el producto #299 🚀
Successful neobanks, Google shutting down Stadia, Amazon live stream shopping, Twitter's TikTok-like video player, Meta & Lyft hiring freezes, AR/VR body tracking, & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend & welcome to a new edition of el producto.
🎰 The week in figures
$466M: NFT trading volumes have fallen from a record $17.2B in January to $466M so far in September; NFT trading volume has consistently fallen since April; September marked the third straight month that NFT trading volumes have fallen below $1B; the popular CryptoPunks NFT collection saw its monthly sales volume fall from $124M in January to $25M last month
$340M: Italy-based app developer Bending Spoons raised $340M; the app developer has made tools such as Splice, a video editor, and Remini, an image editor built on remarkable AI technology; according to the company, the Bending Spoons app has registered over 500M downloads and has 90M MAU
$320: Satispay, an Italian provider of a payment network that bypasses banks, raised €320M at a €1B valuation
$300M: Traveloka, South Asia’s largest travel startup, raised $300M as travel increases in the region due to loosening COVID restrictions; the Jakarta-based startup is considering an IPO in the US or Indonesia
$258M: Berlin-based Grover has raised $258M; Grover is a subscription platform that enables its customers to use tech products without buying them; users get access to over 10,000 products such as laptops, PCs, smartphones, smart watches, etc
$117M: Edtech platform Ocelot raised $117M; the Boulder, Colorado-based company provides AI-powered communications and engagement solutions, such as two-way texting, AI chatbots, and live chat, for educational institutions
$80M: Not So Dark, a French startup that helps restaurants operate their own “delivery-only” businesses to boost profits, raised an $80M Series B; the company has 150 employees
$80M: Strike, a bitcoin payments company, raised $80M Series B; the company made headlines when it partnered with El Salvador for a Bitcoin-based project; Strike offers cheaper, faster global payment solutions that are built on the Bitcoin Lightning Network
-9%: DocuSign is terminating 9% of its workforce and will start a restructure of the company, scheduled to be completed by the end of 2023; the company expects to incur $30-40M of costs due to the restructuring
📰 What’s going on
Google is trying to reinvent search - by being more than a search engine; at its annual Search On event, Google showed off a bunch of new ways for people to search the internet; most of them continue the trend of Google’s last few years: trying to find more natural and more visual ways for people to input searches and get results; you can now ask Google a question by taking a picture or rambling into your phone’s microphone rather than trying to type the perfect set of keywords into the search bar
Google is shutting down its Stadia cloud-gaming service in January and is refunding all game and hardware purchases; first launched in 2019, the game streaming service hasn’t gained the user traction that Google had expected
Adobe committed to keeping Figma’s current freemium pricing model and will reevaluate its XD program following the acquisition; the $20B deal marks the largest takeover of a private software maker ever
Apple confirmed that it removed Russia’s largest social network VKontakte’s parent company, VK, along with its other apps due to UK sanctions; the apps are still available on Google Play
Apple is expected to release a new iPad Pro, Mac mini, and 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models before the end of the year; Apple will likely forgo a digital event to announce the products and unveil them via website updates and press releases
Meta Platforms will freeze hiring across the company and restructure some teams as it works to cut costs amid slowing revenue, according to Mark Zuckerberg; the CEO outlined the plan to employees on Thursday, saying that more downsizing is expected
Meta has rolled out Meta Pay in over 200 countries as it continues to set the building blocks for its metaverse offering; Meta Pay will be the financial infrastructure used in Meta's new metaverse to facilitate digital transactions such as purchasing digital clothing, art, videos, music, and NFTs
Amazon launched a live QVC style live stream shopping feature called Amazon Live in India following its investment of over $6.5B in key overseas markets in an attempt to grow its customer base; 150 creators are hosting the streams, which air 30-600 simultaneous
Square launched Tap to Pay support for iPhone, enabling businesses to use iPhones as payment terminals; Apple is also working with Stripe, GoDaddy, Chase and others in its Tap to Pay partner program
Calendly bought scheduling startup Prelude for an undisclosed price; One Media, Duolingo, and Cloudflare are among Prelude's 'hundreds' of customers; Calendly CEO Tope Awotona told TechCrunch the company has been prioritizing enterprise clients over individuals
Substack acquired Yem, a startup aimed at growing writers’ email lists through email marketing campaigns; Substack is also starting to roll out new features to help build their subscriber lists for free, including a referrals feature, subscription prompts on webpages used to house, and Substack Boosts which uses data to show discounts and offers for subscriptions
Twitter is launching a Tiktok-style video player that lets users tap into the media, making it full screen and if scrolled on, more video content will be available; the social media platform is also adding a video carousel to the Explore tab feature
Lyft announced a hiring freeze through the end of 2022 in the US; the move follows a 60-person layoff in July, $LYFT is down ~68% YTD
Snap's head of luxury Geoffrey Perez said the company could launch an "AR enterprise business" where brands are charged transaction and startup fees when they use its AR technology; Perez said Snap is currently prioritizing AR, but it could explore ways to sell products in the metaverse in the future; 250M people "engage" with Snap's AR technology daily, according to Perez
GitHub announced the general availability of Github for Startups; the service is available globally, and startups can apply here; GitHub said through the pilot program announced last year, it saw increased importance for developer collaboration and productivity, security, and speed of innovation; selected startups will receive up to 20 seats of GitHub Enterprise free for one year and support and guidance, such as regular office hours, friendly onboarding experience, and best practice sharing from experts
Coinbase Cloud launched Node, an easy-to-use platform for empowering developers to build and monitor Web3 applications; Node is a revamp of its service called Query & Transact
Netflix has opened its own gaming studio in Helsinki, Finland, where it plans to develop additional mobile titles for its streaming service; Epic Games, WarGaming, and a number of independent studios are also based in Helsinki
Samsung launched two credit cards in India, the world's second-largest internet market; the South Korean company partnered with Mumbai-based Axis Bank and global payments processor Visa to launch the Samsung Axis Bank Credit Card; Card users that purchase Samsung products will get 10% cash back
Walmart debuted its metaverse experiences in Roblox with Walmart Land and Walmart Universe of Play; the retailer is looking into new ways to connect with shoppers, including shoppable recipes, live streaming events, and AR features for furniture
Audius, a crypto company, reached 7.5M MAU, weathering the crypto winter in large part because the average user "is not even aware that the crypto is there;" the platform caters to over 250,000 artists and holds 1M songs on its platform; Audius is a crypto company that does not market itself with Web3 hype, an intentional strategy that seems to have worked; fans are "getting the benefits of decentralization without having to be super aware of having to use a wallet," says CEO Roneil Rumburg; less than 10% of the users have a MetaMask wallet
Korea's popular Zepeto metaverse is planning global expansion; considered "Asia's largest metaverse," the female-centric metaverse is now looking to enter Western Europe and the U.S. 340M people have joined the Zepeto metaverse since it launched in 2018; it hosts 15-20M MAU, 70% of which are young women ages 13-21; Zepeto is valued at $1B
Starlink is providing Iran internet after the US government permitted private companies to offer uncensored internet access to the country while it faces protests resulting in 40+ deaths; previously, its satellites were activated in Ukraine following disrupted communication networks from the Russian invasion
Elon Musk revealed the first prototype of Tesla Optimus robot; "Our goal is to make a useful humanoid robot as quickly as possible;” it’s still very early days for this field of robotics - and it’s hard to tell how much of this is hype - but Musk and his team delivered a fascinating demonstration with Tesla’s engineers going into quite a lot of details about the technical specs and capabilities
📚 Good reads
Chaos surfing: from surviving to thriving in chaotic times. “When a living system is in a state of equilibrium, it is less responsive to changes occurring around it;” Anne-Laure Le Cunff looks at the cornerstone principles of chaos in nature, and how we can leverage them for positive outcomes, in work and life
The most successful neobanks. The neobanking industry has grown immensely as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased demand for digital financial services. This reports look at the state of neobanks in 2022, including funding, growth, shortcomings and advantages
DAOs are not corporations. An analysis by Vitalik Butlerin about the key role that DAOs may play in the organizational landscape
4 major problems with the Lean Stratup methodology - and an alternative: “The Deliberate Startup”, by Reforge
How product strategy fails in the real world - what to avoid when building highly-technical products. As you look back on plans of years past, there’s probably a graveyard of abandoned ideas, goals and launches that never made it off the page and into your product. As the Chief Product Officer for Cockroach Labs, Nate Stewart has plenty of hard-won lessons to share about why strategies tend to stall once the rubber hits the road. “There’s a lot written about startup strategy and how you can use OKRs to go from strategy to execution. But there’s not a lot of literature out there about why some strategies fail in the real world,”
🔮 Emerging trends
Meta researchers successfully demonstrated an AI-based body tracking program for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR). The group found that machine-learning algorithms outperform accelerometer- and gyroscope-based systems. They showcased how neural networks can predict user movements without supplemental accessories.
The Quest 2 tracking program uses headset and controller inputs to predict body movements. The predictions do not necessarily reflect actual placement.
In their paper entitled, "QuestSim: Human Motion Tracking from Sparse Sensors with Simulated Avatars," the researchers claim that their updated "learning framework" "simulates plausible and physically valid full body motions" in real-time
The AR/VR body tracking system can also produce "diverse locomotion styles, [for] different body sizes, and novel environments"
The researchers' findings may bring full-body avatars to Meta's Horizon Worlds metaverse
That’s all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email
Angel
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