el producto #399 🚀
How PayPal stays relevant, Apple introducing new products in Sept, X to compete with Zoom, Google Meet "notes," Reverse-engineering strategy, Growth hacks & more
Hi folks 👋
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$1B: OpenAI raises an additional $1B led by Thrive Capital at a $100B valuation. Apple and Nvidia are also reportedly considering joining this round
950M: Telegram has over 950M users and its CEO previously told the FT that each user cost only 70 cents a year to support
400M: Meta's AI Assistant hits 400M MAU. Meta also reports that Llama, its mostly open-source family of AI models, has been downloaded almost 350 million times since its public release last year
$340M: Indian online grocer Zepto’s valuation surged 40% to $5B at its latest $340M funding round. Zepto plans aggressive expansion, aiming to double its warehouses to over 700 by March 2025. The company is reinvesting profits from mature dark stores and preparing for a potential IPO
$320M: Generative AI code writing and software development automation startup Magic secured $320M in fresh funding
$319M: Cribl, the data infrastructure startup, which “organizes companies’ data for IT and security teams” raised a $319M Series E at a $3.5B valuation
200M: ChatGPT crosses 200M weekly active users
$150M: Codeium became the latest AI startup to enter the unicorn club, with a $150M Series C funding round that valued the firm at $1.25B
122%: Nvidia's highly anticipated earnings report showed 122% YoY revenue growth and a new $50B stock buyback, but the stock fell 3%, reflecting the risks of being priced-to-perfection. 50% of Nvidia's revenue is from 4 large, likely buyers: OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook
52% of US under-30s use TikTok for news and politics
📰 What’s going on
Apple is expected to reveal its iPhone 16 lineup at its event on Sept. 9. The event, tagged “It’s Glowtime,” will be held at Apple Park at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET. It will stream on Apple.com, Apple TV, and YouTube Live. The iPhone 16 and 16 Plus may feature a new vertically aligned rear camera system. The iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max could have larger screens while retaining the three-camera setup. A new button dedicated to photo and video capture might also be introduced
Amazon’s updated Alexa will be powered by Anthropic's Claude AI models instead of their own
Amazon Cloud’s CEO caused a storm, predicting the end of coding in the next 2 years. "Coding is just kind of like the language that we talk to computers. It's not necessarily the skill in and of itself," the CEO said. "The skill in and of itself is like, how do I innovate? How do I go build something that's interesting for my end users to use? Being a developer in 2025 may be different than what it was as a developer in 2020"
Google Meet has released a new feature called “take notes for me”. Notes are transcribed during the meeting into a Google Doc which is then automatically added to the calendar invite and emailed to all participants. It also gives late attendees a chance to catch up with what’s happened in a meeting so far. For Product teams, this could be helpful for activities like user research sessions or daily standups (assuming you want everyone to know what was said in those meetings, of course)
PayPal wants to challenge Apple Wallet. Now that third-parties are allowed to develop apps that leverage the iPhone's contactless NFC payments in Europe, PayPal plans to build a mobile wallet with physical payments capabilities
X is testing a video conferencing tool. An employee confirmed that the company had its first internal conference through the tool. He also claimed that initial feedback from the team was strong, and the company will likely work on features like the ability to pin speakers and better notification to indicate people joining or leaving
Snapchat has officially launched an iPad app - 13 years later. The app is fully functional in portrait mode and gives users access to all of the AR features available on mobile devices. There are reports that Snap is also working on a new set of AR glasses set to be unveiled next month
Nvidia has launched a series of “Agent Blueprints” - a set of pre-trained, customizable AI workflows designed to accelerate the development and deployment of generative AI applications. Initially, Nvidia has released blueprints for three core use cases: digital humans for customer service, generative virtual screening for drug discovery, and multimodal PDF data extraction for helping companies with retrieval-augmented generation
Klarna, Sweden’s buy-now-pay-later juggernaut, plans to slash nearly half of its workforce with AI efficiencies in marketing and customer service, and give the rest raises
Grammarly Authorship is coming to Google Docs as a beta and aims to help educators, in particular, work out when students are using AI to write their assignments
Australia passes ‘right to disconnect’. Australia joins 20+ other countries in granting the right for employees to ignore their bosses after work
French authorities charged Telegram CEO Pavel Durov with complicity in distributing child pornography and aiding criminal activities on the messaging app. Authorities also charged Durov with failing to comply with investigations into illegal activities on Telegram
📚 Good reads
How to do things that don’t scale. Adam Fishman shares great examples of taking multiple products from zero to one and beyond. Fun ideas from Lyft, Arbnb and more
PayPal is not just PayPal. Jas Shah shares how PayPal keeps reinventing itself and expanding its products to stay ahead in fintech. A nice and insightful read going from PayPal’s origins and early success to its present and future
Can AI be the platform shift Google is finally able to exploit? Ben Thompson weighs in on Google's Strategy with Pixel and AI, and honestly, all pieces seem to go in place right here, right now. “In the end, though, Google’s real bet is that owning the information stack matters more than owning the tech stack.” How important will it be - for the user - that a fully capable integration of AI into the phone can happen securely, without the need to share information with third parties, and within a frame of experience that is fully controlled? How much of such a vision will be able to spill to Android-based devices? The smartphone race may be about to live a new and interesting chapter and a… true platform shift
The best stratgey icebreaker. Roger Martin shows how reverse-engineering a key competitor's strategy using the Strategy Choice Cascade can be a fun and practical way to kick off strategy discussions. It can help Product leaders understand the strategic decision-making process of competitors, and promotes engaging dialogue
Bottleneck thinking, by Ivan Landabaso. Business bottlenecks are everywhere and endless. But if you’re not working on the most important thing, the rest doesn’t really matter. Ask yourself: what right now is your biggest bottleneck, and what one lever should you go pull? “The people who move the fastest aren’t doing more work, they are continuing to apply the right efforts to the right bottlenecks faster than anyone else”
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