el producto #348 ๐
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 ofย el producto!
๐ฐ The week in figures
$1.6T: As of August, Alphabet led the global internet sector with aย 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 raiseย $500Mย in fresh funding through a down round that will reportedly value the firm at $2.5B.ย 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 raisedย $200M in funding, valuing the company at over $1B.ย 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, raisedย $93M. Zopa plans to use the funds on acquisitions and building up its products, including savings, deposits, and BNPL.ย 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,ย raisedย $80M
-10%: Roku is cuttingย 10% of its workforce, or approximately 300 employees, to help reduce operating costs, according to anย SEC filing made this week.ย 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
๐ฐ Whatโs 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 companyโs iOS app; the project is codenamed Chore
Metaย plans to stop promoting news content for people in the U.K., Germany, and France. The company will โdeprecateโ 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.ย 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 policyย took effectย on Tuesday, requiring employees to work in the company's physical offices for a minimum of 3 days per week.ย 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 โnearly all iPhone and iPadโ apps that are currently in the App Store, but developers can also build and optimize apps specifically for Vision Pro and visionOS
Apple hasย significantly increasedย its investment in AI technologies, allocating millions of dollars daily to enhance its language models.ย The company's cutting-edge language model, internally referred to as Ajax GPT, reportedly surpasses the capabilities of OpenAI's GPT-3.5
Amazonย canceledย its magazine and newspaper subscriptions on Monday.ย The company did notย provide a reasonย for the change, which it first announced last year
Google is celebrating Chrome's 15th anniversary with aย refreshed desktop design, embracing the "Material You"ย design principles.ย The update includes improved icons for better legibility and customizable color palettes
Multiple senior staffers at YouTubeย fear thatย Shorts, the short-form video competitor to TikTok,ย could cannibalize the platform's core business.ย 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 introducedย Claude Pro, the paid version of its Claude 2 chatbot.ย San Francisco-based Anthropic is one of theย best-funded generative AI startupsย in the Bay Area, behind only OpenAI andย 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 isย Airtable AIย - the companyโs own take on how gen-AI can help product teams and other users. Practical use casesย suggested by the company include writing campaign briefs, product spec creation and collecting and analyzing customer feedback
Clubhouse unveiledย 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
Coinbaseย creates a new crypto lending service geared toward large investors. The platform was revealed in an SECย filingย on Sept. 1, which showed $57M had already been raised for the program
The EU plans to impose stricter rules onย 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 toย 10%ย 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
๐ 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 thatโs masked by your strength is key to personal and career growth. โWhen 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.โ Here is a small self-reflection exercise: What are your top three strengths, and whatโs a potential opposite for each?ย Examples:
Mastering user onboarding - from first moments to lasting engagement. A fresh take on user onboarding by Nima Torabi. โUser onboarding has long been regarded as a critical phase in the journey of introducing users to a product. However, thereโs more to the story than just the initial interaction. In the realm of modern product management, itโs essential to recognize that user onboarding isnโt a linear path with a finite end. Instead, itโs a dynamic, cyclical process that keeps the momentum going long after the initial engagementโ
Your path to leadership doesnโt 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. โTaking responsibility for others is one of the most important components of the role, and as you have more pressure to achieve results, youโll need guidance and support more than ever.โ
Time published its first-ever list of theย 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence.ย 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.
Thatโs all for today! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Angel