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🎰 The week in figures

$1T: Stripe expects to process $1T in payments and possibly earn $100M EBITDA this year as it eyes a new fundraiser from potential investors

$500M: AI and quantum computing startup SandboxAQ secured $500M in fresh funding; SandboxAQ aims to bring AI and quantum computing to the telecom, financial services, health care, and security sectors; the firm spun out from Alphabet in March last year

$180M: Cybersecurity firm Deepwatch has closed a $180M fundraising round; the Tampa-based company saw sales growth of 100% in 2022; the latest influx of cash brings their total funds raised to $256M

$175M: Demandbase has raised a $175M funding round to help companies increase their revenue through better sales; its software platform scans its client's target list and selects the business accounts that are most likely to buy from the company

$110M: Via Transportation, an app that helps users navigate public transit routes has secured $110M in funding; the round valued the company at $3.5B; Via previously raised funds in November of 2021 with a valuation of $3.3B

$100M: Tokhit has raised a $100M funding round to become the largest blockchain-based social app

$100M: Singaporean fintech Aspire raised a $100M Series C; Andrea Baronchelli, the CEO, did not give exact figures but said Aspire has “more than doubled” its valuation

-17%: Twilio is laying off 17% of its workforce, marking its second round of layoffs within six months

-60%: Twitter’s top 1000 advertising customers have cut their spending by 60% since September; advertisers spent ~$127M in September, down to $48M in January

💰 Q4 results

Airbnb’s stock surged 9% after the release of their Q4 earnings; Airbnb’s Q4 revenue hit $1.9B, up 24% y/y; net income nearly 6x from $55M in 2021 to $319M in 2022; gross bookings for the year hit 393.7M while FCF hit $3.4B, making it Airbnb’s most profitable year to date

Shopify recorded $1.73B in revenue in their Q4 earnings report, up 26% y/y; the e-commerce platform’s gross merchandise volume was up 13% y/y to $61B; gross profit was up 13% y/y to $798.5M; total revenue for the year was $5.6B

📰 What’s going on

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down from her role after nine years; she will be replaced by Neal Mohan; in her letter to YouTube employees, she wrote that she is ready to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I’m passionate about”

Apple has yet again postponed the release of their highly anticipated mixed reality headset after reports that the tech giant still has to iron out a few wrinkles with both the hardware and software; they expect to release the headset in June at Apple’s WWDC

Apple released iOS and iPadOS 16.4 beta 1 with support for push notifications and other features for Home Screen web apps; last week, WebKit invited developers to test CSS Nesting

Instagram is following in the footsteps of its sister platform Facebook by sunsetting live shopping; beginning on March 16, users will no longer be able to tag products while live streaming

Twitter has once again delayed the release of its new paid API; on February 13th, hours before it was supposed to be released, Twitter announced “will be taking a few more days to ensure the developer community will have an optimal experience with the new API

Elon Musk said that he will be looking for a new CEO for Twitter when the organization is “in a financially healthy place, and the product road map is clearly laid out,”; he predicts that Twitter will be in this position by the end of the year

Content publishers are concerned about the effects of Google's Bard and OpenAI's ChatGPT on their ability to make money; publishers also expressed concern about the chatbots' confident ability to spread misinformation

Errors in Bing Search’s AI demo went unnoticed, while Google’s unveiling of Bard received large amounts of criticism for displaying incorrect information; it is reported that Bing’s chatbot presented incorrect information about Gap’s financial reports, Bissel’s pet hair vaccum and more

Amazon’s ad product has gained significant market share in the last few quarters as Meta’s targetting is becoming more restrictive; Amazon’s ad business grew 19% last quarter, while Meta saw a decline in ad revenue for the third straight quarter

Amazon’s self-driving car subsidiary Zoox has successfully transported passengers on public roads for the first time; the autonomous vehicle will now be able to shuttle employees of Zoox between its two office buildings in Foster City as it awaits clearance to expand its service to the public

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stated that they plan to “go big” on brick-and-mortar stores in 2023 and beyond; Amazon acquired Whole Foods five years ago for $13.7B but has yet to expand, “blaming a lack of normalcy during the pandemic”

In another effort to cut costs, Amazon has warned European distributors that they will be directly purchasing products from brands in an effort to cut out some middlemen; Amazon’s international unit tallied a loss of $7.75B last year, 3x larger than the prior year

TikTok creators may soon be able to charge their fans $1 or more to view their content; TikTok also plans to launch the Creator Fund 2.0 this Spring, according to sources familiar with the matter

British digital bank and loan fintech Zopa acquired compatriot buy-now-pay-later startup DivideBuy for an undisclosed sum; the acquisition comes on the heels of a £75M ($90M) venture round that Zopa closed earlier this month

Internet search engine You.com has launched a chatbot that can generate text answers, videos, and other data in response to queries; the "multimodal" search feature is an upgraded version of the company's YouChat AI chatbot, which initially launched in December

Snap has added ray tracing to its arsenal of AR tools; ray tracing allows for rendings to react to light and reflections in a scene; Snap has partnered with Tiffany to enable users to use the new AR lens to try on and purchase jewelry within the app

Github’s Copilot for Business is now available to the general public after having released its beta in December 2022; the $19 per month service adds features like license management, organization-wide policy management, and additional privacy features

Strava CEO Michael Horvath is stepping down for the second time; Horvath left in 2013 after founding the company in 2009 due to family reasons; the Strava founder resumed his role in 2019 before announcing that his time as the chief executive has come to an end today

📚 Good reads

How X1 found PMF - the consumer credit card company that pulled off a pandemic pivot. In this article by First Round Review, we will learn how X1 successfully launched their product before he even had a product in place. “Consumer products have to be jaw-dropping. Otherwise, they’ll never work out. Whether people love it or hate it, you want to make sure they’ll 100% have something to say about it.”

Nfx’s framework for Product Led Growth. Nfx comes up with another interesting mental framework for achieving Product Led Growth: you’ll need to have fast-moving waters in the market (i.e. a dynamic market, going through rapid and deep changes). You’ll need to figure out quickly, even before your Product-Market fit, what’s your essential product promise (“the pain point, why you feel your product needs to exist, and the reason someone would use it”) and then… build an iteration machine. Seems easy right?

From Customer/Founder driven to Product/Team driven. Casey Winters comes up with another piece of timeless advice as he shares a framework to manage the delicate process through which Founders have to gradually leave decision-making space to leaders and employees. Winters also explains how the process is similar to what happens when we gradually move from customer driven insights ("observing what customers are doing") to product driven behaviours where we teaching customers "what best practices the company is aware of that will make them more successful."

The new gatekeepers. Every year, Ben Evans produces a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. This year's presentation is mostly data-focused - not many general market insights but slide 100 hits the nail on the head: a good reminder that there are still a lot of physical economies that need to be transformed by digital - the question is: will this ever be transformed? Should it? In what ways?

Airbnb - how to reduce churn with personalization. This Growth.Design Airbnb case study will show you step-by-step:
• How to focus on personalization to reduce customer churn
• Why some customers get stuck in checkout funnels
• The most important type of personalization

How Snapchat designs product. ADP shares lessons from Snapchat by breaking product strategies and tactics to unlock new growth

a16z’s fintech focus. Despite last year’s fintech market turbulence, a16z remained an active investor in the space. Of all the verticals that drew a16z’s participation in 2022, fintech saw the most attention, accounting for almost 25% of the investor’s total bets

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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