el producto #392 🚀
Neuralink telepathy, Amazon luxury, Samsung smart rings, Startup post-mortems, Delegating as first-time manager, Why users ignore certain features & more
Hey friends,
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto!
🎰 The week in figures
$3.9B has been invested in the code copilot industry and 29% of respondents of a new survey think that developers will be less relevant by 2030
$300M: Pittsburgh robotics startup Skild AI just raised $300M to build a “General Purpose" Robot Brain. Skild’s generalist AI model can be used in various robots and scenarios
$200M: Earned Wealth, a startup that advises doctors on their professional and personal finances, raised $200M in order to pursue acquisitions
$130M: AI startup Hebbia raises $130M. Hebbia offers a service that it claims can “reason” across any “amount and modality of data” and answer complex questions for corporate clients
📰 What’s going on
Spotify has started rolling out a new comments feature to podcasters app which will allow users to leave comments on specific podcast episodes. Spotify says the feature was one of the most requested by users. Adding social elements like comments makes sense as more socially-oriented apps like YouTube and TikTok start to eat into the music market, too. Could Spotify continue to add more social features to become more of a social network itself?
Google has abandoned its plans to acquire HubSpot, a potential deal that could have been one of the largest this year. Following this news, HubSpot shares plummeted, and currently has a market value of $25B. Earlier this year, Alphabet showed interest in HubSpot, but discussions never progressed to due diligence
ML model efficiency. Google Deepmind published a paper proposing a new method for training ML models that uses 10x less compute power
YouTube is rolling out a smart new AI feature that will detect and remove copyrighted music from videos - but leave the rest of the video intact. Just a few months ago, this type of activity would take editors hours to achieve. It’s an excellent example of AI as a painkiller, not a vanity feature
Instagram’s CEO has confirmed that the company has no plans to pivot to long-form video. One of the reasons he gives is that users are less likely to share long-form content with friends which would undermine Instagram’s viral potential
A new Meta AI model can generate 3D models from text. The models accuracy as assessed by groups including 3D artists and product designers and alongside use cases you might expect like movie and game design, the assets could eventually be used in Meta’s social products, too. Here’s some samples of it in action:
Neuralink Telepathy. In a Neuralink presentation this week Elon Musk claimed Neuralink’s coming Telepathy product will allow patients to control Teslabot humanoid robots with their minds
Microsoft leaves OpenAI's board amid increasing regulatory scrutiny
Amazon looks to enter the luxury market. Amazon is taking a minority stake in the merged entity created by Saks's acquisition of Neiman Marcus, to get a foot in the luxury goods market it has failed to crack so far
Samsung launched its first smart ring, the Galaxy Ring, at its Galaxy Unpacked event in Paris, aiming to integrate its health-tracking features with its ecosystem of devices, including smartphones and smartwatches. The Galaxy Ring, available July 24 starting at $399.99, monitors sleep, menstrual cycles, heart rate, and exercise, and includes a battery lasting up to 7 days
📚 Good reads
483 startup failure post-mortems. CB Insights recently updated their database of startup post-mortems. Startup death is not uncommon, especially in the face of challenging macroeconomic conditions, and this is an insightful repository
Starting an Analytics org from scratch - lessons from a decade at DoorDash. As the momentum of product-market fit picks up and more and more users leave measurable fingerprints across your product, you might begin to wonder how to start tracking everything. Is it time to build out an analytics team? As both a seasoned analytics leader and a startup advisor, Jessica Lachs is a good person to ask. She joined DoorDash as its first GM back in 2014, helping the delivery service hit the ground in a couple US cities, and went on to found the analytics team and make the first few hires. Ten years, millions of users and an IPO later, Lachs has climbed the ranks to VP of Analytics, leading a global org of over 300 people — so she’s seen firsthand how the company’s data and resourcing needs have evolved at every stage of its life
Managing up: removing uncertainty, managing your priorities, and showing a growth mindset. Unless you’re a founder, your relationship with your manager is the most important one to get right. And the most reliable way to get it right is to remove uncertainty for them and build ridiculous levels of trust. Just one rudimentary example: If your manager asks, “What's the status?” then it's already too late. There’s uncertainty. Jordan Cutler shares great advice on managing up
How to delegate as a first time manager. Many people are promoted into management for doing their previous job well. But once you’re promoted into a leadership role, you must accept that you can’t do everything on your own — nor should you. Harvard Business Review explains how
Why users are ignoring your product’s features. Without a predictable or immediate value anchor, onboarding is hard. Retention is even harder. But that's the reality for most software. In this piece, UX designer Peter Ramsey explains why users ignore features - and what you can do about it
How small UI delighters have a huge impact on UX. Another great visual case study full of actionable insights by Growth.design; this time on on “been” app onboarding experience
A Product-Led Growth primer, by David Pereira. Great into, or refresher, into some PLG basics. Including examples from Grammarly, Spotify, Canva, Notion and more
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