el producto #348 🚀
Spotify's audiobooks, Uber's TaskRabbit-like service, Building AI products, Clubhouse's reinvention, Finding your weakness and unlocking growth, Apple's AI focus & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$1.6T: As of August, Alphabet led the global internet sector with a market valuation exceeding $1.6T. Amazon followed closely, holding a market cap of $1.373T, followed by Meta Platforms
$500M: Turkish grocery delivery startup Getir is looking to raise $500M in fresh funding through a down round that will reportedly value the firm at $2.5B. The lowered valuation is less than a quarter of its peak valuation of $11.8B 18 months ago
$200M: Imbue, an AI startup working on building AI agents capable of reasoning, has raised $200M in funding, valuing the company at over $1B. Imbue aims to develop AI agents that can autonomously handle complex tasks, from research to coding
$120M: Shop Circle, a London-based startup that enables e-commerce merchants to utilize features like restock alerts, raised a $120M Series A
$100M: Inceptive, a startup that uses AI to design mRNA molecules that it licenses to pharma companies, raised a $100M round
$93M: Zopa, a U.K.-based FinTech, raised $93M. Zopa plans to use the funds on acquisitions and building up its products, including savings, deposits, and BNPL. The startup claims over 1M customers and says it is on track to generate $312M in ARR this year
$80M: Ingsai Finance, a high frequency and algorithmic trading provider, raised $80M
-10%: Roku is cutting 10% of its workforce, or approximately 300 employees, to help reduce operating costs, according to an SEC filing made this week. This marks the third round of layoffs for the streaming software company within a year
-70%: the number of short-term Airbnbs available in New York City has dropped 70% after the city began enforcing a new law requiring short-term rental operators to register their homes. The law took effect on Tuesday
📰 What’s going on
As part of a content push, Spotify will offer a free audiobook bundle to paying subscribers, including up to 20 hours/month of content
Uber appears to be working on a TaskRabbit-like service that allows users to hire gig workers for various tasks, according to code in the company’s iOS app; the project is codenamed Chore
Meta plans to stop promoting news content for people in the U.K., Germany, and France. The company will “deprecate” the news tab in these regions
With a new advertising campaign, "The Impact Is Real," Meta Platforms is moving away from futuristic portrayals of the metaverse and concentrating on practical and current VR uses. Meta seeks to engage software developers across various industries to broaden VR and AR adoption by dispelling the misconception that these technologies are solely gaming-oriented and highlighting their practical, real-world applications
Meta's new return-to-office policy took effect on Tuesday, requiring employees to work in the company's physical offices for a minimum of 3 days per week. Fully remote workers are exempt
Apple announces the App Store for visionOS will be available later this year for developers. Vision Pro will be able to run “nearly all iPhone and iPad” apps that are currently in the App Store, but developers can also build and optimize apps specifically for Vision Pro and visionOS
Apple has significantly increased its investment in AI technologies, allocating millions of dollars daily to enhance its language models. The company's cutting-edge language model, internally referred to as Ajax GPT, reportedly surpasses the capabilities of OpenAI's GPT-3.5
Amazon canceled its magazine and newspaper subscriptions on Monday. The company did not provide a reason for the change, which it first announced last year
Google is celebrating Chrome's 15th anniversary with a refreshed desktop design, embracing the "Material You" design principles. The update includes improved icons for better legibility and customizable color palettes
Multiple senior staffers at YouTube fear that Shorts, the short-form video competitor to TikTok, could cannibalize the platform's core business. Recent YouTube strategy meetings have discussed the risk of long-form videos being a dying format. Shorts has amassed more than 2B users since its 2021 launch. Longer videos typically generate more advertising revenue because they can contain more product placements and have a higher click-through rate
Anthropic introduced Claude Pro, the paid version of its Claude 2 chatbot. San Francisco-based Anthropic is one of the best-funded generative AI startups in the Bay Area, behind only OpenAI and Inflection AI. Claude competes with both ChatGPT and Inflection AI's Pi chatbot, among others
Airtable has unveiled a bunch of new features this week. One of which is Airtable AI - the company’s own take on how gen-AI can help product teams and other users. Practical use cases suggested by the company include writing campaign briefs, product spec creation and collecting and analyzing customer feedback
Clubhouse unveiled its future vision by reinventing itself as an audio messaging app
Patreon added a premium group chat feature on mobile, resembling Discord, which lets creators restrict access based on membership tiers
eBay launched a generative AI feature that helps sellers generate product listings from a single photo
Coinbase creates a new crypto lending service geared toward large investors. The platform was revealed in an SEC filing on Sept. 1, which showed $57M had already been raised for the program
The EU plans to impose stricter rules on 6 major tech companies (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta, and Microsoft), known as "gatekeepers," under its new Digital Markets Act (DMA):
Companies with over 45M MAU or a market cap exceeding $82B are labeled as "gatekeepers"
The DMA prevents gatekeepers from favoring their services over rivals' and from trapping users within their ecosystems
Companies must also allow third-party entities to integrate with their services in specific situations
Violations can result in fines of up to 10% of a company's annual global turnover, or as high as 20% for repeat offenses
The companies will have 6 months to adhere to the rules
📚 Good reads
Building AI products with a holistic mental model. Janna Lipenkova has put together a great guide for the ideation, planning, and definition of AI products by cross-disciplinary teams. A long, but truly recommended read for anyone venturing into AI products
Open doors in your career by unlocking the dark side of your superpower. Nikhyl Singhal on how finding your weakness that’s masked by your strength is key to personal and career growth. “When you have a superpower, you receive tremendous praise that feeds your superpower. Your strengths create such an aura that your colleagues, your peers, and even your boss will look past any shortcomings or bad habits that need development.” Here is a small self-reflection exercise: What are your top three strengths, and what’s a potential opposite for each? Examples:
Mastering user onboarding - from first moments to lasting engagement. A fresh take on user onboarding by Nima Torabi. “User onboarding has long been regarded as a critical phase in the journey of introducing users to a product. However, there’s more to the story than just the initial interaction. In the realm of modern product management, it’s essential to recognize that user onboarding isn’t a linear path with a finite end. Instead, it’s a dynamic, cyclical process that keeps the momentum going long after the initial engagement“
Your path to leadership doesn’t start with you. Inspiring article by Elena Verna highlighting that if you actually want to get yourself to the leadership level, you have to start looking to others. There are some key characters that can help you get there. “Taking responsibility for others is one of the most important components of the role, and as you have more pressure to achieve results, you’ll need guidance and support more than ever.“
Time published its first-ever list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence. The TIME100 AI issue covers the "leaders, pioneers, innovators, and thinkers who are shaping today's AI landscape." To create the list, Time's editors and reporters gathered nominations and recommendations from industry leaders and experts. It features 41 women and nonbinary individuals, including the COO of Google DeepMind, Lila Ibrahim, and artist Kelly McKernan.
That’s all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Angel