el producto #379 🚀
The Product narrative canvas, Spotify to allow mix & edit songs, Instagram's AI features, Top startups in 2024, TikTok's new EU app and "virtual influencers", The busyness trap, Reverse trials & more
Hey friends,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$16.5B: StubHub aims to go public by late summer but may call off the listing if it can't get close to the $16.5B valuation from a funding round in 2021
$1B: Sam Altman's net worth reaches $1B, driven by startup investments in Reddit, Stripe, YC companies, and others, despite no equity in OpenAI
$125M: Automattic, the company behind Wordpress.com, is set to acquire cross-platform messaging app Beeper. Sources pegged the deal value to be about $125M
$40M: Klarna boosts profits with ChatGPT as BNPL firms tap AI. OpenAI shared that the Klarna’s adoption of the technology is estimated to yield a $40M improvement in the company’s profits this year
$120: Adobe offers its network photographers $120 for videos of people engaged in everyday actions, or ~$2.62/minute to ~$7.25/minute on average, to train AI
📰 What’s going on
Spotify is developing tools to let subscribers speed up, mash up, or edit songs; rights holders would still get paid
Spotify’s paid users can now create AI-generated playlists from text prompts. The beta feature is first launching to Premium subscribers in the U.K. and Australia
Instagram is testing AI in its search bar to answer questions and surface content. Entering a search query directs users to a direct message conversation with Meta AI, its LLM-powered chatbot, where users can ask questions or choose from pre-loaded prompts
Microsoft confirmed that it's testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu. The test is limited to previewers in the U.S. Microsoft introduced Start menu ad promos with Windows 10, but excluded them from Windows 11 until now
Microsoft announces Microsoft AI London, a new hub for its consumer AI division led by former Inflection AI and DeepMind engineer Jordan Hoffmann
Apple plans to update its entire Mac line with new M4 processors focused on AI capabilities.Sources said Apple would launch the updated computers starting late this year through early next year
Google will release some AI-powered photo editing tools to all Google Photos users for free. Previously, the tools were only available to Google One subscribers and Pixel owners
Google announces Vids, an app to help companies and consumers make collaborative, shareable video, powered by Gemini, launching in public beta in summer 2024
Sam Altman and other OpenAI executives pitched ChatGPT Enterprise to hundreds of Fortune 500 companies this month, including some Microsoft customers
Amazon is investing "deeply" in generative AI and views it as possibly "the largest technology transformation since the cloud" and the internet, CEO Andy Jassy wrote in his annual shareholder letter. Jassy believes Amazon's major future breakthroughs for customers will stem from generative AI built on AWS's cloud
TikTok’s growth in Europe has slowed down so much that it’s rolling out a new app that gives people financial incentives to watch its videos. The app, called Coin App within the company and TikTok Lite to the public, is designed to help TikTok boost growth among people aged 18 and older
TikTok is reportedly creating AI "virtual influencers" for advertisers and sellers on the platform. The AI-powered avatars would promote and sell products on the app, potentially replacing some human creators
Humane has started shipping its "Ai Pin," a screenless wearable similar to Star Trek communicators. Reviews have described the device as a unique novelty, though they report it being slow, lacking features, and sometimes not functioning, making it "a work in progress”
Wise Platform, the embedded remittances infrastructure arm of cross-border provider Wise, partnered with Brazilian neobank Nubank to power their global account and international debit card
📚 Good reads
Levels of Product-Market Fit. A new indispensable guide and framework to help b2b startups find PMF faster by First Round. “Repeatability is the holy grail on the hunt for PMF. Without any patterns, it’s nearly impossible to generate early momentum and plot a course forward”
Reverse trials. Elena Verna explains us what traditional trial and freemium models tend to get wrong, and shows us a bunch of practical examples of something better: reverse trials
Being busy and the illusion of productivity. “Instead of stopping for a few minutes to ask ourselves why we’re doing something, we keep on mindlessly churning work that may or may not lead to a goal we actually care about. It’s also one of the only socially acceptable excuses to not do the things that matter.“ An article that may sound way too familiar to many PMs (including the author of this newsletter!). Anne-Laure Le Cunff also shares a Busyness Matrix as a tool to help you reclaim your time to focus on what really matters
The Product Narrative Canvas, a guide to capturing the essential points of context to support Product strategy storytelling. Clayton Tarics helps us understanding how high-impact strategy storytelling needs to establish credibility, while appealing to logic and emotion
Apple Notes hidden features. Apple Notes has been quietly evolving overtime. A lot of the features that made Evernote popular a while ago, are now available on Apple Notes, although some a bit hidden
The Rocket ship startup list - 2024 edition, by Jeff Bussgang. An amazing list with over 570 fast-growing, rapidly hiring private companies from around the world. The methodology for compiling the list involves a combination of analytical sources like Pitchbook and LinkedIn, alongside insider knowledge and VC and entrepreneur input. To be included, companies must demonstrate strong growth momentum, substantial fundraising, significant scale, extensive hiring, and a young founding year (2013 or later). Here Jeff elaborates on the methodology
[Video] How PMs can best use AI. Shyvee Shi talks with David Pereira on how AI can 10x PMs instead of making them obsolete
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