el producto #199

Big Tech Q3 results, YouTube growth & updates, Apple Search push, Google dark mode, Facebook’s tech strategy, Types of marketplaces, Live shopping, & more

Welcome to a new edition of el producto

🎰 The week in figures

100B: WhatsApp is delivering ~100B messages per day; doubled from 2014

$12B: Google paid Apple $8B-$12B to serve as the default search provider on Apple products, according to the Justice Department’s antitrust suit against Google, which alleges the search giant used its market power to snuff out competition; it also alleges Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai met in 2018 to discuss strategies for driving growth in search revenue; a senior Apple employee allegedly wrote to a Google counterpart, suggesting they work together as if one company

$5B: YouTube generated $5B in ad revenue during Q3, up 30% YoY; YouTube Music and Premium collectively have 30M paid users, while YouTube TV has over 3M subscribers

$950M: Nestlé acquires NYC-based Freshly, which offers health-focused meals for delivery, for $950M + $550M in growth-based earn-outs; the company prepares each meal so the customer only has to put one in the microwave or oven; ships 1M-plus meals per week across 48 states; forecasts $430M in revenue for 2020; previously raised $107M

$350M: Indonesian e-commerce firm Tokopedia has raised $350M from Temasek and Google; follows a report the companies had collectively invested ~$800M; Tokopedia aimed to raise as much as $1B, though it could still secure other backers; it has held talks with Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon

$170M: Wholesale marketplace Faire (YC W17) raises $170M Series E at a $2.5B valuation; three former Square employees founded Faire to help smaller stores discover and stock products; provides a 60-day free return policy for unsold items; has facilitated the sale of 35M products over the past year; raised $439M to date

$150M: Brazil-based payments processor Conductor, which offers banking-as-a-service infrastructure, raises $150M; valuation undisclosed; CEO Antonio Soares said the funding would facilitate Latin American expansion ahead of a potential US public listing

$133M: Berlin-based GetYourGuide, which offers tours and experiences, raises $133M via convertible note; the note will covert to equity at the company’s next round, and at that round’s valuation; the company laid off 100 in recent months but also saw some recovery in bookings during the summer; raised $790M to date

$125M: Eightfold, which provides AI-powered software for recruiting and employee retention, raises $125M Series D at a $1B valuation; reduces bias during the hiring process to improve diversity; integrates with Workday and Oracle; clients include Twilio, Hulu, and Capital One; raised $177M to date

115M: Microsoft teams claims 115M DAUs, up from 75M in April; Satya Nadella notes Microsoft is adding new features at a rapid pace, saying Teams has introduced over 100 capabilities over the last six months

$100M: Boston-based wearables firm Whoop raises $100M on a $1.2B post-money valuation; Whoop Strap is a wrist-worn device for tracking sleep, breaths-per-minute; users pay a monthly subscription to access their data; has raised more than $200M to date

$80M: Marketing tech company Rokt raises $80M Series D at a $450M-plus valuation; the company’s tools enable client businesses to make personalized offers for cross-sales and up-sales during and after e-commerce transactions

$50M: Apple acquires Barcelona-based computer vision company Vilynx for ~$50M; Vilynx uses AI to analyze video content and automatically apply tags; clients have used the tech for search functions; potential applications for Siri, Photos, content recommendations, and search

£30M: UK-based market research app Streetbees raises £30M; offers cash rewards and other incentives to users who carry out various real-world tasks; has raised ~$56M to date

22M: NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service claims ~22M users, up from 10M at the end of July; Peacock offers free and premium tiers; Paid plan figures undisclosed

3K: TikTok says it plans to hire 3k engineers over the next 3 years; the jobs will be added in Europe, Canada, and Singapore; it will also add some positions in the US; TikTok currently has ~1k engineers outside of China

📰 What’s going on

TikTok and Shopify announce global partnership enabling Shopify merchants to create and manage TikTok ad campaigns from within the Shopify dashboard; requires the TikTok channel app for Shopify; provides access to the TikTok For Business Ads Manager; merchants can also use TikTok Pixel to track conversations about campaigns; the companies plan more in-app shopping features

Zoom rolls out end-to-end encryption for free and paid users; meeting hosts must enable the feature manually, as must all room participants; Zoom seeks user feedback regarding the technical preview

Netflix raises the price of some plans; the standard plan increases to $13, while premium costs $16; basic tier remains $9; current subscribers will see an increase over the coming weeks

YouTube updates its mobile apps, adding new gestures and more; adds support for chapters, and captions are now easier to find; rolling out now to iOS and Android

Google is testing a dark mode for Chrome OS; currently available in the Canary channel, the feature works with browser tabs pages and some system-level tabs; Chromebook users can try it out by enabling the relevant flags

Google researchers develop a tool to automatically generate videos based on a web page; known as URL2Video, the AI-powered system extracts assets such as text, logos, images, and embedded clips, combining them into a short video; the final videos can be presented in landscape or portrait formats; Google notes its working on implementing voiceovers and more; unknown if or when the feature will be publicly available

Facebook launches cloud gaming for desktop and Android, enabling users to try free-to-play titles within Facebook without installing anything; the company said it could not launch the service on iOS, citing Apple’s policy for cloud gaming services; Apple recently updated its terms to allow apps that offer numerous games, but each game must have its own App Store listing

Apple’s updates to search in iOS 14 indicate the company has broader search ambitions; iOS 14 users, when searching from the home screen, now see Apple’s own search results; Apple poached Google’s head of search in 2018, and has posted multiple search job listings

Apple launches its Apple One bundled subscriptions, starting at $15 per month; that plan, Individual, includes Apple Music, Apple TV Plus, Apple Arcade, and 50GB of iCloud storage; the $20 Family option adds a family subscription to Apple Music and 150GB more storage; the $30 Premier plan adds News Plus and Fitness Plus subscriptions and 2TB iCloud storage

Microsoft is working on a large Windows UI update, to roll out in 2021; includes a refreshed Start menu, Action Center, and File Explorer; codenamed Sun Valley, the update is expected to launch by the Holiday season next year

Microsoft adds the ability to incorporate custom live data within Excel; the feature will let users track a variety of third-party datasets including nutritional info, stocks, and more; currently available to beta users; set to roll out Office 365 users soon

ByteDance launches first consumer hardware product, the Dali smart lamp for kids; the $120 gadget features a display, a camera, and an assistant; the company also branded its education category of products and services, including English language learning offering GoGoKid, as Dali Education

China’s digital yuan will work with WeChat Pay and Alipay; the country’s Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) can be moved between digital wallets; WeChat Pay and Alipay collectively have 94% market share; DCEP is currently being tested in multiple Chinese cities

ProductCon LA will take place online on November 5th. Free Early Bird tickets running until 3-Nov

💵 Q3 financials

Microsoft ($1.61T market cap) Q3 beats: $37.2B revenue, up 12% YoY ($35.7B expected); $13.9B net income; Azure revenue grew 48% (44% expected)

Twilio ($44.75B market cap) Q3 beats: $448M revenue, up 52% YoY ($409.8M expected); 208k active accounts as of Sept 30, up 21% YoY

Spotify ($49.6B market cap) Q3 misses: $2.31B revenue, up from $1.97B for the year-earlier period ($2.36B expected); -$0.68 EPS (-$0.61 expected); 144M premium subscribers, up 27% YoY; 320M MAU, up 29% YoY ; the company expects to add 8M premium subscribers in Q4

Facebook ($800B market cap) Q3 beats: $21.47B revenue ($19.8B expected); $2.71 EPS ($1.91 expected); $7.89 average revenue per user ($7.32 expected); 1.82B DAU, 2.74B MAU; 3.21B MAU across the company’s family of apps

Twitter ($41.47B market cap) Q3 beats: $936M revenue ($777M expected); $0.19 EPS, adjusted ($0.06 expected); 187M monetizable DAU, up 29% YoY (195M expected); $808M ad revenue, up 15% YoY

Amazon ($1.61T market cap) Q3 beats: $96.15B revenue ($92.7B expected); $12.37 EPS ($7.41 expected); $11.6B AWS revenue, up 29% YoY; the company expects $112B to $121B in sales in Q4

Alphabet ($1.06T market cap) Q3 beats: $46.2B revenue ($42.8B expected); $16.40 EPS ($11.37 expected); $5B YouTube revenue, up from $3.8B for the year-earlier period ($4.52B expected); $3.44B Cloud revenue, up from $2.4B for the year-earlier period ($3.31B expected); $178M Other Bets revenue; $11.2B net income

Apple ($2T market cap) Q3 beats: $64.7B revenue ($63.7B expected); $0.73 EPS ($0.70 expected); $14.55B services revenue; $26.44B iPhone revenue; $6.8B iPad revenue; $9B Mac revenue; $7.88B other products

Samsung ($344B market cap) Q3 beats: $59B revenue, up 8% YoY ($57B expected); $10.9B operating profit, up 59% YoY; $8.2B net profit; the company saw a boost in demand for smartphones and other consumer devices; Samsung predicts a drop in sales for Q4 as smartphone competition increases and enterprise customers buy less servers

Ebay ($37B market cap) Q3 beats: $2.6B revenue ($2.48B expected); $25B GMV, up 22% YoY; its managed payments business processed 20% of on-platform payment volume; 183M annual active buyers, up 5%

👩🏾‍💻 Good reads

The hungry man parable, by Rich Mironov. PMs know how important it is to start fewer things and stick with them until we finish. Rapid priority shifts are expensive and demoralizing. But that may not be a native concept for some on the go-to-market side

Live shopping is gaining traction in the US, following significant growth in China; Amazon and Facebook recently launched live shopping features, and Google’s Area 120 developed a shoppable stories product; pandemic-related lockdowns have accelerated growth in live shopping

Sequencing business models: the types of Marketplaces, by Casey Winters, CPO at Eventbrite. Brief analysis of different types of marketplaces and what a company has to build to be successful in them

Product Inteligence Report. Amplitude released its yearly report on Product Management tools, trends, challenges and more

How to apply the Build-Measure-Learn framework for product success. Karla Fordham shares a simple yet useful framework to do what its name says

[Podcast] Facebook’s Tech Chief: How we built it and where we’re going. This podcast explores how Facebook planned for infrastructure resilience to cope with such explosive growth, and why they have invested so deeply in AI and virtual reality

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