el producto #313 đ
Apple's XR plans and AI-narrated audiobooks, ChatGPT in Product Design, 2022 winners and losers, Amazon layoffs, TikTok audience controls & more
Hey team,
Welcome to a new edition of el producto!
đ° The week in figures
$29B: OpenAI is in talks to sell existing shares to Founders Fund and Thrive in a tender offer for ~$300M, valuing the startup at ~$29B
$750M: SpaceX is raising $750M at a $137B valuation in a round likely led by a16z; last year, SpaceX raised ~$2B and surpassed 1M Starlink subscribers
$200M: KreditBee, an Indian fintech startup that offers micro-loans to new-to-credit customers, raised a $100M Series D extension, bringing the roundâs total capital raised to $200M
200M: the user names and email addresses of more than 200M Twitter users were leaked on an online hacking forum
150M: Google unveiled at CES 2023 that Android TV OS, which powers Google TV and Android TV, is now on 150M active devices; the number of active devices has gone up by 40M since last year
18K: Amazon will cut >18K employees in January, more than its previous announcement of ~10K; the majority of layoffs are within Amazon's corporate ranks, including its retail, recruiting, devices, books, and tech teams
-10%: Salesforce will cut 10% of its employees and close down some office spaces after admitting it hired too many people during the pandemic; shares were up ~4% on the news; Tableau, a subsidiary of Salesforce that was acquired in 2019 for $15.7B, was hit harder by layoffs than other divisions
-11%: Vimeo is going through another round of layoffs, reducing its headcount by 11% after a 6% cut back in July
-94%: IPO deal proceeds fell 94% in 2022 from $155.8B to $8.6B; in 2021, more than ten companies raised $1B via IPO; in 2022, no companies raised $1B or more
đ° Whatâs going on
New reported features of Appleâs XR headset: aluminum, glass and carbon fiber material, lighter than Meta Quest Pro, dial that turns XR up and down, waist-worn battery pack, and more; more on Apple XR below (Emerging trends section)
Apple is said to be developing lower-priced "AirPods Lite" as well as its first Apple Watch with a micro-LED display, according to tech analyst Jeff Pu; he expects the tech giant to release both products in 2024
Apple launched a series of audiobooks narrated by AI-generated voices; total audiobook sales grew ~25% last year to $1.5B
Microsoft is planning to use OpenAI's ChatGPT software to power its Bing search engine, and will look to take on Google
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke asked employees to purge their calendars of meetings with more than two people and leave large group chats, among other things, to increase productivity in 2023
Amazon Prime Air is now operating in Lockeford, California (3.5K residents) and College Station, Texas (120K residents); the maximum payload for a Prime drone is 5lbs, and Amazon claims that 85% of its orders fall under this thresholdÂ
Amazon's Ring division has debuted its dash cam, called the Ring Car Cam; the two-way camera can store up to 7 hours of footage and sync to a phone via WiFi; it will also have limited voice commands via Alexa and will retail for $250 in the US
Crypto payments company Wyre told employees it plans to shut down after ten years of operations; Wyre had previously raised a total of $29M and had agreed to be acquired by Bolt for $1.5B before the deal fell throughÂ
Spotify froze its US budget for new podcasts as Amazon and Sirius XM have pulled back on new podcasting deals
TikTok plans to expand its âaudience controlsâ feature set, giving creators the ability to restrict videos exclusively to adult viewers
Shopify launched a new service that allows retailers to integrate with their own online platform tools and services they offer; customers will be able to choose which components they would like to use from Shopify, such as checkout and back-office services
Hema Xiansheng, Alibaba's grocery brand, broke even after online shopping grew due to COVID-19 lockdowns; sales from the grocery brand took seven years to become profitable
Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent have come to a âtruceâ with the CCP; the companies agreed to stricter controls and slower growth in exchange for the government relaxing its tech crackdown
đ Good reads
Data is part of a Minimum Viable Prototype, by Leah Tharin. "Let's ship an MVP and see what happens, we can add tracking later"
The US stock market winners and losers of 2022. Unmissable infographic with huge tech loses, but also some interesting wins
How to use ChatGPT in Product Design - 8 practical examples by Nick Babich
The 30 best pieces of advice for entrepreneurs in 2022. First Round Review shares the 10th edition of their curated list. Here's a sneak peek at what you'll find on the list:
Get comfortable with the boos that come from playing in arenas đž
For Promiseâs Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, one of the most resonant pieces of guidance came from earlier in her career, when she worked with Prince (yep, the musician): âYou have to decide if youâre going to play in Madison Square Garden or in your backyard. Because no one boos you in your backyard. But if you play in Madison Square Garden, someoneâs going to boo youâ
Test out an anti-pilot to eliminate busy work â
Before delegating out a task, Levelsâ Sam Corcos recommends removing it first to see if anyone notices. âThereâs nothing worse than spending time improving something that should never have existed to begin withâ
Avoid doorknob comments đȘ
âIn therapy, clients will often bring up the most important thing in the final few minutes of a session, saying what they actually wanted to say the whole time, but needed the entire hour to muster enough courage. And we sometimes see a similar thing in 1:1s," says Ximena Vengoechea. If youâre a manager looking to deepen the conversation, try asking this one question: âWhat would you save for the end of our 1:1 today? Letâs start with thatâ
Share interview questions with candidates in advance.â
âIf you really want to evaluate candidates for clear competencies, you want to give them the best shot of actually showing you whether or not they have those skills. If you donât give candidates a sense of what youâre going to be probing, you end up hiring folks who are just the best at interviewing.â â Peoplismâs Amber Madison and Liz Kofman-Burns
đ Emerging trends
Appleâs mixed-reality headset
Apple is expected to announce formally and perhaps even debut its mixed-reality (MR) headset in 2023. When Apple eventually enters the extended reality (XR) industry, it will likely transform the field as we know it. The company's highly anticipated foray into the space could bring more attention to the burgeoning industry and pique a broader group of more affluent consumers' interest. If the company does showcase its MR headset in 2023, Apple could reframe how we talk about XR and the metaverse. Apple CEO Tim Cook is notoriously reticent about the term metaverse, telling reporters, "I'm really not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is." Regardless of how the company describes the immersive web, Apple is eager to dominate the space. In 2022, the company secured several important patents while analysts uncovered new details about the company's forthcoming hardware:
May 2022 was a busy month for the company. Apple secured new patents, analysts found evidence of a new XR operating system, and Tim Cook allegedly tested the company's forthcoming AR/VR glasses
Apple was granted a new patent for a VR headset tailored to traveling in autonomous vehicles. The patent may mean Apple is also developing its own autonomous vehicle
That same month, Apple allegedly used an anonymizing shell corporation to secure a trademark for an XR operating system called "RealityOS"
Later that May, rumors of Apple's forthcoming headset made headlines. Bloomberg, for instance, argued that the glasses would work alongside a user's iPhone, marking the company's first new product since the 2015 Apple Watch
In June 2022, analysts began suggesting that Apple's rumored MR device may run on the company's latest M2 chipset
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman recently suggested that the company's forthcoming headset will utilize the next-gen chip because it would require less cooling and therefore allow for a slimmer form factor
Gurman suggested that the M2 chip would ship with an 8-core GPU and 16GB RAM
By July, analysts were all, but certain Apple was preparing to debut an XR headsetÂ
In a Twitter post, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said he believes the company will release multiple versions of its forthcoming MR headset over the next five years
According to Kuo, the first-generation MR headset will be expensive and higher-end, and the second-generation HMD will include two models, one of which will be less costly than the first
Kuo outlined his predictions in a medium post, concluding that the second-gen, more affordable headset will launch in the first half of 2025
We'll likely learn more about Apple's forthcoming headset in 2023 and that Apple will begin transforming the industry just as the iPhone transformed smartphones. Most recently, Tim Cook told reporters, "Life without AR (augmented reality) will soon be unthinkable"
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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