el producto #338 🚀

Apple crosses $3T market cap, Spotify's full-length music videos, Meta's Quest Plus subscription, Apple's Product roadmap, Building a neobank using APIs, & more

Jul 02, 2023

Hey team,

Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!

🎰 The week in figures

$3T: Apple became the first publicly traded company to close with a market cap above $3T; Apple shares are up 55% YTD; the company previously hit a $3T market cap intraday in January 2022

$34B: A recently revealed court document shows Microsoft's Azure business reported $34B in revenue for the 12 months ending June 2022

$10B: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew announced the app’s plans to invest $10B into Indonesia over the next five years, with the intent of expanding growth in SE Asia; TikTok has already been banned in India and will undergo a security review in Vietnam

$4.6B: IBM will acquire Apptio, a platform that helps companies manage data in hybrid environments, for $4.6B in cash; Apptio was sold to IBM by Vista Equity Partners, which acquired the firm and took it private for $1.94B in 2018

$1.3B: Inflection AI raised $1.3B at a $4B valuation in a round led by Microsoft, Nvidia, Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, and Eric Schmidt; Inflection is installing 22K Nvidia H100s, which it believes will be the world’s largest AI-specific GPU cluster

$1.3B: Databricks will acquire open-source generative AI startup MosaicML for ~$1.3B; MosaicML enables businesses to build proprietary language models; the deal is expected to close by the end of July

$1B: Visa acquires Brazilian fintech startup Pismo in $1B blockbuster deal

$150M: Accelerant, an Atlanta-based startup building a “Risk Exchange” marketplace to connect underwriters with risk capital, raised $150M at a $2.4B valuation

$141M: Runway, known for its AI software that creates short videos from text prompts, raised $141M in a Series C extension round; Runway's Gen-2 tool, which generates videos from text, has gained popularity among a diverse user base, from movie directors to small creators

$100M: Celestial AI, a startup building optical interconnect technology for operations such as on-chip data transmission, raised a $100M Series B

$96M: Smartphone maker Nothing raised a $96M round led by Highland Europe ahead of the launch of its Phone (2); valuation was not disclosed

230: Pokémon Go-maker Niantic cut 230 employees, canceled its upcoming Marvel game, and will close its LA-based studio to rein in costs

+32%: the Nasdaq closed out H1 2023 up 32%, its best first half since 1983; Nvidia led the way, up ~195% behind an AI-induced surge

📰 What’s going on

Spotify is in talks with partners to test full-length music videos on its mobile app as it expands further into video

OpenAI wants to transform ChatGPT into a highly intelligent personal assistant for work; the effort, which is likely years away, would create a personal assistant capable of tasks like drafting emails or documents in a person's writing style with the latest business information

Meta has announced Quest Plus, a subscription costing $8/month or $60/year, which offers a suite of VR games and two new titles every month

Apple has made the fourth betas of its iPhone and iPad software updates available to public beta testers; non-developers can now try out iOS 16.6 and iPadOS 16.6 ahead of their official release in July

Apple's upcoming product roadmap includes the launch of the iPhone 15 lineup and three new smartwatches; here's what else is planned for 2023 and 2024:

13-, 14- and 16-inch variants of MacBook Pro with various M3 chips, as well as two new MacBook Airs
New iMacs with 24-inch screens are in the works, along with a larger iMac model at 30 inches, which would be its largest all-in-one screen to date
Updates to the iPad, including two revamped iPad Pro models with OLED screens, are planned for 2024, as well as a new iPad Air to replace the current version
Two sizes of the next-generation Apple Watch 9 and an updated version of the Apple Watch Ultra
In early development are third-generation AirPods Pro, smart displays, and an improved Apple TV set-top box

Apple is reportedly working on two new headsets to enhance the capabilities of its visionOS, even before the release of the first Vision Pro headset announced at WWDC 2023; these new models aim to introduce additional features and improve accessibility by offering a lower-priced option:

The second-generation high-end model and the lower-end headset are being developed by Apple, with some of the existing Vision Pro employees transitioning to work on these new projects
Features not showcased during the Vision Pro unveiling, such as displaying multiple Mac desktops simultaneously and expanding the single-display limit, will be introduced in the new headsets
Fitness Plus support and the ability to work out while wearing the Vision Pro are among the planned new features
Apple is also planning to enable multiple Vision Pro wearers to participate in the same FaceTime call using Personals, though one-on-one calls will remain the limitation
While Apple has not disclosed a specific release date for the new headset versions, the initial launch of the Vision Pro is anticipated to take place in the first half of 2024

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino is preparing to launch full-screen video ads with sound, which will be shown in Twitter's new short-video feed

Twitter appears to have made a change that prevents non-logged-in users from seeing content on the platform; previously, users without an account could view public tweets and profiles, but are now met with a sign-in prompt that blocks their view completely

Microsoft has launched an AI training program in partnership with subsidiary LinkedIn, offering free coursework and certification on generative AI; the AI Skills Initiative is said to offer "the first Professional Certificate on Generative AI in the online learning market"

Google is downsizing its workforce at navigation app Waze as it integrates the app's advertising system with Google Ads; Waze has a workforce of 500+ employees, but the specific number of layoffs has not been disclosed

ByteDance has released a music production app in the U.S; the Ripple app is designed to help creators compose and edit music for their content, particularly for short-form videos on TikTok and other platforms

TikTok Now, the platform's BeReal-inspired in-app feature and standalone app, is being discontinued; despite heavy promotion, the feature failed to gain user traction and is now being phased out less than a year after it was first announced

DoorDash, the food delivery service, is shifting its business model to give drivers a choice on how they wish to be compensated; the company will now allow drivers to be paid hourly rather than strictly making money on the number of deliveries they make

Checkout.com launches AI-powered optimisation engine to increase merchant revenue.; the engine, trained on “billions of transactional data points” from Checkout.com’s global network, has reportedly already enabled transactions creating around $750m of new revenue

📚 Good reads

0 failure = 0 growth. Ami Vora (CPO @ Faire, ex-VP Product & Design @ WhatsApp) argues that being too afraid to be wrong can make you unwilling to take a bold stand on anything. Expect to be pretty bad at things you’ve never practiced. Embrace taking risks and trying something new, even if it means others sometimes see you fail

Building a neobank using FinTech APIs, by Mikhail Sadovskiy. The development of an app using ready-made components has been a long-standing aspiration in the software engineering field. In the financial industry, this dream has become a reality due to the growth and maturation of the FinTech API ecosystem and the widespread adoption of industry standards like SWIFT, ACH, and SEPA

The equation for making irresistible products. Peter Yang presentes a framework created by Alex Hormozi, author of the book $100M Offers, which is a way to make an offer so good that people just can’t say no. Made up of four components, it breaks down “what makes a product valuable”. It looks like this:

To zoom in a bit more:

Dream outcome: How will this improve my life?
- The more people think your product helps them close the gap between their current reality and their dreams (e.g., status), the more they’ll value your product
Perceived likelihood of achievement: How likely is this dream outcome to happen?
- You can’t just promise the world. People need to trust in the dream outcome you’re selling. That’s why community and other social proof points are so helpful
Time delay: How long will it take to get to that dream outcome?
- Reducing the time delay is one of the most underrated ways to provide value. If you enter a competitive market with a product that’ll help customers achieve the same dream in half the time - you’ll win
Effort and sacrifice: How much work will this take?
- The less perceived friction (i.e. time and money), the more valuable the product. This is why so many people pay so much money for get-rich-quick seminars but don’t invest a little each month

The AI is eating itself: How gen AI is affecting the Internet (so far). Casey Newton (author/tech journalist at Platformer) wrote an excellent thought piece sharing early notes on the effect of generative AI on the broader web, and thinking through what it means for platforms. Generative AI models are changing the economy of the web, making it cheaper to generate lower-quality content. And, we’re just beginning to see the effects of these changes as AI output is spreading rapidly to encompass more of the web every day

How Roblox grows: from virtual playground to global empire. Lessons on steadfast vision, platform building, vertically-integrated ecosystems, community as the product, and a peak into what a virtual country looks like. Nowadays Roblox can be compared to a virtual country, with a stable population, defined territory, form of government, capacity to enter into relations with other states, culture, technology, education, and economy. To achieve continued growth, they will need to master challenges such as remaining relevant on new platforms and content formats, aging up its userbase, and making its creator tools more accessible and intuitive

How Airbnb is design-led. Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb shares 10 lessons of designing a global company

Forget about the 10,000-hour rule, by Ness Labs. There is no rule indicating that sticking to one area of expertise for many years is the best strategy. Next time you feel like studying something new that doesn't fit neatly into your current 'frame of expertise', go ahead and just do it. Complement with this recent article by Petra Wille on cross-disciplinary learning for PMs: “Successful product leaders share a common trait: the ability to think outside the box and learn from diverse industries, companies, and individuals. Through cross-disciplinary learning, they unlock the potential to drive innovation, foster growth, and stay competitive in an ever-evolving landscape“

Creating a Product strategy with multiple strategic tracks, by Itamar Gilad. For most tech companies, their first big product success is also their last; finding a second hit is very hard no matter how much we invest in vision and strategy development. But we can see something different, some sort of a sequence pattern, in Apple, Amazon, Netflix or Google. Great companies arrive at their product strategies through parallel explorations. Strategic tracks test big ideas — new products, new business models, etc, by building short/medium size projects. Testing multiple strategic ideas improves the odds of finding the next big thing

That’s all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack

Angel