el producto #410 🚀
Free AI tools for prototyping and productivity, Amazon's low-cost store, Apple Home Hub, Monetizing Perplexity, Rituals for decision-making, Buy vs Build, PM interview questions & more
Hi folks 👋
Happy weekend and welcome to a new edition of el producto
🎰 The week in figures
$4.48B: Pony.AI targets $4.48B IPO valuation. The Chinese self-driving firm prepares for a US IPO
€2B: Estonian ride-hailing startup Bolt (not the one-click checkout company Bolt) has passed €2B worth of revenue, and is moving towards an IPO
CA$360M: Canadian consumer neobank Neo Financial raised a CA$110M Series D and CA$250M of debt as it expands lending to its customers
$321M: Disney’s streaming services, including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, turned profitable with $321M in operating income, reversing a $387M loss from last year
$300M: Argentina's mobile payments and debit card provider Ualá secured $300M at a $2.75B valuation, aiming to expand its financial services across Latin America
$200M: Writer, the enterprise AI platform raised $200M Series C at a $1.9B valuation and revealed plans to expand into healthcare, retail, and financial services
$150M: New York-based SMB bills and invoicing platformstartup Melio raised a $150M Series E round at $2B valuation
$125M: Tessl, the startup building an AI tool for writing and maintaining code raised $125M at a $500M+ valuation even before it has a product in the market
$100M: Shenzhen-based autonomous driving tech startup DeepRoute raised a $100M round
100M: Nubank, the digital bank, surpassed 100M customers in Brazil, representing 57% of the adult population in the country
$93M: New York-based brain–computer interface tech startup Precision Neuroscience has raised $93M of a planned $100M round at a $500M valuation. It aims to treat paralysis and neurodegenerative diseases
+60%: TikTok revenue increased 60% to ~$17bn in the first half of 2024, which makes it around half the size of YouTube
+12%: Spotify’s latest earnings have impressed investors. MAU grew 11% to 640M and paying subscribers increased 12% YoY to 252M, helping the company achieve revenues of €4B, up 19% on the year. Internationalization played a key role in its growth with the rollout of AI DJ in Spanish and Daylist, which is now supported in 14+ languages
📰 What’s going on
Amazon has unveiled Amazon Haul, a mobile-only storefront with budget goods shipped mostly from China, aiming to compete with low-cost giants Temu and Shein
Apple Home Hub: A new wall-mounted AI smart home display is coming soon – the tablet device will be a central hub for Siri and Apple Intelligence assistance with everything from video calls to appliance management
Instagram has rolled out a subtle - but important - UX improvement: the app will no longer automatically refresh when you open it, unless a user scrolls down. Even Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri admitted he found this very annoying during a live Q&A
YouTube is testing a new feature that will let creators use AI to “restyle” licensed songs for their Shorts
Baidu introduced new AI products, including a no-code dev tool and AI smart glasses
Perplexity’s CEO shares new monetization strategy. Perplexity plans to introduce ads that will take a slightly different form: ads will appear as sponsored follow-up questions, rather than within the tool’s answer itself. “We would rather give brands a transparent way to advertise through Perplexity that — rather than attempting to manipulate answers”, the CEO said
Snowflake has unveiled “data agents”, a series of autonomous agents designed to help folks without SQL skills get the data they need. Agents can extract data from multiple sources including databases, APIs and Google Workspace and then query it using natural language
Near Protocol, the decentralized blockchain company, plans to build the world’s largest open-source AI model, a 1.4T parameter LLM surpassing Meta's Llama
Anthropic, the AI startup, is in talks with Amazon about another billion-dollar+ investment into the startup, but the catch is it would need to commit to using AWS to train its’ AI models rather than its current solution, Nvidia
DeepL launches DeepL Voice, a tool that translates voices and videos to another language in real time. It claims to be more nuanced and precise than services from the likes of Google. It’s currently supported by Microsoft Teams but it could eventually be rolled out to Zoom and others. The feature essentially allows businesses to talk to each other in real time in different languages, which could fuel international growth
Revolut is launching its cryptocurrency exchange in 30 EU countries, allowing users in these markets to trade a variety of digital assets
Klarna files for US IPO. The process is likely to take 1-2 months
PayPal launched a feature to give customers an easy way to pool money with friends and family. Rolling out globally across the US, Germany, Italy and Spain, customers can set up a pool in PayPal, invite friends and family to contribute, track group contributions and transfer funds
Waymo expands in LA. Alphabet-subsidiary, and decacorn Waymo is dropping its waitlist in LA. That means more than a quarter million more people can now use its self-driving taxi service, based on public reporting of the company’s previous customer backlog in the city
Stretchable Display: LG unveiled a micro-LED display that can expand up to 50% and freely transform into any shape. It has 100-pixel-per-inch resolution, can be stretched 10K+ times and could be applied in fashion, wearables, and mobility
📚 Good reads
A Masterclass in user activation - a brief and inspiring case study by Built for Mars. According to Headspace, 96% of their users feel less stressed after using the app. Their sign-up flow is a masterclass in how to set a goal, control the narrative and create the perception of success
Coda’s CEO shares 4 rituals for great decision making, including resources to expand on each point
The Buy vs Build dilema for PMs, by Jesse Rosel. Product Managers often face the decision of whether to buy a solution or build it in-house. The choice can impact enabling technologies, applications, and customer-facing products. It's not just about whether a solution can be built, but if it should be
8 new and (mostly) free AI tools for enhanced productivity and creative solutions, compiled by Nitin Sharma
20 PM interview questions from Product leaders, complied by Ed Biden. Tried and tested PM interview questions that some well known Product leaders like to ask. If you’re prepping for interviews, make sure you have answers to these
Why your product idea sounds too complicated. Overly complex descriptions can confuse customers and dilute the Product's message. Descriptions should focus on the 'what' and 'why,' not just technical details. In this fun read, Andrew Chen shares some useful advice on how to get there
Reimagining prototyping with AI, by Vamsi Batchu. How generative AI tools are bringing creativity, speed, and efficiency to design validation
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