el producto #381 🚀
Using AI at work, Big Tech Q1 results, Meaningful meetings, New iPads soon, Apple's LLMs, Monetization playbooks, Photoshop's AI-image-generator, Making $100M in SaaS & more
Hey friends,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$6.4B: IBM moves deeper into hybrid cloud management with $6.4B HashiCorp acquisition
$6B: xAI, Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, is closing on $6B in funding and X, his social network, is already one of its shareholders
$1.25B: Food delivery and instant commerce startup Swiggy secured approval from shareholders for its IPO listing. The Indian startup plans to raise $1.25B, of which $450M is expected to come through the issuance of new shares
$700M: Nvidia is set to acquire AI hardware infrastructure management and optimization software startup Run:ai. The transaction is estimated at $700M
$252M: AI-powered coding assistant Augment emerged from stealth mode with a $252M Series B funding round at a post-money valuation of $977M
$250M: AI startup Perplexity is looking to raise over $250M at a valuation ranging from $2.5B to $3B.The news came on the same day the company announced it raised $62.7M in fresh funding
150M: Threads now has more than 150M MAUs, up from 130M in February 2024
45M: Shopping app Shein is now large enough to fall under the EU's strictest online safety rules. The retailer reached over 45M MAU in the EU, earning it the status of "very large online platform" alongside Amazon, Meta, TikTok, and others
💸 Q1 results
Alphabet: surpassed expectations with revenue of $80.54B, vs estimated $78.59B. The company announced its inaugural dividend of $0.20 per share, while experiencing 15% YoY revenue growth, its fastest rate since early 2022. YouTube's advertising revenue reached $8.09B, vs estimate of $7.72B. Ad sales soared to $61.66B from $54.55B a year ago. Google Cloud revenue reached $9.57B, vs estimate of $9.35B
Meta: DAU was 3.24B on average for March 2024, an increase of 7% YoY. Ad impressions increased by 20% YoY. Total revenue was $36.46B, and increased 27% YoY
Microsoft: exceeded expectations with total revenue reaching $61.86B, a 17% YoY increase, and net income hitting $21.94B. The Intelligent Cloud division, which encompasses Azure, Windows Server, Nuance, and GitHub, saw a revenue increase of 21% to $26.71B. Revenue from Azure and other cloud services increased by 31%, with services relating to AI accounting for 7% of this growth
Spotify: After a year of cost-cutting, Spotify reported a record profit in Q1, exceeding €1B ($1.1B) for the first time. Spotify's Q1 revenue grew 20% to €3.6B ($3.8B). Paid subscribers rose 14% to 239M. Total active users reached 615M, slightly below the 618M expected, which was attributed to cuts in marketing
📰 What’s going on
Apple is expected to launch new iPads at an online event on May 7.After over a year without updates, Apple could unveil the latest iPad Pro and iPad Air to boost lagging sales
Apple released large language models called OpenELM, or Open-source Efficient Language Models. The model family is designed to run on devices instead of in the cloud. Four of the models are now available on the Hugging Face hub
OpenAI has launched a series of new API features - many of which could be useful for product teams. These include updates to the Assistants API which is used for building chatbots which such as the ability to limit the number of tokens used per run, improved file searching capabilities, which are 500x larger, and streaming support for real time, conversational responses
Photoshop users will soon be able to generate images using text prompts. The AI-powered "Generate Image" tool launched in beta this week, with a wider rollout planned later this year
Meta will open up its operating system for Quest headsets to outside hardware makers. Microsoft’s Xbox, Asus, and Lenovo will be the first to build virtual-reality headsets running the OS
Stripe held its annual "Stripe Session," unveiling a whopping 50 updates to its stack. Stripe announced it will decouple payments—the cornerstone of its services—from the rest of its financial offerings. Stripe will also let customers accept cryptocurrency payments in the next few months, starting with just one currency in particular, USDC stablecoins, initially only on Solana, Ethereum and Polygon
Google Meet rolls out an update to let users seamlessly transfer calls between devices “without hanging up and rejoining” via its Android, iOS, and web apps
TikTok paused rewards on its TikTok Lite app amid EU concerns that it is addictive for children. The app's "Task and Rewards" program lets users over 18 earn points by watching videos, liking posts, and inviting friends. The points can be exchanged for vouchers and gift cards
ByteDance denied any plans to sell TikTok, despite a report that it could divest its stake without the app's algorithm. The report followed President Biden's signing of a law that bans TikTok in the U.S. unless ByteDance sells it within the next 9 to 12 months
X is launching a TV app for videos. The new app will come with features including: enhanced video search, trending videos and multi device casting
Trello has added new features to its core Kanban board product. Colors allow users to brighten up their boards and collapsible lists give users the option to collapse lists that aren’t in use to make it easier to navigate larger boards
📚 Good reads
The monetization playbook used at Eventbrite. Casey Winters discusses the challenges faced by Eventbrite regarding its low take rate and the need for a new monetization playbook to increase profitability for the network business. This framework for evaluating strategies for pricing additional features is extremely relevant and pragmatic
How WeRoad leverages AI to be 10X at their jobs. My ex-collegue and top CPTO Simone Basso, shares an inspiring article on how engineers, PMs, data analyists and other roles use AI at WeRoad. Some examples:
Engineers utilize GitHub CoPilot for efficient coding assistance, enabling faster development processes
Deepnote empowers Data Analysts with enhanced data analysis capabilities and streamlined presentation tools
ChatGPT facilitates Data Engineers in auto-generating data warehouse documentation, optimizing workflows and enhancing system understanding
PM leverage tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT for research, idea generation, and documentation tasks, increasing efficiency and effectiveness
Most Meetings Suck. Let's Change That! It's time to stop having pointless meetings and start having meaningful ones. David Pereira shares an extremely important and actionable piece that will 100% resonate with some unproductive meetings you recently had. If you only have time to read 1 article this week, make it this one (and Simone’s above, which I hope you have read by now)
Why everything is becoming a game, by Gurwinder. Every kind of app out there—social, dating, shopping, cabs, buying stocks, health, education, habits, etc—use game mechanics to some degree, and there’s a concerning dark side to it. Our brains are designed to solve problems. Evolutionarily, the brains that were able to solve problems better—like finding food, creating shelter, picking a mate—were the ones that survived. Except, we now live in a world now where we don’t need to solve those problems really—it’s all done for us. Things are convenient and easy. So, what do we do with all that problem-solving horsepower? We direct it elsewhere. We find and set ourselves goals purely to have goals to pursue. As Gurwinder points out, what gamification promises in the short term via extrinsic goals (for scores/prizes) comes at the expense of long term intrinsic goals (for the love of it): “It has the power to seclude people from reality, and to rewrite their value systems so they prioritize the imaginary over the real, and the next moment over the rest of their lives”
The 2024 Tech Strategy Toolkit. 9 sources of tech-based competitive advantage, by Sangeet Paul Choudary. You will always need to understand how to develop competitive advantage for your business and how tech shifts provide new tools in your strategic toolkit. This post is about such tools that have become increasingly important over the past few years
Ways to make $100M dollars per year in SaaS. CJ Gustafson shares an insightful piece on how companies reach $100M revenue based on their average customer sizes
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