el producto #390 🚀
Gmail gets AI, ChatGPT MacOS app, Notion Sites, Apple won't launch AI features in EU, Optimize funnels with neurodesign, Finding the right problems to solve & more
Hey friends,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$3.4B: OpenAI revenues soar to $3.4B. $1B of that is from their new API product
$460M: Funding for AR and VR startups is continuing to plummet. YTD funding sits at $460M and will struggle to get above $1B in 2024 vs a high of $4B in 2021
$200M: No code software provider Creatio has raised $200M at a $1.2B valuation. The company offers automation and CRM tools that customers can customize to their own needs. It raised $68M back in 2021
$198.4M: Betashares, an Australian exchange-traded fund manager, raised up to A$300M ($198.4M) to help build its domestic and overseas offerings
$60M: HeyGen, a startup that allows users to generate videos with AI-created avatars that can lip-sync to provided audio, making it easier for businesses to create engaging video content, raised a $60M funding round at a $500M post-money valuation
100k: 100,000 US consumers have subscribed to Klarna Plus, the $7.99 monthly service offering exclusive discounts and reduced fees
1%: Netflix’s gaming business is struggling to gain traction. Less than 1% of Netflix users have interacted with a game and since launch, the average Netflix game has been downloaded 2.7M times according to new analysis
📰 What’s going on
Apple has confirmed it will not be releasing its upcoming AI Intelligence features in the EU due to regulatory compliance issues with the bloc’s new Digital Markets Act. Regulators this week confirmed it will charge Apple with issues relating to the App Store. With the power to issue fines of up to 10% of global revenue, it’s not difficult to see why Apple decided the EU wasn’t worth the risk for its upcoming AI feature set
Google is rolling out Gemini across Gmail and Workspace apps with capabilities including email creation and thread summarization. Generative abilities will be helpful in an email creation context however, CIOs are quickly realizing that taking full advantage of AI summarization capabilities is only possible if the underlying data sources are structured effectively. Even then, if the summary is still wrong, relying on a summarized version of the data might simply not be worth the risk for many workers
OpenAI makes a play for the OS. While Apple and Microsoft are baking AI-powered tools into their operating systems, OpenAI is trying to worm its way into the most basic layer of computing interfaces. By making its ChatGPT app for MacOS generally available this week, it’s offering an OpenAI-flavored compute experience that puts its own tech at the center of the OS experience. This is something to keep an eye on, especially among startups that want to bring mass-consumer AI products to market
Anthropic’s Claude has unveiled new ways to share AI generated research. Projects and Artifacts allows teams to curate documents, code and components - ideal for product teams
Pinterest is launching a new feature that allows users to transform their pin boards into videos. Despite being over 10 years old, the company has been remarkably successful at continuing to appeal to Gen Z. Over 40% of its users are now Gen Z
Stripe and Coinbase announced a partnership. Stripe will add support for Base in its crypto product suite to offer users faster and cheaper money transfers, and Coinbase will add Stripe’s fiat-to-crypto onramp into Coinbase Wallet to allow users to buy crypto instantly with credit cards and Apple Pay
Notion has launched a new feature called Sites which allows users to turn databases into fully fledged websites with custom domain support, visual customization, and analytics. For product teams, this could transform internal wikis and PRDs
Shein’s London listing is a go. After filing privately in the United States last year before seeing its IPO plans slow, Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein is moving ahead with a UK listing. It has now filed confidentially to list in London
📚 Good reads
The Holistic Growth Playbook to empower your product. Written by ex-Miro’s Kate Syuma, this playbook aims to provide fresh perspectives and inspiration for anyone interested in Product-Led Growth (PLG). Insights from 100+ companies and industry leaders from Dropbox, Canva, Loom, Amplitude and more
Are you solving the right problem? Or failing to focus where you can drive results? By JD Schramm. History shows the impact of framing challenges correctly, with examples such as the transition from 'iceboxes' to refrigerators and the downfall of blockbuster stores. Rephrasing a problem from various perspectives, looking for answers in unexpected places, and encouraging brainstorming for diverse solutions, can help identifying the right problems to solve. Avoid rushing to implement the first solution and continue exploring for multiple, potentially more effective answers. Complement with Antler’s framework to find the right problem to solve
How we turned 1,200 employees into a buzz-generation machine. Inside Wiz's employee advocacy strategy. Tom Orbach shares a great playbook for how to activate teams to become advocates, but the first tip is the most important: Do all the heavy lifting for them:Â Write the posts, create personalized images, and give them crystal-clear instructions
Sales funnel and neurodesign techniques. How to optimize each stage of the customer journey using neurodesign principles. A short, yet super useful article by Alex Cerqueira
Effective positioning and copywriting for startups. By Emily Kramer and Anthony Pierri. Strong positioning leads to strong/differentiating copy. And if you’re struggling to write compelling copy, you probably need to go back to your positioning and refine it. Once you know what status quo you’re comparing your product to, you can drill into who it’s for, what it does, and why it’s better. That’s positioning. And to turn your positioning effort into excellent copy that converts, you need to write with deep focus. You don’t need to (and shouldn’t) say everything you do for every audience on your homepage
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