoY in Q2 to $621M, making it the best performing quarter in the company's history; over 60M orders were placed on its platform in Q2, a 25% increase YoY
+8%: Zoom released its Q2Â earnings, reporting an 8% revenue growth YoY, down from 12% reported in Q1;Â Zoom generated $1.1B in total revenue. Net income came in at $45.7M, down from $316.9M reported the prior year
-28%: Peloton's revenue declined by 28% YoY in Q4 to $678.7M; the company's net loss increased from $312.2M in Q4 2021 to $1.2B in the latest quarter; this marked the sixth straight quarter that Peloton recorded a net loss; the company's full-year revenue was $3.6B, down from $4B in the previous year; its full-year net loss rose from $189M in the previous year to $2.8B; a limited number of Peloton's products are now being sold on Amazon's U.S marketplace
-81%: the number of new job postings including the word "metaverse," dropped 81% between April and June
đ° Whatâs going on
Twitter is integrating podcasts into its redesigned Spaces Tab, including curating suggestions based on who you follow and what content you interact with; the redesign will involve personalized hubs with themes like news, music, and sports and will be visible to a group of English-speaking audience on iOS and Android; the move comes days after Youtube kicked off its podcasting strategy by starting with a new "Podcasts" page that features recommendations based on subscription and history
Instagram is testing a BeReal-style feature called Candid Challenges internally on its platform; Instagram users participating in Candid Challenges will get a random notification daily to take a front and rear-facing photo of their surroundings which can be posted to their Story; BeReal is currently near the top in Appleâs App Store ahead of Facebook and Instagram
Microsoft has been increasing ads in Outlook mobile that look like emails; previously, ads were put in the âotherâ tab for free users, while the âfocusedâ tab was ad-free, but now all ads can appear in all inbox tabs; users can avoid ads in Outlook mobile by paying for a Microsoft 365 subscription
Apple has sent out press invites to its presumed iPhone launch event on Sept. 7; Apple is expected to unveil the 6.1-inch âiPhone 14â, 6.7-inch âiPhone 14â Max, 6.1-inch âiPhone 14 Proâ, and 6.7-inch âiPhone 14 Proâ Max
Google has opened up registrations for its "AI Test Kitchen" app for users to download and interact with its AI chatbot and other experimental technologies; the app lets users chat with LaMDA, Google's AI language model for conversations
Meta will launch its next virtual reality headset at its Connect conference in October, Mark Zuckerberg told the Joe Rogan Experience podcast on Thursday; the headset will have tracking to reflect a wearer's facial expressions and eye movements through their avatar in real-time
Meta's latest promotional video teases the company's Project Cambria headset; the headset is expected to release later this year; the video focuses on how one East African cycling team is using Meta's hardware to connect with one another and train for races
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, announced that the company will focus more on its subscription services; the company will move away from trading fees on the platform as a source of revenue
Reddit is airdropping NFTs to some of its avid users at no cost; long-term users on the platform will be given free NFTs for contributing to the community forums
ByteDance launched a search app called Wukong in China, where Google is banned, just days after Tencent shut down its Sogou search app; Wukong is available on Apple and Android app stores in China and promotes itself as providing quality information without ads
TikTok is testing a feature called âNearbyâ which is designed to show users local content; the test is being rolled out to select users in Southeast Asia; the feature comes after Instagram launched a searchable map, similar to Snapchatâs Snap Map
Fitbit launched three updated, sleeker, and lighter fitness trackers: the Inspire 3, Versa 4, and Sense 2; the new watches use Fitbit's OS rather than parent company Google's wearable OS; the Fitbit's show improvements over its competitor Apple Watch in battery life, only taking 12 min of charging to hit a full day's worth of battery
Twitch is lifting its exclusivity agreement that bars partners from streaming on other services; content creators can now go live on other platforms as long as they are not also live on Twitch; Twitch is putting limits on simulcasting live broadcasts to multiple âTwitch-likeâ platforms, including streaming on YouTube or Facebook for âextended periods of timeâ but simulcasting to mobile services like TikTok and Instagram Live is allowed
ParagraphAI released a free AI writing assistant built on top of OpenAI's GPT-3; the tool, which generates articles, essays, and other original texts, is free in Google's Chrome Web Store and Apple's App Store
Crypto developer infrastructure startup Alchemy acquired ChainShot, an education startup that runs coding bootcamps for web3 developers; Alchemy, raised a $400M Series C1 last year and has seen a 10x increase in teams building on its platform over the past year; ChainShot started as a hackathon project at ETHDenver 2018 and has seen a 180% growth in enrollment since January 2022Â
SpaceX is teaming up with T-Mobile to eliminate mobile dead zones with their âCoverage Above and Beyondâ setup; with the plan, phones can connect to a satellite and use a portion of a connection providing ~2-4 megabits per second connection across a coverage area; the connection provides enough to text, send MMS messages, and use âselect messaging appsâ when users have a clear view of the sky, even when no traditional service is available
Sony says it will release its next-generation virtual reality headset for the PS5 in early 2023; Sony has yet to reveal a price for the PlayStation VR2; the original PSVR first retailed for $499.
đ Good reads
The Product-led-growth story of Lattice. How a strong belief in valuing the people behind your business led to the birth of a unicorn worth $3B today
How to create and align your companyâs first product roadmap? Creating clarity amidst ambiguity with the first product roadmap at a startup, by Lisa Zane
All the ways to grow your product. Lenny Rachitsky made a handy summary of all of the ways to grow your product
âFrameworks I canât live without,â by Greg Isenberg. Not only product stuff, but worth a check:
Thatâs all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email
Angel
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