el producto #307 đ
Pinduoduo's US growth, Spotify audiobooks, Netflix games, Klarna openbanking, The PLG guide, Tech industry's midlife crisis, Binance recovery initiative, Startup lessons & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend & welcome to a new edition of el producto!
đ° The week in figures
$10.2B: An investor group has completed its $10.2B purchase of customer service software company Zendesk; founded in 2007, SF-based Zendesk sells SaaS products for customer support, communications, and sales
$10B: Amazon's Worldwide Digital group, including its Alexa unit, is on track to lose $10B this year; attempts to turn around Alexa's monetization issues have not worked out, resulting in recent layoffs in the division
$1.5B: FTX, the bankrupt crypto exchange, owes $1.5B to its top 10 creditors whose names are not disclosed; the company reportedly owes more than 1M individuals and businesses and failed to keep adequate accounting records; crypto values kept dropping this week as more revelations were made about the collapse of FTX; Amazon is already setting up an eight-episode limited series about the FTX scandal, which might be released in spring 2023
$1B: Amazon plans to invest +$1B annually to produce movies that will be released in theaters; the e-commerce giant aims to make 12-15 movies a year that will get a theatrical release; this number of releases puts them on par with major studios like Paramount Pictures
$1B: Binance launched the Industry Recovery Initiative (IRI) to rescue crypto startups struggling in the wake of the FTX fallout; Binance has made an initial $1B commitment split across three tokens: Bitcoin, Binance USD, and Binance Coin
$200M: Berlin-based MatterLabs has raised a $200M Series C; MatterLabs is the developer of Zksync, a Layer-2 Ethereum blockchain solution that essentially aims to reduce the cost of transactions in the Ethereum network
5M: Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo's Temu shopping app has been downloaded 5M times in the U.S. since it was launched in September; the U.S. accounts for 97% of Temu's global downloads; Temu has become the most downloaded shopping app on both iOS and Android
1M: Hive, a Gen Z-focused Twitter alternative, has made the US App Storeâs top 20Â after surpassing 1M downloads earlier in November; the app is run by a team of three, does not rely on personalized algorithms, and has some paid featuresÂ
đ¸ Q3 financials
Zoom: the video communications company reported $1.1B in revenue, up 5% YoY. Zoom posted a GAAP net income of $48.4M, or 16 cents a share, down from $340.3M reported during the same period last year. Zoom reported 209,300 enterprise customers in Q3, up from 204,100 in the previous quarter - its slowest quarterly growth
More Q3 results in the last weeksâ editions of the newsletter
đ° Whatâs going on
Spotify is expanding its audiobooks to English-speaking countries outside the U.S. the company first launched audiobooks in the U.S. in September and is now bringing them to the U.K., Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand
WhatsApp rolled out its Directory feature in five markets, including Brazil, the U.K., and Mexico; the feature makes it easier for users to find businesses in their local area; users can search for businesses by their names or product categories
Netflix is hiring staff to develop a AAA PC game, signaling its plans to expand beyond mobile gaming; the steamer is hiring several directors, engineers, and a producer at its new games studio in Los Angeles
Klarna launched an open banking product to let startups access open banking services at 15,000+ partner banks
Waymo will begin offering passenger rides in its autonomous vehicles without a driver at the wheel; Alphabet's autonomous driving unit will provide driverless rides to the public in the San Francisco area in the coming weeks
Twitter will delay the relaunch of its $8 blue check verification system until there is "high confidence" that the platform can stop impersonation attacks, Elon Musk said in a tweet; the company had hoped to restart the Twitter Blue subscription service on Nov. 29; a new launch date has yet to be announced
đ Good reads
The Product-led growth guide, by Leah Tharin. It covers "everything" on a surface level to get you kickstarted on product-led growth:
- Definition of PLG
- PLG in Action
- Conditions
-- Product, Business Model, Market
-- The stage of your company
-- Data Setup / Experimentation infrastructure
-- Organizational Structure
-- Supplier contracts and PLG suitability
- B2B vs B2C archetypes
- PLS - Product-led Sales
-- PQLs
-- Influence on individual buying decisions
- Additional reading material
The tech industry is having a midlife crisis. Derek Thompson on the main reasons leading to the current tech industry instability - âThe tech industry, which had perfected the art of optimizing digital spaces for engagement and ad placement, was prepared to invest deeply in the next adventureâŚat the moment, a lot of these bets look half-baked, catastrophically expensive, or outright fraudulentâ
Startup to exit: Lessons from a first-time founder, by Suril Kantaria for Lennyâs newsletter. Why VC funding is a drug, when building in stealth is a mistake, what to do when you lose conviction, how to approach selling your company, and more
[Podcast] a16z on all things metaverse - what it is, what it isnât; how VR, videogames, sports, fashion, communities play here; where crypto comes in, including trends in DAOs, on-chain gaming, etc. The episode also goes well beyond technology, into science fiction, the arts, narratives, and more
Thatâs all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Angel
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