el producto #357 đ
GPT-4 Turbo, Google Maps updates, Humane's AI pin, Defensibility of Network Effects, Growth Loops, Using ChatGPT for design, A better content diet & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
đ° The week in figures
$270B: ByteDance has offered to buy back employee stock at $160/share (implying a ~$270B valuation) to motivate staff by giving them liquidity
$90B: Shein is aiming for a valuation between $80B-$90B in its US IPO; recently, the company has been valued between ~$50B-$60B in private trades
$500M: Aleph Alpha, a German generative AI startup focused on customers in sensitive sectors like healthcare and law enforcement, raised $500M+
$500M: IBM announced the launch of the Enterprise AI Venture Fund with a total of $500M for early-stage "hypergrowth" startups. The tech company has already participated in AI startup funding, including HiddenLayer's $50M round and Hugging Face's $235M round
$120M: Enable, a rebate management startup, raised a $120M Series D at a $1B valuation
1M: Meta says there are now 1M active subscriptions to Instagram creators, a year after the company launched the feature. Whilst itâs an impressive start, for context, Instagram has around 2 billion monthly active users
$99: Amazon cut the price of its annual One Medical subscription to $99 for Prime subscribers, down from $199
đ° Whatâs going on
OpenAI announced GPT-4 Turbo, a new model, at its developer day; features: 128K token context window, 2.75x cheaper than GPT-4, updated knowledge cutoff to April 2023
OpenAI also announced custom GPTs and an App Store-style GPT Store with a rev share model coming later this month
Elon Musk has announced Grok, a chatbot created by his company, xAI. The chatbot will access real-time data from X to generate answers. Musk also announced plans to merge xAI with his social media platform X
Spotify premium subscribers in the US now have free access to 15 hours of content from 200K+ audiobooks per month; this service was initially launched in the UK and Australia on 10/3
Google Maps has introduced a major update which introduces several new features. Immersive View uses AI to bring a multi dimensional 3D view of a journey, a new search function which uses image recognition models to search for key phrases and the rollout of Lens for augmented reality
Humane, an AI hardware startup founded by former Apple execs, revealed the specs of its $699 AI Pin, which took five years, 25 patents, and ~$240M in funding to build; the company expects to sell ~100K units in year one:
The AI Pin is a wearable projector with an ultrawide RGB camera for photos. It can make phone calls, text, email, play music, and answer questions using ChatGPT-like features
The square device weighs 55 grams and attaches magnetically to clothes. The clip doubles as a battery pack, allowing for battery replacement during the day
Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, the Pin has a built-in speaker and camera and flashes a "Trust Light" when either is turned on
It uses the camera, depth sensors, and motion sensors to monitor and capture its environment. Its green laser projector can project information onto the user's hand and other surfaces
The Pin responds to voice queries using large language models and offers real-time translation between Spanish and English in spoken conversations
It requires a $24 monthly data subscription to a Humane-branded version of T-Mobile's network, which includes access to OpenAI and Microsoft models
Amazon will offer free grocery delivery to non-Prime members. The offer will be available for all U.S. markets where Amazon Fresh stores operate
Amazon is reportedly investing millions to train a language model, codenamed "Olympus," with 2 trillion parameters. By comparison, OpenAI's GPT-4 allegedly has 1 trillion parameters, though experts caution that bigger models may not necessarily be more capable
Meta agreed on a preliminary deal with Tencent to sell a lower-priced version of its VR headset in China starting in H2 2024
Uber Q3 results: revenue: $9.3B (+11% y/y), gross bookings: $35.3B (+21% y/y), trips: 2.4B (+25% y/y), net income: $221M, FCF: $905M; shares are up slightly on the news
Disney will launch a beta version of a combined Disney+ and Hulu app in December. The app will merge Disney+ and Hulu content into a single experience for bundle subscribers. A full launch of the app is expected in spring 2024
Samsung announced Galaxy AI, a mobile AI experience that includes live translations which will debut in 2024
23andMe, Ancestry, and MyHeritage have notified customers that all accounts will be 2FA by default after millions of 23andMe records were stolenÂ
đ Good reads
Are your network effects truly defensible? Andrei Hagiu and Julian Wright share an interesting and informative piece on local-vs-global network effects, and their defensibility:
Global network effects provide a significant advantage for platform expansion, as it allows a platform to harness its existing installed base across all locations, providing defensibility against local competition
Local network effects, on the other hand, reset when a platform expands to new locations, making it less defensible and giving rise to potential competition
How to win at Generative AI. Â Sangeet Choudary provides a framework to evaluate when and how upstarts can challenge incumbents in a given space, and how to assess the potential to create a new Over The Top layer on top of emerging GenAI enablers
Donât fix things; write a new story. The push to 'align on the problem' can lead to a narrative stalemate, where competing narratives about what is broken and how to fix it create conflict. The focus shifts from solving the actual problem to winning the narrative battle, resulting in oversimplification and power struggles. John Cutler shares how to overcome this struggle, and shift the focus from competing problem narratives to collective solutions
How to use ChatGPT in your design work. Felix Lee shares a powerful list of ChatGPT prompts that will greatly enhance your day-day work designing products
A better content diet, and how to practice active content consumption. Access to limitless data does not necessarily lead to creative insights. On the contrary, perpetual overload prevents our brains from making unexpected connections. Anne-Laure Le Cunff shares advice on how to escape the algorithm and get the most of our content consumption
Growth funnels vs Growth loops. Aakash Gupta explains how growth loops outperform growth funnels by addressing key problems like scalability, linear thinking, resource sinkholes, optimization myopia, retention neglect, and inflexibility. You may have heard of Amazonâs flywheel, but here you will also find great examples from other tech companies like Netflix, LinkedIn, and Uber.
The Netflix effect. Scott Galloway on Netflix's successful business strategies and industry positioning. A year ago, Netflix was losing 1M subscribers per quarter and had shed 75% of its market cap. Fast forward, it has become Wall Street's favorite while the rest of the industry flounders. Netflix's profits hit $1.6B, up 20% from a year earlier, and the platform added 9M new subscribers
What makes a great acquisition? By Mario Gabriele. âOne moral of the [Facebook/Instagram & Twitter/Vine] story is this: the right acquisition can change everything. A purchaser who finds the perfect business at the ideal time can unlock new markets, establish new moats, stave off decline, and accelerate growth. Think Google snagging YouTube, eBay grabbing PayPal, or Disney devouring Marvel.
Another equally true moral: picking the right acquisition is extremely difficult. It requires a mix of vision, operational acuity, financial discipline, cultural awareness, market storytelling, and timingâ
[Podcast] How Meta built Threads in 5 months. Meta engineer Pascal Hartig is joined by Joy Qiu, Cameron Roth, and Richard Zadorozny, three engineers from the Threads team, who worked on backend, iOS, and Android respectively, to explain how they built the social app in such a short space of time
Thatâs all for this week! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Angel