el producto #419 🚀
Google adds Gemini to workspace, Apple pulls AI notifications, Chinese apps turn viral ahead of TikTok ban, Meta layoffs, ChatGPT Tasks, Refining retention, Beyond Journey Maps & more
Hi folks 👋
Welcome to a new edition of el producto
🎰 The week in figures
$5B: Trading platform eToro eyes $5B IPO in 2025. The fintech, which enables trading in stocks, ETFs, and crypto, previously abandoned a $10.4B SPAC deal in 2022 but raised $250M at a $3.5B valuation in 2023. Founded in 2007, eToro could list in New York as early as Q2 2025
$2B: Anthropic is near to raising $2B at a $60B valuation (~40% of OpenAI's $157B), just months after securing $4B from Amazon
$333M: Vultr, the AI cloud infrastructure startup raised $333M at a $3.5B valuation in its first outside funding round
$180M: Synthesia, the Nvidia-backed AI video platform, secured a $180M Series D, raising its valuation to $2.1B
$150M: Phantom, a crypto wallet provider with 15M MAU, raised $150M at a $3B valuation. Phantom is best known for its work with the Solana blockchain, but it supports multiple blockchains, staking, and other normal wallet functions
125M: Apple’s News app has quietly grown to over 125M users in the US, UK, Canada and Australia
$100M: Instabase, a startup that helps companies understand and leverage their unstructured data, has raised $100M at a $1.24B down round (vs $2B in 2023)
$100M: OnPay raised over $100M in funding to expand its payroll and HR services
216%: Duolingo has reported a 216% spike in Mandarin learners as users flock to Chinese based TikTok alternatives
50%: ChatGPT, Anthropic and Google Gemini are retaining over 50% of their paying users, according to new analysis. ChatGPT Pro sales already account for nearly 5.8% of OpenAI’s B2C sales as of January 1
40%: The number of people with “Open to Work” badges on their LinkedIn profile is up 40% YoY, with 67M users now looking for jobs each week. LinkedIn this week confirmed that it is making its AI features available for free to help job seekers. If you’re looking for a new role, this could be worth checking out
-5%: Meta is planning to cut 5% of its staff through performance based reviews
📰 What’s going on
As TikTok’s divest-or-ban date approaches, users of the social services are hunting for replacements. But instead of flocking directly to US-built options, Chinese apps Xiaohongshu and Lemon8 appear to be soaking up a good portion of TikTok’s soon-to-be-bereft users. That ByteDance owns Lemon8 as well as TikTok is ironic
ChatGPT is testing a new feature called Tasks that allows users to set up regular reminders, alerts and other notifications. Tasks could include asking for a daily news update or reminders about upcoming events. For now, the feature is only available for paid users but it marks the first step towards OpenAI’s agentic offerings
Apple is pulling its AI-generated notifications for news after generating fake headlines
Microsoft is adding Copilot to Microsoft 365 for an extra $3 monthly, but with some thoughtful touches: new subscribers pay the higher price now, while existing ones keep their current rates until renewal
Meanwhile, Google are rolling out Gemini to all Workspace Business customers immediately—Enterprise folks, you're next month. Even though they’re raising the price $2 for Workspace plans, the previous Gemini add-on pushed costs to $32/month; now, it's all bundled for $14/month. You get:
Gemini woven into everything from Gmail to Google Meet
Access to their Gemini Advanced chat platform.
NotebookLM Plus for research superpowers
Unreleased code from Google suggests that Gemini could soon be added to YouTube. YouTube videos could get the ability to chat with users to ask specific questions about the video you're watching
Amazon is launching a new product that will allow ecommerce businesses to show ads in their search results - powered by Amazon. In 2024, Amazon’s ads business grew significantly, and now generates over $50B a year. This new product - called Amazon Retail Ad Service - will allow retailers off Amazon to monetize their search results by showing “contextually relevant” third party products which will appear in search results
Robinhood announced plans to introduce AI-powered financial advice, expand into Asia with a new office in Singapore, and launch new products and services, aiming to become a comprehensive financial service provider
Revolut is making a push into private banking for wealthy clients, putting it in direct competition with big incumbents like UBS and Morgan Stanley
Klarna secured a global payment partnership with Stripe, enabling Klarna's buy-now-pay-later services to be integrated into Stripe's payment platform
📚 Good reads
Beyond AI: The art of stacking business models. AI enables new business model strategies, but NFx’s Pete Flint shows why having great AI technology isn't enough. Starting from two core patterns—Price Disruption (making services radically cheaper) and Quality Innovation (delivering premium services at scale)—the piece explores combining business models as a go-to-market and market strategy. It's a genuinely essential read. Pete Flint has excellent pattern recognition skills—his insights on market disruption are always worth studying
Figma’s CPO on when to offload the product roadmap. As we enter the new year, you’re probably already in execution mode, working through carefully plotted 6-to-12 month roadmaps. Figma’s Director of Product Avantika Gomes argues that before you get consumed by the tactics and to-dos, you should take a step back. Things are different this year. AI technology is evolving rapidly. Agents and assistants are transforming our workflows, and tools like Claude and Cursor promise to make app building as easy as writing a few prompts. And more from Figma this week…
How to make your Product idea go viral inside your company - the story of how Figma Slides founding PM Mihika Kapoor transformed a hackathon project into one of Figma's most anticipated launches
Is your retention too good? CJ Gustafson shares an interesting perspective on retention: if your retention is too high, especially in B2C subscription businesses, it might signal that you’re playing it too safe on acquisition (and leaving money on the table) - you may not be reaching larger, potential audiences
Beyond Journey Maps: why your strategic view defines your advantage. A brilliant piece by Helge Tennø that hits right at the core of why most customer insight models fail us: they oversimplify complex realities into linear paths. The article argues that true competitive advantage can only come from mapping and understanding the full complexity of your ecosystem using systemic diagrams rather than reductive models like customer journeys.
That’s all for this week. Feel free to reach out and share your thoughts by replying back to this email or commenting on Substack
Thanks for your support!
Angel