el producto #314 🚀
el producto #314 🚀
Microsoft <> OpenAI and AI plans, ChatGPT iOS app, Clubhouse churn, Best places to work in 2023, Mac touchscreens, PLG and organization scaling guide & more
Hey team,
Welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$208B: in 2022, Chinese consumers spent a total of $208B on ByteDance platforms; ByteDance owns TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin; it saw a revenue increase of 76% in China between 2021 and 2022
$63B: Stripe cuts valuation again; the company’s new internal valuation makes Stripe worth $63B; Stripe originally had plans to go public by the end of 2022 in what could have been one of the most valued exits a private company has seen; following the shifting headwinds in the economy, those plans have been on hold; the company last raised its Series H round at a $95B valuation in March 2021
$10B: Microsoft is in talks to invest $10B into OpenAI at a $29B valuation as part of a deal in which Microsoft would get 75% of the startup's profits until it recoups its investment; after that, it would revert to a structure where Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI; Microsoft is working to bring the ChatGPT chatbot to Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and other apps
>$3B: crypto broker Genesis owes creditors >$3B; DCG, its parent company, is exploring selling assets in Genesis's VC portfolio to raise cash
$1.37B: capital allocators invested more money into generative AI startups in 2022 than the previous five years combined, investing ~$1.37B across 78 deals last yearÂ
$1B: DeepL, a startup using deep neural networks to provide translation-as-a-service to businesses, announced a funding round valuing the company at more than $1B; CEO Jaroslaw Kutylowski did not disclose the exact amount, saying only that it was a "significant size"
$966M: South Korea-based Kakao Entertainment has raised a $966M funding round to create storytelling content; the company says it has over 100,000 content creators
$190M: Microsoft acquired Fungible in December for a reported ~$190M; Fungible produces data processing units (DPUs) that enable specific tasks like security and network routing; Microsoft will reportedly use the technology to enhance Azure's capabilities
$125M: Xpansiv, an infrastructure provider for environmental investing markets, raised $125
$115M: Chronosphere, used by Snap, Visa, and DoorDash, has raised a $115M Series C funding round to simplify cloud management; the company is now valued at $1.9B
$60M: the London School of Economics has launched a $60M accelerator for social startups; the accelerator will accept startups in two cohorts per year
$40M: Inbenta, a startup that provides conversational AI-as-a-service to >250 brands, raised a $40M round
+61%: Mercado Libre, also known as the "Amazon of Latin America," saw 61% revenue growth in Q4 2022; in particular, the fintech arm of the company has grown substantially
+30%: Crypto exchange Binance plans to increase its workforce by 15% to 30% in 2023; Binance grew its workforce from 3,000 to nearly 8,000 in 2022; a surprising trend and move given that about $1.4T was wiped from the crypto market in 2022
-20%: Crypto.com will cut 20% of its employees, citing growing too ambitiously at the start of 2022
-20%: Flexport, a supply chain software startup, will cut 20% of its staff (~640 employees), citing the need to be more nimble in the current economic situation; Flexport was valued at $8B in February 2022
-30%: Mastodon (open-source Twitter alternative) saw a 30% drop in active users since hitting a peak of 2.5M active users in December; in the first week of January, the company recorded 1.8M active users
-63%: startup funding in North America dropped 63% YoY in Q4 2022; VCs invested $36.1B in North American startups during the quarter
📰 What’s going on
Microsoft announced that US salaried employees would get unlimited time off starting January 16; employees will also receive ten corporate holidays, leaves of absence, sick and mental health time off, and time away for jury duty
Microsoft announced a new text-to-speech AI model called VALL-E that can accurately simulate a person's voice with a three-second audio sample; Microsoft trained its model on a dataset, assembled by Meta, with >60K hours of English language speech from >7000 speakers
OpenAI will start piloting a paid version of its ChatGPT chatbot, called "ChatGPT Professional"; benefits include no "blackout" windows, no throttling, and an unlimited number of messages; OpenAI is also building a native iOS app for users to interact with its ChatGPT chatbot
YouTube will start sharing ad revenue with Shorts creators on February 1; changes to YouTube's Partner Program will allow creators to earn money from ads placed between videos in the Shorts Feed
After multiple delays, Apple plans to debut its mixed-reality headset in spring 2023 and could start shipping units in the fall; the headset is rumored to be called the Reality Pro
Apple is considering adding touchscreens to its new line of Macs as early as 2025; this goes against Steve Jobs's ideology that touchscreen laptops were "ergonomically terrible"
Twitter has weighed the idea of auctioning off user names in order to generate more revenue; under the proposal, the company would hold online auctions for people to bid on user handles, most likely those freed up through the deletion of inactive accounts; in December, Elon Musk said the company would begin to free up 1.5B accounts
Meta confirmed there will no longer be a dedicated Shop tab on Instagram; however, the company declared that users will still be able to shop through feeds, reels, stories, explore, and ads
Beginning in February, advertisers on Facebook and Instagram will not be able to target teens 18 and younger based on their gender; marketers will also lose the ability to target children based on their in-app activity and who they follow
TikTok created a new service called "Talent Manager Portal" that enables managers to handle deal flow, contract negotiations, and project feedback for the creators they represent
Amazon plans to open up its "Buy with Prime" feature to all U.S. merchants by the end of the month; the feature allows online retailers outside its network to use its payment and delivery services
AWS is partnering with Ava Labs to accelerate enterprise, institutional, and government adoption of blockchain; Ava Labs is the company behind the layer-1 blockchain Avalanche; the partnership will make it easier to launch and manage nodes on Avalanche and provide more strength to the network and flexibility to developers
📚 Good reads
Leah's Growth and Organizational Scaling guide. Leah’s blog is quickly becoming one of my favourites. After her recent PLG guide, now she will help you get kickstarted on growth and scaling your organization. This guide is aimed at founders, PMs, and senior leaders (CTO/CPO/CRO/CMO). Complement with another in-depth guide to getting started with PLG by Hila Qu for Lenny’s blog
Maven's path to Product-Market Fit — lessons for leveraging community in the early days. Maven founder and CEO Kate Ryder shares:
What she learned about market size from her time in venture capital
How she used focus groups to validate and gain conviction in the early idea for Maven
Why she decided to start with building a B2C community — even though she knew the long-term play for the company would mean pivoting to B2B
Her advice for getting creative when it comes to early hires (like swapping seats at a wedding to get face time with a dream hire)
Glassdoor’s 100 best places to work 2023. For the first time since 2011, Apple and Meta were excluded from Glassdoor's 100 Best Places to Work list. Newcomer Gainsight, a tech and software company based in San Francisco, came in at No. 1. Other tech firms in this year's top 20 included Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and LinkedIn
The psychology of Clubhouse’s user (lack of) retention. Big names, invites-only, and live talks skyrocketed Clubhouse's growth. But user acquisition without user retention is like a bucket full of holes
At 48 years old, is Microsoft the best-positioned big tech company for the next decade?
Most diversified revenue stream
Azure is clear #2 in cloud market
In talks to acquire 49% of OpenAI and adding AI to multiple products
ChatGPT for Product Managers. Togay Aytemiz shares some ideas on how PMs can get value out of ChatGPT
That’s all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Angel
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