el producto #374 🚀
Product decisions at Spotify, Onboarding strategies, Streaming churn, New MacBooks, Adobe's AI audio tool, The time-boxed startup, Instagram growth & more
Hey friends,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$1B: AI startup Perplexity is in talks with investors to raise a new funding round set to double the firm's valuation to $1B. Perplexity leverages AI to answer search queries raised by users instead of giving website links. The firm recently crossed the $10M mark in annual recurring revenue. About 50M users used Perplexity’s mobile and desktop app in February, up 8.6%
$430M: UK challenger bank Monzo hits $5B valuation after a $430M funding round
+20%: Instagram's total app downloads grew 20% YoY in 2023 to 768M, making it the most downloaded app worldwide
-2%: Netflix is winning the streaming churn wars. Despite roughly doubling its churn rate over the past 5 years, it's proven remarkably resilient with churn rates of 2%, well below the industry average of ~5%
-8%: Expedia Group will cut 8% of its workforce this year, approximately 1,500 roles, mostly in its Product & Technology division
📰 What’s going on
Apple announces new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models with M3 chip
Apple's new iOS 17.4 update adds support for third-party app stores and payment options on iPhones in the EU. Apple is opening up parts of its "walled garden" to comply with the EU's new DMA tech competition rules
Google will soon launch an update to improve websites' rankings in search results, including efforts to address "low-quality AI-generated content." Google is updating its algorithms to improve search quality by filtering out low-quality, spammy, and/or automated content, with changes set to roll out in May
Meta suffered a worldwide outage on Tuesday affecting Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Threads. More than 500,000 Facebook users reported outages, along with 77,000 Instagram users and 12,000 Messenger users
Meta is working on a single advanced AI model to improve its video recommendations across its platforms, according to Facebook head Tom Alison. The new AI-driven engine is part of Meta's "technology roadmap" planned through 2026, he said. Meta is already using the new engine for its TikTok-like Reels and plans to expand it to other video sections
Instagram has quietly added a secret emoji game that you can access in your DMs
OpenAI is releasing a new “read aloud” feature for ChatGPT that will read ChatGPT text aloud. It’s available on iOS and Android.
Anthropic released its most advanced family of AI models, called Claude 3, rivaling Google and OpenAI's models. Anthropic's latest AI programs have both text generation and image analysis capabilities
Adobe has revealed an experimental new AI audio tool that can create music and other audio from text prompts. It is currently an experimental product known as Project Music GenAI Control and begins with a text prompt fed into a generative AI model, a method that Adobe already uses in Firefly. A user inputs a text prompt, like “powerful rock,” “happy dance,” or “sad jazz” to generate music. Once the tools generate music, fine grained editing is integrated directly into the workflow
X announces a new long-form post format called Articles, letting users publish posts with text formatting, other X posts, and embedded videos and image
TikTok has launched an AR effects creation feature within its app, allowing users to design their own AR effects and mini-games. This feature, along with the Effect House Knowledge Center, provides users with guides, tutorials, and templates to facilitate the creation of personalized AR effects
Airbnb has a new label to denote its top listings, identifying the top 25% and 1% of properties on its listing page
AWS follows Google in announcing unrestricted free data transfers to other cloud providers
📚 Good reads
How Spotify uses a decision engine to make product decisions. Spotify uses its proprietary A/B testing technology to make product decisions. In this piece, the data scientists and engineers behind the technology explain how it works
The time-boxed startup. How long should you work on a startup? “The short answer is 2 years. Here's the fine print: Time-box your startup to 2 years in the market. Put your product in customers' hands and try to crack product-market fit. If you add in pre-launch and wind-down time, the total time could be closer to 2.5 or 3 years. It’s reasonable for duration to vary in particular based on sector and product type“
The #1 skill every executive should have. Working “high” gets you promoted. Working “low” keeps you from getting laid off. The combination is your new superpower. As an executive, you don’t want to just be a big thinker that has no output and day to day focus. And you also don’t want to be doer who can’t think about and prioritize bigger bets. The big skill is fluctuating between high and low work. This means context switching, and often on the fly in the exact same conversation
How Google blew up its open culture and compromised its Product. David Kiferbaum held various roles within Google from 2015 to 2023. In a recent post with Big Technology, he shares an inside look at Google’s open culture’s demise, and the impact it’s had on the product
An onboarding email strategy that actually works, by Elena Verna. This seems like a clear opportunity for just about any product or growth team. If you’re looking to try this out at your company, here are the biggest takeaways to remember:
Keep it super focused on just one feature a day. Don’t try to boil the ocean with your ‘digital transformation’ message
Focus on your killer features first
Email every day during onboarding period
Give emails both written and video (GIF) treatment
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