el producto #370 🚀
Apple foldable phones, Uber becomes profitable, WhatsApp 3rd-party chat support, Airbnb winter updates, OpenAI "Agent" tool, PLG principles, Q4 results & more
Hey friends,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$1.5B: Disney will invest $1.5B in Fornite maker Epic Games and create a gaming "universe" linked to the popular online game. Disney shares rose 6% in after-hours trading Wednesday following the announcement of the deal and earnings that exceeded expectations
$1.1B: Uber (finally) turned a profit, earning $1.1B in 2023. A big win for CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. It’s the first time in Uber’s 15-year history that they finished a year in profit. Detailed results below
$840M: TikTok acquired a majority stake in Indonesian e-commerce business Tokopedia. The deal closed last week, allowing TikTok to re-enter the Indonesian market after government legislation forced it to close its e-commerce unit in the country. TikTok paid $840M for 75.01% of Tokopedia, the e-commerce unit of Indonesian tech conglomerate GoTo
600M: Spotify announces that the service now has 600M+ MAU, adding 28M users in the quarter, marking the second biggest quarterly gain in the company’s history. More details on Spotify’s results below
$150M, reportedly invested by HSBC on recently launched Zing, a new application poised to challenge established FinTech players such as Wise and Revolut in the competitive foreign exchange (FX) market
55%: GitHub recently reported that Copilot helped engineers write code 55% faster. However, a first of its kind study has concluded that this will lead to a doubling of the rate of code churn - the percentage of lines that are reverted or updated less than two weeks after being authored
-10%: Snap plans to lay off 10% of its global workforce, around 500 employees
-6%: DocuSign Inc. announced layoffs affecting 6% of its workforce, or roughly 440 positions. The layoffs are due to a restructuring amid stalled sale talks with private equity firms
💰 Q4 results
Snap’s stock plunged 30% after its Q42023 results failed to meet expectations. DAU grew 10% year on year to 414M but this was up just 8M since the last Q. Despite that, the company revealed that its paid subscription product reached 7M subscribers and that over 300M users engage with augmented reality every day
SoftBank reported its first quarterly net profit of $6.6B (985.5B yen) in Q4 2023 after four consecutive quarters of losses. SoftBank's Vision Fund division reported an investment profit of $4B (600.73B yen). The profits were primarily driven by a surge in valuations of TikTok owner Bytedance, robotics firm AutoStore Holdings, warehouse automation robotics company Symbiotic, and food delivery service DoorDash
Spotify: reduced its losses to $75M in Q4, compared to $290M the previous year, with revenue increasing by 16% to $3.95, driven by a price hike and expanding advertising business.Subscription revenue saw a 17% rise to $3.4B, and advertising revenue grew by 12% to $540M. With notable growth in Latin America and other regions outside Europe and North America, paid subscribers climbed by 15% to 236 million. MAU increased by 23% YoY to reach 602M, with expectations to grow to 618M in Q1
Uber reported its first annual profit in 5 years as a public company. Uber's net income swung from a $9.1B loss in 2022 to a $1.9B profit in 2023. In 2023, Uber achieved record revenues of $37.3B, driven by its ride-hailing and Uber Eats services, along with a growing ad business, exceeding analyst expectations. Mobility gross bookings rose 29% to $19.3B and delivery bookings increased 19% to $17B YoY
📰 What’s going on
OpenAI is reportedly developing a software solution dubbed "Agent" that automates tasks. The AI startup wants to turn its popular chatbot tool ChatGPT into a "supersmart personal assistant for work." The tool will be able to perform tasks that require text typing, cursor movements, or interaction with different apps. A few use cases for the tool include collating public data sets, creating itineraries, or booking flight tickets
OpenAI introduced a dedicated ChatGPT app for the Apple Vision Pro, facilitating interaction with the latest GPT-4 Turbo model. Users can inquire, seek advice, explore new topics, and create images and text within the app, showcasing a step forward in more intuitive human-AI interactions
Apple is building at least two iPhone prototypes that fold widthwise; the devices are in early development and not set for production in 2024 or 2025
Google Maps has introduced LLM search that allows users to search using key phrases. The feature uses over 300 million user contributions tol answer queries for restaurant or shopping recommendations like “places with a vintage vibe in SF”. It’s rolling out in the US first with other countries expected to follow and is the latest step in Google taking steps to make Maps the starting point for search
Google has rebranded its Bard AI chatbot to Gemini and launched a paid version of the service. Gemini Advanced, a $20-per-month subscription, competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus and Microsoft's Copilot Pro. Gemini is also available free on the web at gemini.google.com
WhatsApp is preparing to roll out third-party chat support; just a month away from the Digital Markets Act (DMA) deadline
Snap plans to unify user experience across Spotlight and Stories by using ranking mechanisms and recommendation engines
Bluesky, a micro-blogging app funded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey as an alternative to X, is now open to the public
Mozilla introduces a new subscription service that will locate and remove personal and sensitive information from data broker websites around the web
Adam Neumann is attempting to buy back WeWork, the bankrupt coworking firm he founded and from which he was ousted in 2019
Rivian will reveal its next-generation vehicle — a smaller, cheaper electric SUV known as R2 — on March 7
📚 Good reads
Stop saying this stuff to women. Despite living in 2024, there is still a pervasive double standard for women's assertiveness in the workplace. Women are often criticized for being too aggressive or not smiling enough, reflecting underlying biases and unrealistic societal expectations. Elena Verna shares her own experience, which unfortunately, sounds too familiar in my household. A must read
High quality principles to support your product led growth. Miro’s former head of growth Kate Syuma explains why quality and speed don’t have to be a trade off and why the outcomes of growth teams should be tightly linked to the quality delivered to end users
Key takeaways from Airbnb’s winter redesign. When Airbnb announces something new, it’s the result of months of hard work, thinking, and testing.. Airbnb is unlike most companies in that it only releases major updates 2 times a year. In this piece, designer Daniel De Mello analyses the new design and its impact on the product’s user experience
The power of investor updates. One of the top pieces of advice for any entrepreneur or startup founder. It’s amazing (and often ignored and neglected) how much an hour/month effort can get you. A similar advice can go for PMs about their Products
Has Apple Card been a success? Check out this comprehensive article by Alex Johnson for an overview of the latest updates on Apple Card's performance and insights into key industry trends
Adobe: The growing issue with “Free” trials UX. I’ve yet to hear a positive word about Adobe’s subscription / free trial UX. The folks at Growth.design distil very well some of the problems so pervasive at Adobe’s products. A great list of examples of what not to do - and advice on what to do instead
That’s all for this week. As usual, feel free to reach out and share your thoughts by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Thanks for your support!
Angel