el producto #303 🚀
Big tech Q3 results, Network effects masterclass, Regenerative Finance, Figma updates, YouTube re-design, Apple health insurance, Amazon+Venmo & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend & welcome to a new edition of el producto.
🎰 The week in figures
$1.3B: Video-based customer insight company UserTesting is being acquired for $1.3B by Thoma Bravo and Sunstone Partners
$329: Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, has raised a $329M debt funding round
$200M: Google will invest $200M into AI startup Cohere, which builds natural language processing software that helps developers to build business apps like chatbots; the startup has also been in talks with Nvidia
$170M: OpenWeb, a startup that helps publishers better understand and target readers with ads, raised a $170M Series F at a $1.5B valuation; the company has >1000 clients and has doubled revenue in each of the past six years
$150M: Bilt, a NY-based startup that offers a rent payment loyalty program and a credit card that converts rent payments into points, raised a $150M round at a $1.5B valuation; Bilt lets members use points towards a downpayment; the startup is profitable and has >500K active members
$120M: B2B marketplace Udaan raised $120M and plans to go public in the next 12-18 months; Udaan is an online marketplace connecting 3M+ SMBs with brands such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, HP, and LG for inventory and working capital
$110M: ConnexPay raised $110M in a growth round to expand into Europe; The fintech startup puts customer and supplier payments on a single platform to help make the process cheaper, faster and safer
$100M: Computer vision startup Trigo announced $100M in new equity financing to fund its technology that brings autonomous checkout to supermarkets; the Israeli company says its technology transforms existing grocery stores into "fully autonomous digital stores" using cameras, sensors, and computer vision algorithms
$100M: Google quietly acquired AI startup Alter, previously branded as Facemoji, for about $100M; the acquisition was reportedly completed about two months ago but not made public at the time; Alter provides a software development kit for developers to create and place 3D avatars in apps, websites, and games
-40%: In H1 2022, a16z's $4.5B crypto fund was down ~40%; compared to 10-20% markdowns from other VC funds; via PitchBook, a16z has invested in 9 crypto startups in Q3 2022 compared to 26 in Q4 of 2021
-75%: Twitter employees penned an open letter to Elon Musk and its Board of Directors regarding Musk's plans to cut 75% of Twitter’s workforce; the letter demands that Elon commit to retaining all 7500 employees if he takes control of Twitter; Musk said he doesn’t plan such a cut anymore, although he fired five top Twitter executives on Thursday night; the employees who were let go include CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, policy chief Vijaya Gadde, general counsel Sean Edgett, and chief customer officer Sarah Personette
💸 Q3 financials
Alphabet: total revenue: $69B (+6% y/y), net income: $13.9B (-26% y/y), FCF: $16B, cash and marketable securities: $116.2B (-17% y/y), YouTube ads revenue: $7B (-2% y/y), Google Cloud revenue: $6.8B (+38% y/y), $GOOG stock was down ~7% after missing on revenue, EPS and YouTube ad revenue
Amazon: ~$127.1B (+15% y/y), net income: $2.9B (-10% y/y), TTM (trailing twelve months) free cash flow: -$19.6B, AWS revenue: $20.5B (+27% y/y), AWS operating income: $5.4B (+11% y/y); Amazon also lowered its expectations for Q4; shares were down ~9% Friday morning. Aakash Gupta shared a good analysis on what may be causing Amazon’s downturn - what he calls “The rings of pain”
Apple: revenue: ~$90.1B (+8.1% y/y, beat expectations), net income: ~$20.7B (flat y/y), iPhone sales: ~$42.6B (+10% y/y), services revenue: ~$19.1B (slightly missed on expectations); shares were up ~7% Friday morning
Meta: missed on earnings expectations but slightly beat revenue expectations; Meta generated $27.71B in revenue (-4% y/y); operating income fell 46% to $5.66B; costs and expenses were $22.05B (+19% y/y); Net income: $4.4B, or $1.64 per share (-52% y/y); Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which houses its VR products and services, has lost $9B this year; Meta shares fell more than 10% in extended trading; the social media giant is down more than 60% YTD
Microsoft: total revenue: $50.1B (+11% y/y), net income: $17.6B (-14% y/y), LinkedIn revenue +17% y/y, Azure and other cloud revenue +35% y/y, Windows OEM revenue -15% y/y; $MSFT stock was down ~6% after reporting its slowest revenue growth in five years
Pinterest: revenue $684.5M (+8% y/y), net income: -$65M (compared to $93.9M last year), global MAUs were flat at 445M; shares were up ~11% Friday morning
Spotify: total revenue: €3B (+21% y/y), net loss: -€166M, FCF: €35M (-65% y/y), premium subs: 195M (+13% y/y), total MAUs: 456M (+20% y/y); $SPOT stock was down ~11% after reporting wider than expected losses in Q3
Shopify: GMV: $46.2B (+11% y/y), total revenue: ~$1.4B (+21% y/y), MRR: $107M (+8% y/y), net loss: -$187M (net income was ~$1.1B in Q3 2021); Shopify stock is down ~75% YTD
Intel: $15.3B (-20% y/y), net income: $1B (-85% y/y), PC chip revenue: $8.12B (-17% y/y); Intel plans to cut cost of sales and operating expenses by ~$3B in 2023 generating $8B- $10B in savings into 2025; shares were up ~10% Friday morning
Deliveroo showed a decrease in takeout orders amidst a "difficult consumer environment;" despite reporting a 1% decline in orders, the company's report revealed unexpected growth in grocery deliveries; Deliveroo posted an average of 7.3M monthly active consumers in Q3, an increase of 1% YoY
📰 What’s going on
Twitter's "heavy tweeters" have been in decline since the beginning of the pandemic; Twitter defines a heavy tweeter as a user who logs in to Twitter 6-7 days/week and tweets 3-4x/week; these users account for <10% of Twitter's MAUs, create 90% of all tweets, and account for half of Twitter's global revenue
Figma announced 10 new feature updates to help teams collaborate better on its platform:
Teams can now listen to music together; any user in the file can set or change a music track, and users have the option to control their volume and mute
Professional, Education, Organization, and Enterprise plan members can use voting to gather feedback and select ideas that team members like the most
Sections, which was available in FigJam, is now available in Figma; sections allow users to organize their canvas by grouping related items
Other features include the Figma Chrome extension, Microsoft Teams integration, markdown support in Figma, and push notifications
Greenpeace research: Big tech companies have not provided sufficient incentives or support for their suppliers to decarbonize; 12 of the top 14 suppliers for companies like Apple and Google operate on just 5.4% renewable energy; of 10 major consumer electronics brands, only Apple has designed a strategy requiring its suppliers to achieve 100% renewable energy by 2030
Apple unveiled new App Store mandates that limit NFT functionality and require Apple's in-app payments processor to be used for social media "boost" purchases
Apple will start to offer health insurance in 2024 as it looks to build on the health data it has acquired from the Apple Watch
Apple confirmed it will comply with a new EU mandate requiring all mobile phones, tablets, and cameras to have USB-C charging ports by the end of 2024
YouTube is refreshing its design to make the app more cohesive with Google's "Material You" design that's already rolled out to Gmail, Calendar, and more; new features include pinch-to-zoom and a more precise seeking feature that allows frame-by-frame browsing, and adds three dedicated tabs for Shorts, live videos, and regular videos
Amazon customers will now be able to pay via Venmo; the feature will be available to select US customers before rolling out to the rest of the country by Black Friday
Microsoft is still struggling to find its foothold in the mixed-reality (MR) and metaverse sectors; over the past two years, Microsft has cut budgets for its mixed-reality headset, lost over 100 employees, and canceled plans for a consumer-facing headset; the company's HoloLens headset is floundering after Microsoft opted to restructure its MR department and reduce its budget; with over 1,000 employees dedicated to metaverse projects, developing the HoloLens has proved more difficult than anticipated
Jack Dorsey's new Bluesky Social app is looking for users for its beta testing; the social app is a decentralized social network protocol controlled by users, and data will be free from government influence
DoorDash is testing a new feature that allows users to make restaurant reservations through its app; the pilot program appears to be available to users in several U.S. cities, including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles
eBay is going after the 're-commerce' industry and taking on re-sale platforms StockX and the RealReal; eBay said the re-sale of luxury goods can make up ~50% of its sales volume by 2024; the company's market cap is down ~60% from its 2022 peak of ~$53B to ~$21B today
Wise is set to expand investment services across Europe with an Estonian license; The global fintech received the licence from the Estonian Financial Supervision and Resolution Authority, and said it will be bringing its Assets product to Estonia “in the coming quarters”
📚 Good reads
The Network Effects masterclass. NfX has released an 11-chapter masterclass on network effects where James Currier and others dive deep into the body of knowledge that NfX has developed through the years. It’s free. Unmissable!
DAO: The Evolution of Organization. A great easy read, especially for those not strictly following the DAO space since inception. This report can give a quite solid overview of the history so far, the key uses cases and the implications for the future
Five counter-intuitive questions you should ask your users. Dipika Prasad shares advice on how to lead insightful conversations when doing customer discovery interviews
🔮 Emerging trends
At the intersection of Climate and Crypto is an emerging market known as regenerative finance (or ReFi for short ). This post by Hugh Brown is a quick explainer on using blockchain as a tech enabler to solve sustainability challenges
That’s all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email
Angel
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