el producto #398 🚀
Build prototypes with Gen-AI, Waymo growth, Uber robotaxis, Notion charts, Neurodesign tricks, Gmail "refine" feature, Startup failures increasing & more
Hi folks 👋
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$45B: Revolut has achieved a remarkable $45B valuation through a recent share sale by employees. This milestone places Revolut as the UK’s second-most valuable bank, trailing only HSBC, and surpasses its previous $33B valuation from 2021
270M: Grafana Labs raises $270M, boosting the value of the company from $3B to $6B. How did the open-source observability company manage such a jump? More than $250M worth of ARR and 5k paying customers (up from 2k in 2022) explains
100K: Waymo just flexed on the entire autonomous driving world by hitting 100,000 paid robotaxi rides per week. Alphabet is ready to drop another $5B on Waymo
60%: Startup failures in the U.S. have surged 60% over the past year, with 254 venture-backed companies going bust in Q1 2024 alone. This rate is x7 higher vs 2019. Startup failures are on the rise due to a lack of capital available, causing them to run out of cash
3%: Mastercard plans to cut about 3% of its global workforce (1,000 people) in a re-org
📰 What’s going on
Gmail is getting a new “polish” feature that will refine email drafts on web and mobile
YouTube is launching a new Chrome extension that will allow creators in the US save a product while browsing a retailer's website. An interesting example of a highly targeted use case for browser extensions which tie to a product’s broader strategy (in this case, boosting Shopping purchases to compete with TikTok Shop)
Notion launched charts, a one-click way to bring any Notion database into rich visual life
Uber is linking up with GM’s self-driving company, Cruise, to “bring its robotaxis to the ride-hailing platform in 2025”
OpenAI has partnered with Condé Nast to integrate content from Vogue, The New Yorker, GQ, Wired, and other outlets into its AI products, including ChatGPT and SearchGPT. The collaboration will embed Condé Nast's content directly into OpenAI's search and conversational models. Other media companies like The New York Times and Chicago Tribune are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement as AI-generated content rises
Luma AI has released Dream Machine 1.5 - a new version of their flagship text-to-video model. It offers enhanced realism, improved motion tracking and more intuitive prompt understanding. One of its biggest new capabilities though, is its ability to render text in videos from prompts
PayPal is on a release tear: it integrated with payroll provider UKG to provide an early wage access product, and partnered with European payments giant Adyen to distribute its Fastlane product which enables payments without passwords
Dropbox has acquired Reclaim.ai, an AI-driven scheduling tool used by over 320,000 people globally. Founded in 2019, Reclaim.ai focuses on optimizing time management and scheduling through AI, integrating with Google Calendar to offer features like booking links and automatic time-slot selection. The acquisition, terms of which were not disclosed, will see Reclaim.ai's entire 22-member team join Dropbox
Metamask began the rollout of its blockchain-based debit card, built in partnership with Baanx and Mastercard, to let users debit directly from their crypto wallets
Peloton is adding a new feature which will allow users to read Kindle books while exercising. “No more awkwardly holding a book or Kindle ereader while trying to maintain proper form” says the press release from Amazon. This reflects a wider strategy by Peloton of offering multiple entertainment options for users who don’t necessarily want to use Peloton screens only for exercise
📚 Good reads
How to build a product prototype with generative AI in 30 minutes. From Idea to Clickable Prototype in 30 minutes with Generative AI. This guide by Rolf Mistelbacher shows you how to use tools like ChatGPT and others to build a prototype quickly
Your product is not their problem. If the market is not currently solving the problem your product does, it may not be a problem they’ll pay to solve. Just because your product has clear benefits, doesn’t mean they matter. Don’t underestimate apathy as a competitor. Once you spot a gap in the market, always make sure there is a market in that gap. “As a young marketer, I made this mistake all the time— thinking that my product was a solution to someone’s problem—without ever understanding what problems the customers really had. And that I needed to have all the answers when in fact I didn’t even understand the questions.” — Steve Blank
Competing in search, by Ben Evans. A quarter century after ‘don't be evil’ a judge has found that Google is abusing its monopoly in search. But no-one knows what happens next, and whether this ruling will change anything. Will Apple build a search engine? Will ChatGPT change search? Does it matter?
Neurodesign: the science behind unforgettable experiences. Jo Ash Sakula shares a nice piece on one of my favorite topics: heuristics and cognitive hacks. Includes examples and actionable insights
The big stack game for LLM. Sarah Tavel shares a brief but interesting reflection about the current state of LLM investment and (difficult) profitability. The battle among industry giants offers promise of profitable applications that were previously implausible, driven by intense competition and rapid innovation
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