el producto #179

Just Eat buys Grubhub, Apple’s WWDC, Twitter reactions, Stakeholder management, Flipkart’s voice assistant, PS5, Good retention, more.

Welcome to a new edition of el producto

🎰 The week in figures

$1.5T: Apple becomes the first company to pass a $1.5T market cap; the company’s stock price closed Thursday up 2% at $352; Apple’s shares fell to $229 in March as the coronavirus pandemic hit

$150B: Jeff Bezos’ net worth has increased to ~$150B, up ~$35B since the start of 2020; Amazon’s shares currently trade at ~$2.5k; Bezos is Amazon’s single-biggest stakeholder, owning 55M shares

$15B: Food delivery firm DoorDash is looking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from T Rowe Price Group, SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Fidelity Investments, and others; the deal is set to value the company at $15B

$7.3B: Just Eat Takeaway acquires fellow food delivery firm Grubhub for $7.3B stock; the combined firm is projected to have 70M active customers worldwide; Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney will join the board of JET. Uber was offering more for the company, but Grubhub reportedly went with JET because of regulatory concerns; an Uber spokesperson suggests the food delivery industry will likely consolidate further

$4.6B: Chinese e-commerce firm JD.com plans to raise as much as $4.6B in a secondary IPO on the Hong Kong stock exchange; it will list June 18; the company says it will use the funds for supply chain initiatives

$2.5B: Used car marketplace Vroom raises $467.5M upon IPO on a valuation of ~$2.5B; the company has priced its shares at $22 apiece, above its $18 to $22 guide price; it has sold 21.2M shares

$1B: Germany-based flying taxi firm Lilium raises $35M Series C (extension) on a $1B valuation; the company is developing an on-demand air mobility service; has raised more than $375M to date

$150M: API development platform Postman raised $150 million in new funding, bringing its valuation to $2 billion. The Series C round, which was led by Insight Partners, is the largest to date for the 6-year-old company.

$47M: Meditation app Headspace has closed on $47.7 million in funding. The financing is an extension to its previously reported Series C, bringing total equity funding for that round to just over $100 million

📰 What’s going on

Uber partners with Flutterwave to launch its Uber Cash digital wallet in several sub-Saharan countries; Uber Cash lets riders pay for journeys using a variety of third-party remittance services; rolling out to South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, and Ivory Coast over the next couple of weeks

Uber-owned ride-hailing firm Careem sees signs of recovery amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to CEO Mudassir Sheikha; Careem, which operates in the Middle East, is seeing ridership of 50-60% of last year’s levels, but it’s still an improvement on the 80% drop it experienced in March and April; Careem cut its headcount by 31% in May

China-based ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing is seeing usage return to normal following the coronavirus pandemic, according to CEO Cheng Wei; the company says it has since ~30M rides per day in June, which is similar to usage numbers during the same period last year

Airbnb is seeing an uptick in domestic bookings, says CEO Brian Chesky; the company saw more US bookings between May 17 and June 3 than for the same period last year

Apple patents a feature to create group selfies featuring users who are not in the same space; the filing describes how an individual can invite others to snap selfies, with the shots then superimposed onto the same image

Apple confirms this year’s WWDC will feature a virtual keynote address on June 22; there will be 100 engineering sessions; additionally, developers will be able to request one-to-one appointments with Apple engineers

Apple may announce a transition away from Intel chips at this month’s WWDC; it’s expected the firm will inform developers of plans to phase out Intel-based Macs from 2021; Apple plans to introduce new Mac devices that use Arm-based chips, as it currently does with iPad and iPhone

Apple to discontinue iBooks Author and iTunes U; iBooks Author, which enables writers to format and publish ebooks, will continue to function but will not see new updates; Apple will stop offering the app on July 1; Apple encourages users to transition to Pages; the company will discontinue iTunes U, which provides access to educational materials from universities, museums, and others, at the end of 2021

Google Duo starts rolling out support for video call invite links; lets users send a link to others so they can join a group call (up to 12 users); currently available via iOS and Android

Google Meet begins rolling out an AI-powered noise cancellation feature; the tool promises to be able to block out sounds such as a dog barking or keyboard taps; initially available via the web, it will eventually be added to the iOS and Android apps

Google updates Maps with COVID-19 alerts; when the user searches for directions that include public transit, the app will display notifications about line closures, required precautions (face masks, social distancing), more; the user can also check how crowded a given transit option is based on historical or live data; will also display alerts for driving mode, including checkpoint information, rule changes for border crossings, etc

Google releases Android 11 beta for Pixel devices, delivering a redesigned notifications system, a new power menu, more; the new notifications system divides them into three categories: conversations, alerts, and silent notifications; the OS now features native full-screen recording, new screenshot management features, an app permissions reset option, more

Alphabet’s Wing is delivering books to students in Montgomery County, VA via UAV; kids request titles from the ~150k available, and middle school librarian Kelly Passek delivers them to a local Wing facility for free delivery; Wing’s craft can carry payloads of up to three pounds

Twitter rolls out Fleets, ephemeral user-generated content limited to the creator’s profile, to Indian users; the company previously launched tests in Brazil and Italy; Fleets do not appear in Search or Moments, and do not propagate through Twitter; viewers cannot Like, Reply, nor Retweet; Fleets disappear 24 hours after publishing

Twitter is testing a tweet reactions panel that includes emoji, Retweets, and Fleets; the reactions could enable users to respond to tweets that have replies disabled

Twitter is testing a new alert for Android users who share articles without first reading them in the Twitter app; when a user shares an unread article, Twitter will ask that the user read it first; the company said the change promotes informed discussion

Former Facebook CPO Chris Cox is returning to the company, and the position, after quitting in March of last year over his disagreements with Mark Zuckerberg’s vision; Cox joined Facebook in 2005 as the company’s 13th software engineer; he helped to design the original News Feed and in 2008 began overseeing all of the company’s products

Facebook’s News tab rolls out for all US users; previously available for select users, the News section features articles from a range of publications; also adds local news

Sony unveils the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, the latter with no drive; the company did not disclose pricing or launch dates; accessories include a camera, a media remote, a wireless headset, and a controller charging dock; Sony also announced multiple titles coming to the system, including “Spider-Man: Miles Morales,” “Gran Turismo 7,” a “Demon’s Souls” remake, and “Grand Theft Auto V”

Snapchat redesign features: a new action bar providing quick access to Snap Map and Snap Originals; Snap is updating Map with features to compete with Google Maps; the company is rolling out to US users a new “Happening Now” banner within the Discover tab to showcase curated Stories

Snap announces Minis: third-party apps that run inside of Snapchat; the apps run in chat and target group use; launch apps include Atom Tickets, which will enable users to watch movie trailers together and buy tickets for selected seats, a Saturn Technologies app enabling students to compare class schedules, more; coming to Snapchat’s iOS and Android apps in July

Flipkart adds an AI-powered voice assistant to its India-based e-commerce marketplace; initially available via Flipkart’s Android app it lets users search for items, generate their bill, and more; supports Hindi and English, with plans to add more languages in the future

TikTok’s parent firm ByteDance has more than tripled its US workforce over the last 12 months; the company now has 1k workers across the country, up from ~300 a year ago; ByteDance is hiring more US engineers in an effort to reduce its reliance on Chinese staff

Data management firm Palantir will file for an IPO in the coming weeks; it’s planning to confidentially file with the SEC, and is currently working with banks to prepare its listing; Palantir was last privately valued at $20B in 2015

Goat 2 Meeting sends an invite to a real goat or llama to join your video call

Brightful Meeting Games introduces icebreaking games to business meetings

👩🏾‍💻 Good reads

[Podcast + transcript] Eric Ries and Brian Chesky discuss entrepreneurial vision and long-term thinking to create whatever comes next. “Design your organization or it will be designed for you.” Brian’s philosophy of building and designing both products and organizations is based on two things: trust and love

Stakeholder management tips for Product people. Roman Pichler offers practical tips to help you succeed in aligning the stakeholders, involving them in the right way, and securing their support for important product decisions

What is good retention. Lenny Rachitsky, former supply growth lead at Airbnb along with Casey Winters, Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite does a deep dive into what GOOD and GREAT retention look like, for all types of businesses, with concrete recommendations from 20 of the world’s top growth experts

[Podcast] How TOMS shoes founder rebalanced life and work. One successful entrepreneur’s journey from 90-hour weeks, through depression, to sustainable wellness

💻 Upcoming online events

Leadership is language for Product Management, with L. David Marquet and Adrian Zwingli, by PMF, Tuesday, June 16, 18:30 CET, Free

Building ethical Products: shaping our future with technology, by ProdPad, Thursday, June 25, 17:00 CET, Free

Tech Circus Meets: Jeff Gothelf — Author of Lean UX, by The UX Crunch — Amsterdam, Wednesday, July 8, 19:00 CET, Free

Additionally, check out this Best Product Conferences in 2020 list put together by Product School

🙂 #alwaysbekind

During the upcoming weeks (for as long as the Covid-19 crisis goes on) I will keep dedicating my evenings to offer free consultation / advice / coaching / casual chats to any impacted professionals that would like to reach out. Don’t be a stranger, reach out by DM if you are interested, and let’s help each other. We are all humans after all, and we are all on the same boat