el producto #361 🚀
Product team dynamics, Google's AI-notebook, Decentralized e-commerce, Upcoming iPads and MacBooks, TikTok concert tickets, Cognitive biases & more
Hey team,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$1B: Elon Musk is looking to raise $1B for his new AI startup xAI, per a SEC filing. According to the document, the firm has already raised $135M from four unnamed investors. Last month, xAI launched its first AI bot, Grok, which is trained on real-time data from X
$210M: Klook Travel, a start-up that provides online travel booking services such as food-themed excursions and adventure expeditions, raised a $210M Series E+. Its total funding is now $900M+ after turning cash flow positive in mid-2023
$118M: AI data startup VAST Data, which unifies storage, databases, and more, raised a $118M Series E at a $9B valuation
$10: Amazon is piloting a $9.99/month grocery subscription service for Prime members, offering unlimited Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh grocery delivery on orders over $35
-17%: Spotify plans a major cut to its workforce, the third and largest this year. CEO Daniel Ek attributed the decision to slowing growth and rising costs. Spotify will reduce its headcount by 17% across the company. The layoffs will affect +1,500 people
📰 What’s going on
Google announces Gemini, a new AI model with three tiers, Ultra, Pro, and Nano, and plans a paid version in 2024; Google says the new Bard beats free ChatGPT
Google launches the NotebookLM, an AI-first notebook that pulls information from users’ documents. It’s powered by Gemini Pro and was demoed at I/O 2023 in the US
Microsoft updates Copilot with OpenAI's latest models, including GPT-4 Turbo, and adds a new code interpreter feature and “Deep Search” functionality for Bing
Meta rolls out tags on Threads, bringing tags without the # symbol and supporting multiple words and spaces. Each post can now feature a single tag, enhancing the search view
Meta announces Purple Llama, an initiative to promote responsible AI development by offering tools and evaluations for safely building open generative AI models
Meta announces Seamless Communication, a suite of AI translation models that aim to enable more natural and authentic communication across languages
X is now licensed for payment processing in a dozen US states, making it a step closer to becoming an “everything app.” Payments are also tied to X’s broader move into the creator economy
Amazon tells customers that the company plans to stop accepting Venmo as a payment method on January 10, 2024, after launching Venmo support in Oct-2022
Apple is gearing up to release new iPad Air, iPad Pro, and MacBook Air models in the first few months of 2024. With the upgraded devices, Apple hopes to counteract a drop in Mac and iPad revenue
Robinhood launches a commission-free crypto trading app, supporting 25+ cryptocurrencies, in the EU, a week after the company launched stock trading in the UK
Disney launched a beta version of its combined Hulu and Disney+ app on Wednesday, merging two major U.S. streaming services under one roof
Discord has launched a major refresh of its mobile app. The new redesign has been inspired by user feedback and is designed to help declutter the UI
ByteDance plans to release a “bot development platform” in beta by the end of December to let users create their own AI chatbots
TikTok has expanded its concert ticket booking functionality to users outside the US. The feature is powered by an integration with Ticketmaster and allows artists to sell concert tickets directly through the app
Sam Altman was named Time magazine's CEO of the year for 2023 and was interviewed alongside 20 people in his close circle
🧑🔬 Cool Products
Vercel v0 - build UIs instantly from scratch, using AI prompts
Capsule - Paris-based Capsule launched a product that curates the news via AI and human editors, aiming to create "Spotify for News”
📚 Good reads
How we got our first 100 customers via FB Groups. “This strategy works so well because no one wants to do this strategy. Which is why when you see that rare person genuinely putting in the work to try and integrate themselves into a group and constantly trying to provide value, you naturally just want to root for them“
Navigating Product team dynamics. Exploring the intricacies of product team structures is vital for any thriving organization - especially growing ones. In this article, Ravi Metha delves into the Product Organization Matrix and discusses four approaches that cater to different product stages, company scales, and cultures. Especially as organizations move towards multi-product landscapes, organizational developers must distribute work (for example across features) and accountability according to different leadership styles: enabling vs managing
How psychology design products that win customers. Felix Lee shares a sweet and short overview of some of my favourite cognitive biases and design principles, including examples and tips
Finding the next wave of Growth: S-curves and Product sequencing. In this post, Casey Winters delves into the strategic shift from product development to growth post-product/market fit. He highlights the limitations of primary acquisition loops and emphasizes the need for new growth strategies or products as these loops plateau. He underscores the importance of preemptively building new growth avenues and different S-curves of growth
A decentralized alternative for e-commerce. India’s ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) has been the most ambitious decentralized alternative to the centralized e-commerce marketplace model pioneered by Amazon and others. Sangeet Choudary’s exploration of ONDC’s points out a conundrum that is worth exploring between its democratization effect and the resulting advantages that it could end up giving to incumbents. Startups are unlikely to thrive in vertically integrated e-commerce due to its shift towards commoditization. Instead, there might be an opening for new startups to emerge, focusing on less capital-intensive aspects of the value chain…if any
Opportunity solution trees - an updated guide. Teresa Torres has just published an in-depth and updated guide, covering what an opportunity solution tree is, the benefits of using one, how to create one, and much more. For those unfamiliar with this tool, opportunity solution trees visually represent paths to desired outcomes, using opportunity space, solution space, and assumption tests
That’s all for this week! Let me know what you think by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Angel