Welcome, tech friends

Happy Tuesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

This week, in Quick Hits we tackle the biggest stories in tech. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing AI tools for SMBs. This week’s Top Story unfolds the internet drama behind AI wearable friends. In Social Pulse, we have a great video from NFX called “AI is like water.”

Let's dive in! 👇

This week

• 🔥 Trending Tools: SEO Juice, Jupiterr, and Flowprompter

• 🏆 Top Story: Tech layoffs by Cisco, Eventbrite, and more

• 🔍 Deep Dive: How SMBs are gaining big advantages with AI

• 🍿 Damian Builds: Now offering Product Audits

• 🌐 Social Pulse: AI is like water

⚡ QUICK HITS

AI frenemies: Microsoft vs. OpenAI.

Audio boom: ChatGPT grows.

API anxiety: Yelp angers devs.

Br-ai-nstorm: YouTube adds Gemini.

Chat, later: OpenAI exec defects.

Coffee spies: China probes data spills.

Fallen stars: Techstars lays off 17%.

Free games: Roku streams sports.

Groq grows: Chip maker amasses $1B.

Hungry Llama: Meta needs 10x power.

India invests: VCs launch $250M fund.

Jakarta rocks: Builds EV anode plant.

‘Quasi-merger’: Brits eye Amazon-Anthropic.

Reward withdrawal: TikTok ends Lite.

Scrape scrap: YouTuber sues OpenAI.

Space tourism: Saudi Arabia plans test flight.

Thank memes: Robinhood soars.

VR venture: Meta deals with India’s Jio.

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

<iframe src="https://embeds.beehiiv.com/69152e3e-e521-45b4-aac0-92f528ff02bf?slim=true" data-test-id="beehiiv-embed" height="52" frameborder="0" style="margin: 0; border-radius: 0px !important; background-color: transparent;"></iframe>

🏆 TOP STORY

Powered by Break the Web.

📉 Tech layoffs continue with Intel, Dell, Cisco, Paypal, Eventbrite, Techstars, and more

We were almost out of the woods, and then we got smacked with the 4th biggest month of layoffs this year in July.

That brings the total number of tech workers laid off in the US alone to close to 500,000 since early 2022. At this point, I wish we could say that the job cuts will end in 2024, but seeing more cuts leading into the holidays would not surprise me.

It doesn’t look like layoffs are ending just yet.

🔗 Cisco cutting 4,000 jobs

🔍 DEEP DIVE

An in-depth breakdown of something interesting

Join the waitlist at unrealai.co

The AI Revolution: How Small Businesses Are Gaining Big Advantages

While tech giants and enterprises dominate the AI headlines, there's a quiet revolution happening in the small business world. Today, we're diving into how SMBs are leveraging AI to level the playing field and boost their efficiency. Let's explore some game-changing ways AI is transforming small business operations:

1. Customer Service on Steroids 🦸‍♀️

Remember when chatbots were clunky and frustrating? Those days are gone. AI-powered chatbots like those from Intercom or Drift are now sophisticated enough to handle complex queries, freeing up your human team for high-value interactions. Small businesses are using these tools to offer 24/7 support without breaking the bank.

Key Benefit: Improved customer satisfaction and reduced support costs.

2. Marketing Magic ✨

AI is making it easier and more affordable for small businesses to approach marketing. Tools like Jasper.ai are helping SMBs create compelling content in minutes. Stealth upstarts like UNREALAI.co are customizing ai email outreach assistants for the SMB B2B niche, while platforms like Albert.ai can optimize ad spend across multiple channels.

Key Benefit: Higher ROI on marketing efforts and the ability to compete with larger companies.

Join the waitlist at unrealai.co

3. Financial Forecasting That Actually Works 📈

Gone are the days of squinting at spreadsheets and guessing your cash flow. AI-powered tools like Fathom or Syft Analytics are giving small businesses enterprise-level financial insights. These platforms can predict cash flow, identify potential issues, and even suggest optimizations.

Key Benefit: Better financial decision-making and reduced risk.

4. Supercharged Sales 🚀

AI isn't just for the big sales teams anymore. Tools like Gong.io are bringing conversation intelligence to SMBs, helping sales reps improve their pitches and close more deals. Meanwhile, platforms like Pipedrive are using AI to prioritize leads and suggest the best times to follow up.

Key Benefit: Increased sales efficiency and higher conversion rates.

5. Streamlined Hiring 👥

Finding the right talent is crucial for small businesses, but it's also time-consuming. AI-powered platforms like Lever and Ideal are streamlining the hiring process by automatically screening resumes, scheduling interviews, and even predicting candidate success.

Key Benefit: Faster, more effective hiring with less unconscious bias.

6. Data-Driven Decision Making 🧠

Small businesses often lack the resources for a dedicated data team. Enter AI. Tools like Obviously.ai and BigML are democratizing data science, allowing SMBs to build predictive models and gain actionable insights without a PhD in statistics.

Key Benefit: More informed decision-making across all aspects of the business.

7. Personalization at Scale 🎯

Delivering personalized experiences used to be the domain of big tech. Not anymore. AI tools like Segment and Optimizely are enabling small businesses to create tailored user experiences, from customized product recommendations to personalized email campaigns.

Key Benefit: Improved customer engagement and loyalty.

The AI Advantage for SMBs

What's truly exciting about these AI advancements is how they're leveling the playing field. Small businesses can now access capabilities that were once the exclusive domain of large enterprises with deep pockets.

But here's the kicker: SMBs often have an advantage in AI adoption. They're typically more agile, with less bureaucracy and legacy systems holding them back. This means they can implement and iterate on AI solutions faster than their larger counterparts.

The Future is AI-Powered (and Small Business Friendly)

As AI continues to evolve, we can expect even more accessible and powerful tools to emerge. The businesses that thrive will be those that embrace these technologies early and use them to augment their unique human strengths.

Remember, the goal isn't to replace human intelligence, but to enhance it. By leveraging AI for routine tasks and data-heavy analysis, small businesses can free up their most valuable asset – their people – to focus on creativity, strategy, and building meaningful relationships with customers.

How are you using AI in your small business? What challenges or opportunities do you see? Hit reply and let me know – I'd love to hear your thoughts!

🍿 DAMIAN BUILDS IN PUBLIC

My journey, failures, and wins

I’ve been taking a lot of feedback on Productpickle, and if you followed me at all this year, you’ve probably seen me try more than a couple things. I’d like to believe that’s the spirit of a good PM. 😅

Weekly Wins

❇️ Refreshed positioning at productpickle.com

❇️ Accepted into a 2-week Clay.com training program

❇️ Made initial investment to move my business into Shopify

Weekly Fails

❇️ I accidentally hid the past 2 weeks of Deep Dive sections from my Beehiiv audience. This is a good reminder that all previous newsletters can be viewed at newsletter.productpickle.com.

I’m now offering Product Audits

I’ve been missing my “foot in the door offering,” some initial lower-priced service that could also be a natural ladder into my core offering as a Fractional Head of Product. I’ve been taking market feedback, and I’m hopeful Product Audits can be my wedge or my foot in the door. 🥾

Subscribers of this newsletter get an initial public offering of $999.

Let me help you turn your product into a growth machine!

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Subscribe today to access

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you

• Browse through our list of product guides

• Power your go-to-market and PLG strategy with ChatPLG

• Download my artifacts as a top contributor on Reforge

• Explore if fractional product management is a fit for your team

• Sponsor this newsletter to get in front of 1,000+ subscribers

From the author

Connect on LinkedIn

Unlimited Product and Design

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Wednesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

This week, in our Quick Hits, we feature news from Perplexity, Lemon Squeezy, and Meta. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing a batch of new customer feedback software. This week’s Top Story unfolds the internet drama behind AI wearable friends. In Social Pulse, we have a great quote from Satya Nadella on leadership.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week

• 🔥 Trending Tools: Ballpark, ReviewLab, Lancey AI, and more

• 🏆 Top Story: The Wild Internet Drama Behind Friend(s)

• 🔍 Deep Dive: Beyond Black Mirror with Always On Devices

• 🌐 Social Pulse: Satya Nadella on leadership

⚡ QUICK HITS

Ad-free chat: Skype kills ads.

Brain gains: AI detects early dementia.

Brazilian boon: Country invests $4B.

Chatbots for all: Meta launches AI Studio.

Dating downturn: Tinder slumps.

Future gains: IIMA launches investor accelerator.

Hollywood strike: Actors protest AI.

Lyric lift: Spotify eases limits.

Monopoly money: GO! passes $3B.

Search wars: OpenAI launches SearchGPT.

Rapido cash: Bike taxis take off in India.

Sharing spoils: Perplexity pays publishers.

Sick in Singapore: Food poisoning hits TikTok.

Southern tech: Atlanta builds innovation village.

Striped lemons: Stripe acquires Lemon Squeezy.

Voice of the people: Rep. uses AI to speak.

Video linguistics: Vimeo adds AI translation.

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

<iframe src="https://embeds.beehiiv.com/69152e3e-e521-45b4-aac0-92f528ff02bf?slim=true" data-test-id="beehiiv-embed" height="52" frameborder="0" style="margin: 0; border-radius: 0px !important; background-color: transparent;"></iframe>

🏆 TOP STORY

🫣 The Wild Internet Drama Behind Friend(s)

🫣 tldr

Two companies, Friend.com and Based Hardware, are locked in a heated dispute over AI wearables called "Friend." The controversy involves accusations of idea theft, a $1.8 million domain purchase, and a surprising diss track, captivating the tech world.

📅 Timeline of Events

• February 6, 2024: Avi Schiffmann's company purchases the domain friend.com for $1.8 million

• March 2024: Based Hardware, led by Nik Shevchenko, releases the "Friend SDK"

• July 26, 2024: Based Hardware releases "Friend" on Product Hunt, winning #1 Product of the Day

• July 30, 2024:

  • Friend.com releases a promotional video for their AI necklace, drawing comparisons to Black Mirror

  • MKBHD asks, "Wait, this isn't a skit?"

  • Shevchenko responds with a rap video, accusing Schiffmann of stealing his idea

• July 31, 2024: Damian buys Based Hardware SDK and starts building

🤖 The Products

• Friend.com's AI Necklace: A $99 wearable AI companion that listens to conversations and sends text responses

• Based Hardware's Friend: An open-source AI wearable priced at $49 (Dev Kit) or $69.99 (Necklace), focusing on memory and communication enhancement

Based Hardware Friend

🤔 Why It Matters

1. Copycats: Highlights fierce competition in emerging AI, showcasing rapid idea development and potential copying, even in hardware.

2. Black Mirror Reality: Raises questions about AI companions and human relationships, as well as potential misunderstandings of device usage. Learn more in our deep-dive.

3. Seed Round Utilization: Internet debate over the $1.8 million domain purchase:

   • Critics: Poor use of $2.5M raised funds

   • Supporters: Valuable "internet real estate" with potential for appreciation and strong backlink profile

4. Viral Marketing: Domain purchase and promotional video dominated weekly internet discussions.

5. Open Source vs. Proprietary: Contrasts Based Hardware's open-source approach with Friend.com's traditional product launch, highlighting different tech development philosophies.

6. Future of AI Wearables: This controversy may shape future development and public perception of AI wearable devices, influencing consumer expectations and industry standards. Based Hardware already has a glasses version in production.

   📺 The Drama

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

🔍 DEEP DIVE

An in-depth breakdown of something interesting

Beyond Black Mirror: The Transformative Potential of Always On Devices

In the wake of the "Friend" controversy, public discourse has focused mainly on the more sensational aspects of Always-On Devices (AODs). While privacy concerns and the potential for dependency are valid topics of discussion, they often overshadow the technology's transformative potential.

I'm incredibly excited by the diverse applications of AODs and their capacity to revolutionize industries and enhance human capabilities.

What Are Always-On Devices?

Always-On Devices are wearable or portable technologies designed to gather and process data from their environment continuously. These devices typically combine sensors, microphones, and sometimes cameras with powerful AI algorithms to provide real-time analysis and feedback to users.

Beyond AI Companionship: 12 Exciting Use Cases

While AI companionship (like "Friend") is one application of AODs, the potential use cases are far more varied and impactful:

1. 📝 Conversation Summarizers: Automatically generate concise summaries of meetings, lectures, or casual conversations, enhancing productivity.

2. 💡 Insight Extractors: Identify and highlight important ideas, action items, or conversation patterns, aiding decision-making processes.

3. 🧠 Therapist-Patient Note Taker: Assist therapists in maintaining accurate session notes without disrupting therapy flow, improving mental health care quality.

4. 🤔 Cognitive Bias Detector: Alert users to potential cognitive biases, enhancing critical thinking skills.

5. 😊 Sentiment Analysis Tool: Analyze emotional tone in real-time, improving emotional intelligence and communication style.

6. ✅ Real-Time Fact Checker: Verify claims against reliable sources, combating misinformation.

7. 💘 Dating Coach: Provide real-time feedback during social interactions, helping improve social skills.

8. 🗣️ Communication Coach: Offer suggestions for more effective communication in various contexts.

9. 🤗 Emotional Support Assistant: Detect signs of emotional distress and provide coping strategies.

10. 🌐 Language Learning Aid: Offer real-time translations and pronunciation corrections, accelerating language acquisition.

11. 👀 Accessibility Assistant: Describe surroundings and provide navigational assistance for individuals with visual impairments.

12. 🛡️ Safety Monitor: Detect potential environmental hazards or unusual vital signs, improving personal safety.

Revolutionizing Industries

The widespread adoption of AODs has the potential to transform various sectors:

• 🏥 Healthcare: Revolutionize patient monitoring and medical record-keeping.

• 🎓 Education: Personalize learning experiences and provide real-time feedback.

• 🛎️ Customer Service: Enhance customer interactions with real-time insights.

• 📰 Journalism: Aid in fact-checking and identifying newsworthy patterns.

• 👮 Law Enforcement: Improve situational awareness in high-stress scenarios.

Ethical Considerations: Balancing Innovation and Responsibility

While the potential benefits of AODs are significant, their development must be guided by strong ethical principles:

• 🔒 Privacy Protection: Ensure robust data security and user control.

• 🔍 Transparency: Clearly communicate device capabilities and limitations.

• 🌈 Inclusivity: Design for diverse populations, avoiding bias.

• ⚖️ Human-AI Balance: Maintain human agency alongside AI assistance.

The Future is Now

The key to harnessing the full potential of Always-On Devices lies in striking a balance between technological innovation and ethical considerations. By focusing on responsible development and deployment, we can create a future where AODs genuinely enhance human capabilities and improve quality of life across various domains.

While the recent "Friend" controversy has sparked essential discussions about AI companionship and privacy, it's crucial to recognize the broader landscape of Always-On Devices. From healthcare to education, from personal development to professional enhancement, these technologies have the potential to revolutionize how we live, work, and interact with the world around us.

As we continue exploring and developing these technologies, let's approach them with excitement for their potential and a commitment to their responsible implementation. The future of AODs is not just about AI companions – it's about unlocking human potential in ways we're only beginning to imagine.

🍿 DAMIAN BUILDS IN PUBLIC

My journey, failures, and wins

This week, I embarked on an ambitious challenge: developing 100 business ideas. Little did I know that this exercise would lead me down an exciting path of innovation and learning. Here's what happened:

💡 The 100 Ideas Challenge

• Set a goal to brainstorm 100 business ideas in one week

• Pushed my creative boundaries and explored various industries

• Discovered a pattern: many ideas revolved around AI and wearable tech

🔧 From Ideas to Action: The Friend Dev Kit

• Several ideas centered around creating plugins for Based Hardware's Friend

• Attracted by the open-source nature of the Friend Dev Kit

• Saw an opportunity to contribute to an emerging ecosystem

🤖 Leveraging AI for Development

• Used Claude AI as my coding companion throughout the process

• Prompted Claude for guidance on:

  • Forking the repo on Github

  • Navigating the Terminal on my local machine

  • Understanding and implementing the plugin architecture

🎉 My First Github Commit

• Successfully pushed my first-ever commits to Github

• Created a simple yet functional “Warren Buffett Financial Advisor” plugin for the Friend Dev Kit

• Experienced the thrill of contributing to an open-source project

My first plugin for Based Hardware’s Friend:

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

Twitter tweet

Subscribe today to access

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you

• Browse through our list of product guides

• Power your go-to-market and PLG strategy with ChatPLG

• Download my artifacts as a top contributor on Reforge

• Explore if fractional product management is a fit for your team

• Sponsor this newsletter to get in front of 1,000+ subscribers

From the author

Connect on LinkedIn

Unlimited Product and Design

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Wednesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

This week, we're featuring news from Apple, OpenAI, and Reddit in our Quick Hits. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing hot tools climbing the internet leaderboards. This week’s Top Story previews OpenAI’s latest feature rollouts. In Social Pulse, we’re sharing some GTM strategies and also asking, “What is the price of a newsletter in 2024?”

Let's dive in! 👇

This week

• 🔥 Trending Tools: Gitstart, AnyModel, Waitlister, and more

• 🏆 Top Story: OpenAI begins rollout of new features

• 🔍 Deep Dive: A Look at Product-Led Growth Flywheels

• 🌐 Social Pulse: Creating a GTM strategy with Pawel Huryn

⚡ QUICK HITS

Access denied: Wiz rejects Google bid.

Air mobility: U.K. startup unveils vertiport.

Better beats: Spotify introduces hi-fi audio.

Crypto cars: Ferrari takes bitcoin.

Eco lounge: Herman Miller goes plant-based.

Folding iPhone: Apple follows trend.

Fund diversification: VCs target minority founders.

Heavy lifting: Ex-Tesla exec builds warehouse robots.

Lunar lake: China rover reveals moon water.

Mega model: Meta introduces new Llama.

Meta move: Verified launches in India.

Mini AI: OpenAI releases GPT-4o mini.

Model rivalry: Mistral's introduces Large 2.

Quality control: Google removes useless apps.

Rover reverse: NASA grounds VIPER.

Space boost: India invest in spacetech.

Sporting threads: Reddit partners with NBA.

Video emergency: iPhone eyes 911 video calls.

Way more $: Alphabet invests in Waymo.

Wind power: Startup builds kite boats.

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

<iframe src="https://embeds.beehiiv.com/69152e3e-e521-45b4-aac0-92f528ff02bf?slim=true" data-test-id="beehiiv-embed" height="52" frameborder="0" style="margin: 0; border-radius: 0px !important; background-color: transparent;"></iframe>

🏆 TOP STORY

🔜 OpenAI begins rollout of SearchGPT and advanced Voice Mode

TLDR 

OpenAI is expanding its AI offerings by introducing SearchGPT, a new search engine, and an advanced Voice Mode for ChatGPT, signaling a major push into search and voice assistant markets.

Key Points

1. SearchGPT Launch: OpenAI has released SearchGPT in early access, attempting to compete with established search engines like Google.

2. SearchGPT Performance: Initial reviews indicate SearchGPT is slower and less reliable than Google, struggling with queries it should excel at.

3. Ad-free Experience: SearchGPT's major advantage is its ad-free interface, which could potentially change the search engine landscape.

4. Voice Mode Rollout: Advanced Voice Mode is being released in alpha to a select group of ChatGPT Plus users, with full rollout expected by fall 2024.

5. Voice Capabilities: The new Voice Mode offers more natural conversations and interruption capability and aims to respond to user emotions.

6. Future Features: Video and screen sharing capabilities for Voice Mode are planned for future releases.

7. Integration Prediction: SearchGPT is predicted to be integrated into standard ChatGPT within 3 months.

Twitter tweet

Why It Matters 

Despite reports of massive revenue losses, OpenAI is not discouraged from directly challenging tech giants in search and voice assistant markets. The success or failure of these features could significantly influence OpenAI's market position and the direction of AI development.

Between a better version of Search GPT and Perplexity, ad-free search experiences are about to reshape the digital advertising landscape. And the integration of search and voice mode functionality into ChatGPT could blur the lines between different AI services, potentially leading to more versatile AI tools.

🔗 Get on the Search GPT waitlist

🔍 DEEP DIVE

An in-depth breakdown of something interesting

A Look at Product-Led Growth Flywheels

🔄 Funnel vs. Flywheel: The Great Shift

Remember the old sales funnel? It's time for an upgrade. Here's why the PLG Flywheel is leaving the funnel in the dust:

• Funnel: Linear, one-way journey (Awareness → Consideration → Decision)

• Flywheel: Cyclical, self-reinforcing process

Why the Flywheel Wins:

1. Continuous Growth: Unlike funnels that "leak," flywheels build momentum

2. User-Centric: Product experience drives growth, not just marketing or sales

3. Scalability: Each satisfied user adds energy to the system

4. Post-Purchase Focus: Turns customers into growth drivers, not the end of a journey

🌀 What's the PLG Flywheel?

Imagine a wheel that, once set in motion, powers its own momentum. That's your product driving growth at every stage:

1. Evaluate: Strangers → Explorers

2. Activate: Explorers → Beginners

3. Adopt: Beginners → Regulars

4. Expand: Regulars → Champions

5. Advocate: Champions → Growth Drivers

💡 Why It Works

• User-Centric: Your product does the heavy lifting

• Scalable: Grows exponentially with each spin

• Sustainable: Turns happy users into your marketing engine

🔧 Implementing Your Flywheel

1. Evaluate: Pull the most redeeming aspects of your app forward in the user experience

2. Activate: Design onboarding with quick time-to-value

3. Adopt: Nurture users with top-notch support and feature education

4. Expand: Upsell smartly based on usage patterns

5. Advocate: Turn your champions into vocal brand ambassadors

📊 Metrics That Matter

• Time to first value

• Activation rate

• Net Promoter Score (NPS)

• Net revenue retention

🔮 The Future of PLG

• AI-driven personalization

• Product-embedded customer success

• Community-led growth initiatives

🧠 Quick Tip

Remember, your product isn't just a solution—it's your most powerful sales and marketing tool. Developing a product flywheel is one of the most scalable ways to generate continuous user growth!

Ready to rev up your growth engine? Let's chat about optimizing your PLG strategy. Hit reply or visit productpickle.com to get started!

🍿 DAMIAN BUILDS IN PUBLIC

My journey, failures, and wins

This week, the sales theme continued with me iterating on my Discovery Call and Suggested Approach process.

As of this week, I’m now offering a Product and UX Audit that lowers the barrier to working with me. This discovery-guided approach creates a win-win by derisking the partnership and making it worth everyone’s time. I think clients will love this way of working.

The audit deliverable will be a memo or presentation that provides an expert opinion on the competitive market, key differentiators, margin-enhancers, and other suggested market-winning approaches. From this researched perspective, it becomes much easier to formalize an ongoing partnership.

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Subscribe today to access

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you

• Browse through our list of product guides

• Power your go-to-market and PLG strategy with ChatPLG

• Download my artifacts as a top contributor on Reforge

• Explore if fractional product management is a fit for your team

• Sponsor this newsletter to get in front of 1,000+ subscribers

From the author

Connect on LinkedIn

Unlimited Product and Design

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Wednesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

This week, news from Starbucks and Salesforce in our Quick Hits. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing hot tool finds like Gamma and Giveaway. This week’s Top Story drops a rundown of the Crowdstrike global outage. And in Social Pulse, we’re sharing some fascinating use cases for Claude 3.5 Sonnet and an awesome periodic table for branding.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week:

• 🔥 Trending Tools: Gamma, Curated Letters, InstaPlug, and more

• 🏆 Top Story: Crowdstrike causes global outage in YOLO deploy

• 🌐 Social Pulse: 10 awesome Claude 3.5 Sonnet uses cases

⚡ QUICK HITS

AI love: Dating app features no humans.

Caffeine + charge: Starbucks adds Benz fill-ups.

Changing film: Generative cinema arrives.

Claude for all: Chatbot goes Android.

Connecting India: LinkedIn introduces video shorts.

Culture boom: K-content spending soars.

Crypto surge: Currencies ride Bitcoin rally.

Fighting frenzy: Evo expects record crowd.

G → Wiz: Google nears $23B Wiz acquisition.

iFund 2.0: Anthropic launches Anthology Fund.

Indian summer: Apple revenue soars 33%.

Leaving Cali.: SpaceX, X move to Texas.

Less force: Salesforce slashes 300 jobs.

Open to investigation: OpenAI’s NDAs scrutinized.

Phone breach: AT&T customer data hacked.

Space rhapsody: NASA beams Missy Elliott to Venus.

Urban air: Air taxis planned for California.

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

<iframe src="https://embeds.beehiiv.com/69152e3e-e521-45b4-aac0-92f528ff02bf?slim=true" data-test-id="beehiiv-embed" height="52" frameborder="0" style="margin: 0; border-radius: 0px !important; background-color: transparent;"></iframe>

🏆 TOP STORY

🛡️ Crowdstrike becomes the security threat

TLDR

CrowdStrike, a major cybersecurity firm, caused a significant global outage due to a flawed software update deployed without validation testing.

Key Points

1. Outage Impact: The CrowdStrike update affected airlines, hospitals, emergency services, retailers, and other critical systems worldwide, causing widespread disruption.

2. Scale of the Problem: Microsoft estimated that 8.5 million Windows devices (less than 1% of all Windows machines) were affected, but the impact was amplified due to CrowdStrike's use by enterprises running critical services.

3. Windows Dependency: The incident highlighted the prevalence of Windows-based systems in the corporate world, as only Windows machines were affected.

4. Deployment Practices: Questions have been raised about CrowdStrike's testing and deployment processes, given the scale of the disruption caused by a single update.

5. Shared Responsibility: While CrowdStrike's update caused the issue, Microsoft's system architecture that allows such deep access to cybersecurity tools has also come under scrutiny.

6. Market Implications: CrowdStrike's stock price fell 11% following the incident, indicating potential market repercussions.

Why It Matters 

This event underscores the critical dependency businesses have on cybersecurity services and highlights potential vulnerabilities in the global technology infrastructure. It raises important questions about:

• The risks of relying heavily on single service providers

• The need for more robust testing and deployment practices in the tech industry

• The importance of redundancy and diversification in critical systems

• The potential need for greater oversight or regulation in the cybersecurity sector

The incident serves as a wake-up call for both tech companies and their customers to reassess their practices and dependencies to prevent similar large-scale disruptions in the future.

Crowdstrikes Post Incident Report

More on the fallout

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

🍿 DAMIAN BUILDS IN PUBLIC

My journey, failures, and wins

I’ve been supporting client projects this past week and stacking little wins. I’m continuing to learn a fractional sales process that works for me. The biggest learning so far is how to draw out qualified leads ‘why?’ so I can more effectively connect and communicate my value. Seems obvious, but I think listening and demonstrating intention in context is a dynamic skill that takes some practice. Developing confidence in how you say something is as important as what you say.

Biggest win

After reporting a jump in Productpickle’s SEO last week, the next day it went up again. Here is the latest from 0 to 52 DR in less than 2 weeks.

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Subscribe today to access

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you

• Browse through our list of product guides

• Power your go-to-market and PLG strategy with ChatPLG

• Download my artifacts as a top contributor on Reforge

• Explore if fractional product management is a fit for your team

• Sponsor this newsletter to get in front of 1,000+ subscribers

From the author

Connect on LinkedIn

Unlimited Product and Design

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Tuesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

This week, news from big tech and AI in our Quick Hits. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing trending product launches. This week’s Top Story looks at OpenAI’s not-so-secret project ‘Strawberry.’ For this week’s Deep Dive, we look at product discovery activities to reduce risk. And in Social Pulse, we share tools for backlinking your website and GPT learning prompts for your product teams.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week:

• 🔥 Trending Tools: guidde, Hiive, Voicecheap, and more

• 🏆 Top Story: New Rumor of an OpenAI Reasoning Breakthrough

• 🔍 Deep Dive: Product discovery activities that reduce risk

• 🌐 Social Pulse: Backlinks and GPT prompts for product teams

⚡ QUICK HITS

Airborne Olympics: Frances OKs flying taxis.

Airborne Olympics: Frances OKs flying taxis.

AI slimming: Meta introduces MobileLLM.

Atomic AI: OpenAI partners with Los Alamos.

Automated taxes: Intuit axes 10% of positions.

Right to copy: Judge dismisses Github suit.

Beautiful language: Duolingo acquires design studio.

Bot crackdown: DOJ seizes Russian bot farm.

Board exodus: Microsoft, Apple exit OpenAI.

Floppy farewell: Japan ditches disks.

European backers: VCs launch $250M AI fund.

Human touch: Nintendo rejects AI.

More CHIPS: Nontraditional tech hubs get $504M.

No training: Brazil blocks Meta.

Fund launch: Index Ventures raises $2.3B.

Out of the dark: Google gifts web monitoring.

Ticket takedown: Ticketmaster warns of hack.

Wrong-way Waymo: Cop pulls over driverless taxi.

Speed surge: Startup clocks 5 minute EV charge.

Young Quest: Meta lowers age for VR chat.

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

<iframe src="https://embeds.beehiiv.com/69152e3e-e521-45b4-aac0-92f528ff02bf?slim=true" data-test-id="beehiiv-embed" height="52" frameborder="0" style="margin: 0; border-radius: 0px !important; background-color: transparent;"></iframe>

🏆 TOP STORY

🍓 OpenAI working on new reasoning technology under the code name ‘Strawberry’

REUTERS/Dado Ruvic

TL;DR

OpenAI is reportedly developing a new reasoning technology, codenamed "Strawberry," to enhance AI models' advanced reasoning and research capabilities.

Key Points

1. Project "Strawberry": OpenAI's latest project focuses on improving the reasoning abilities of AI models. This new technology is expected to enable AI systems to handle more sophisticated tasks requiring advanced problem-solving skills.

2. Advanced Reasoning: The development under "Strawberry" is geared towards enhancing AI's ability to understand and reason through complex scenarios, making it more effective in research and analytical tasks.

3. Integration with Existing Models: The new technology will likely be integrated with existing AI models, such as GPT-4, to boost their performance in handling complex queries and providing more accurate and insightful responses.

4. Potential Applications: The advancements in AI reasoning capabilities can have broad applications across various fields, including scientific research, healthcare, finance, and more, by enabling more accurate and efficient data analysis and decision-making.

5. Industry Impact: This development is expected to push the boundaries of what AI can achieve, potentially setting new standards in the AI industry and encouraging further innovation and competition.

Why It Matters

The initiative is inspired by methods like Stanford's 'Self-Taught Reasoner' (STaR) and is part of OpenAI's ongoing efforts to push the boundaries of artificial intelligence. With enhanced reasoning abilities, AI can better understand and solve complex problems, leading to significant advancements in various sectors. This can improve efficiency, accuracy, and outcomes in scientific research, healthcare, and finance.

Additionally, it underscores the rapid pace of AI innovation and the ongoing efforts to push the boundaries of what AI can accomplish, ultimately leading to more sophisticated and valuable AI applications.

🔍 DEEP DIVE

An in-depth breakdown of something interesting

Product Discovery activities that reduce risk

When it comes to leading product discovery, it's not just about following a set process or checklist. It's about truly understanding the needs and desires of your target audience. Product Discovery is elusive and tricky to put down on paper because the activities you do are largely driven by your level of risk.

Understanding your most significant and riskiest assumptions better is a good starting place. You can do this through Assumption Mapping or developing a Riskiest Assumption Test (RAT).

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the different types of discovery activities based on the type of risk:

💰 Viability Risk:

• Market Analysis

• Market sizing

• Segmentation

• Competitor Analysis

• Perceptual Mapping / Positioning Research

• Customer interviews

• Business modeling

• Price Testing

• Forecasting

• Kano Analysis

• Analytics

• etc

❤️ Desirability Risk:

• Customer interviews

• Ethnographic Research

• User testing

• Focus Groups

• Surveys

• Observation / Contextual Inquiry

• Prototyping

• 404 / Fake door tests

• A/B Tests

• JTBD Analysis

• Analytics

• Customer Journey Mapping

• etc

📦 Feasibility Risk:

• Prototyping

• Proof of Concepts (POCs)

• Spikes

• MVP

• Alpha / Beta

• etc

📱 Usability Risk:

• User testing

• Prototyping

• A/B Tests

• Alpha / Beta

• Accessibility Testing

• Guerilla Testing

• Observation / Contextual Inquiry

• Eye Tracking

• Usability Testing Tools / Platforms

• etc

🍿 DAMIAN BUILDS IN PUBLIC

My journey, failures, and wins

This past week, I continued my Clay.com learning journey. I’m developing a better understanding of how to plug in backed APIs to lessen the research expense. I’m always getting a knack for the Claygent that allows GPT-powered web scraping. I’m now using Clay as a supercharged backend researcher, and I’m just scratching the surface. Don't hesitate to reach out if you need lead lists or want to research your ICP.

Biggest wins:

• Investment in Productpickle’s SEO efforts are paying off. In 7 days, the Domain Rating went from 14 to 38 and organic keywords went from 0 to 15! Email me if you want help doing this for your business.

• Developing a cold email outreach workflow using Clay > APIs > Claygent > Smartlead.ai inbox

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Subscribe today to access

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you

• Browse through our list of product guides

• Power your go-to-market and PLG strategy with ChatPLG

• Download my artifacts as a top contributor on Reforge

• Explore if fractional product management is a fit for your team

• Sponsor this newsletter to get in front of 1,000+ subscribers

From the author

Connect on LinkedIn

Unlimited Product and Design

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Tuesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week, more news from big tech in our Quick Hits. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing the latest tools you do not want to miss. This week’s Top Story covers Youtube’s music eraser tool. For this week’s Deep Dive, we look at the unstoppable rise of B2B SaaS. And in Social Pulse, we have valuable insights on product positioning.

This week:

• 🔥 Trending Tools: Motiff, Audilizer, Saasquare, and more

• 🏆 Top Story: Youtube reintroduces music eraser tool

• 🔍 Deep Dive: The Unstoppable Rise of B2B SaaS

• 🌐 Social Pulse: Product positioning and how to send cold emails

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

🏆 TOP STORY

🎵 Youtube introduces new and improved music eraser tool for copyright claims

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

TL;DR

YouTube has released an AI powered eraser tool that allows you to remove copyrighted music from your videos without affecting other audio (dialogue or sound effects).

Key Points

1. AI Algorithm: The new Erase Song tool uses AI to detect and remove copyrighted music.

2. Selective Audio Removal: Unlike before, this tool can remove just the music and leave other audio intact.

3. Backup: If the tool fails, you can mute the entire audio in the flagged section to avoid a copyright claim.

4. Availability: The new tool is in YouTube Studio and will be rolling out in the next few weeks.

5. Content ID Claims: If you use the tool successfully to remove the copyrighted music, the content ID claim will be removed from the video.

Twitter tweet

Why It Matters

• Creator Control: This tool gives creators more control over their content so they don’t lose revenue due to copyright claims. By leaving non-music audio intact, creators can keep their videos intact and professional.

• Better User Experience: Viewers can watch videos without silences or missing dialogues. This is especially important for content where the spoken word is critical, like tutorials, vlogs, and commentary videos. Keeping the content flowing keeps the audience engaged.

• Legal Compliance: This allows creators to comply with copyright laws more easily, promoting a fair use environment. It simplifies the process of managing copyrighted content so creators can follow the rules without sacrificing video quality.

• Technology: Shows YouTube is using AI to solve real-world problems and improve the platform for creators. This makes YouTube a creator-friendly platform and sets the bar for other social media and video-sharing platforms to innovate and support their users.

• Economic Impact: By better-resolving copyright issues, creators can monetize content without interruptions. This makes being a content creator more viable and allows for more diverse and high-quality content to exist on the platform.

• Educational and Informative Content: For educational and informative videos, keeping the spoken content and removing only the copyrighted music ensures the primary educational value of the content is preserved, making it a must-have tool for educators and knowledge sharers.

Overall, YouTube's improved eraser tool significantly advances digital content management, balancing legal compliance with creative freedom.

🔗 Mashable article

🔍 DEEP DIVE

An in-depth breakdown of something interesting

The Unstoppable Rise of B2B SaaS

In a world where the tech giants are struggling, one sector is standing tall, and defying economic uncertainty with crazy growth. Welcome to the unstoppable rise of Business-to-Business Software as a Service (B2B SaaS) – the force that’s changing business in 2024 and beyond. Providing software products delivered over the internet for businesses to use on a subscription basis, B2B SaaS focuses on improving business efficiency and productivity. The SaaS industry is experiencing rapid growth, driven by increasing adoption of AI and machine learning, and is reshaping the competitive landscape.

The B2B SaaS Revolution: By the Numbers

• B2B SaaS companies are growing 179% year over year – 10x faster than the overall tech industry. SaaS platforms offer scalability and flexibility in managing user base and workload.

• The fastest growing business software companies are growing 200%+ year over year.

• Investors are pouring in billions into this hot space, with companies like Gusto ($746M raised) and Attentive ($863M raised) leading the way.

So what’s behind this magic? Let’s find out.

The Secret Sauce of B2B SaaS Success

1. Solving Real Problems

The best B2B SaaS companies aren’t just building cool tech – they’re getting rid of manual processes and delivering value to businesses of all sizes.

2. User Retention and Customer Acquisition Cost is Everything

In the SaaS jungle, the companies that keep their users coming back are the ones that will become unicorns.

Customer feedback plays a crucial role in ensuring timely and automatic upgrades for SaaS solutions.

3. Efficiency Through Automation

From lead scoring to sales funnels, top B2B SaaS players are leveraging SaaS platforms to enhance features and benefits of various software solutions like bookkeeping, accountancy, form creation, payroll management, email marketing, and global team management, using cloud computing, AI, and automation to turbocharge growth and ROI.

4. Word-of-Mouth

Surprisingly, 34% of B2B SaaS companies still say referrals is their top customer acquisition channel. Trust matters when you’re implementing mission critical software.

5. Segmentation Savvy

The most successful B2B SaaS companies are segmenting their sales approach by contract size to maximize efficiency and personalization.

B2B SaaS All-Stars: 5 Cloud Based Software Companies Disrupting in 2024

1. Deel

Global hiring and payroll revolutionary Deel has raised $679M to help companies hire talent in 150+ countries without the compliance headaches.

2. Webflow

With $334.9M in funding, Webflow is making web design and development accessible to everyone, so businesses can create beautiful websites without writing a single line of code.

3. Notion

This $343.2M backed productivity powerhouse is reimagining team collaboration, bringing together notes, docs and project management in one beautiful platform.

4. Gusto

Simplifying payroll and HR for businesses of all sizes, Gusto has raised $746.1M to power modern workforces.

5. Attentive

With a $863M war chest, Attentive is revolutionizing mobile marketing through its SMS platform, so businesses can do “conversational commerce” at scale.

The B2B SaaS Playbook

Want to be a SaaS superstar? Here’s your to-do list:

First, understand the importance of efficient marketing spend by focusing on metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC). Efficient marketing strategies can significantly reduce your CAC, making your business more profitable. Additionally, utilizing educational resources to enhance your sales and marketing efforts can provide a competitive edge.

1. Invest in Advanced Lead Scoring

Companies using advanced lead scoring grow 75% faster.

2. Automate Your Sales Funnel

SaaS companies using sales automation tools grow 89% faster.

3. Optimize Your Go-to-Market Strategy

Fastest growing companies invest 25-30% of revenue into GTM.

4. Use AI and Machine Learning

From product development to customer insights, AI is a must-have for any serious B2B SaaS player.

Understanding the impact of product analytics across the customer journey allows businesses to use data-driven insights to predict outcomes related to revenue, loyalty, and customer lifetime value.

5. Customer Success and Customer Relationship Management

In a crowded market, retaining and delighting your users is the key to long term success and profitability.

The Future of B2B SaaS Industry: Endless Possibilities

Looking ahead, B2B SaaS shows no signs of slowing down. Businesses of all sizes are hungry for cloud based software that drives efficiency, cuts costs, and unlocks new capabilities. The opportunities for SaaS companies are endless.

To rank higher and increase traffic on search engines, business owners can use SEO toolkits to audit and optimize websites, analyze competitors, conduct keyword research, identify top-performing content, and track progress in search rankings.

From AI powered analytics to industry specific vertical SaaS solutions, the next wave of B2B software solutions will transform every part of how we work. The question isn’t whether your business will adopt B2B SaaS – it’s how fast you’ll get ahead of the curve.

Get on board. Now.

🍿 DAMIAN BUILDS IN PUBLIC

My journey, failures, and wins

In the last week, I’ve scaled up my LinkedIn outreach, which has resulted in many great meetings. While context-switching is a unique challenge, I am energized by the fractional leaders I’ve been meeting with via Zoom. There has been a lot of shared knowledge that I’m sure will make its way into Productpickle and this newsletter. I’ve also been doing a lot of SEO grunt work, diving deeper into Clay to help my clients with go-to-market and AI lead generation.

Biggest wins:

• 10+ networking calls

• Scaled LinkedIn outreach

• Created a new series of guides

• Now offering SEO and GTM monthly services

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Subscribe today to access

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you

• Browse through our list of product guides

• Power your go-to-market and PLG strategy with ChatPLG

• Download my artifacts as a top contributor on Reforge

• Explore if fractional product management is a fit for your team

• Sponsor this newsletter to get in front of 1,000+ subscribers

From the author

Connect on LinkedIn

Unlimited Product and Design

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Welcome to a holiday subscriber-only edition.

Today, we're offering a little thank you for being a part of our community.

Let's dive in! 👇

🌟 SPECIAL EDITION

A little thank you to the community

What is a Fractional Product Management Leader? 🤔

Fractional hiring is a part-time model; consider it a 'rent-a-leader' approach. This model is increasingly popular as organizations seek more flexible, cost-effective ways to access top leadership talent without a permanent hire's costs, risks, or commitment. Fractional product management leaders fill roles within organizations and take initiative accordingly, differing from traditional consulting, which is usually project or task-based.

Why Hire a Fractional Product Management Leader? 🎯

When timed and executed correctly, a fractional product leader delivers superior results compared to a typical full-time leader, but without the expense or risk. Here are three primary use cases:

1. Team Leadership: Hiring a full-time product leader is risky and inefficient for startups and early growth companies under ~$25m in revenue. An experienced fractional leader provides all the benefits at a lower cost, with greater flexibility and expertise.

2. Special Projects: Organizations turn to experienced fractional leaders for key initiatives to properly initiate new products or course-correct existing ones if needed.

3. Utility Player: Fractional leaders can supplement workloads for staffing gaps, new initiatives, or strategic shifts without adding a permanent headcount.

Who Needs a Fractional Product Management Leader? 👥

1. Startups: For the cost of just one full-time leader, hire both a fractional leader and a full-time product manager. Expect higher expertise and help setting up the practice as the company grows. A good fractional leader leverages their network to find and evaluate talent.

2. Early Growth Stage: Organizations under ~$25m will see increased efficacy and lower costs with an expert fractional product manager. They guide team growth by modeling best practices and mentoring senior team members into leadership roles.

3. Established Organizations: Larger companies benefit from a fractional leader's fresh perspective and expertise, who can quickly adapt to dynamic business landscapes.

Benefits of a Fractional Product Management Leader ✅

A fractional product management leader delivers top-tier expertise at the best possible value. You should expect:

• Immediate Impact: Effective from day one with minimal onboarding.

• Adaptability: Quickly pivot to new situations or demands.

• Top-Tier Expertise: High level of product management, industry, and problem-domain expertise.

• Consistency: Provides continuity during times of change.

• Flexibility: Combines best practices with bespoke solutions.

How to Choose a Fractional Product Management Leader 🛠️

Keep these criteria in mind:

• Expert: Top of the class in product management, your industry, and problem space.

• Fractional by Choice: A full-time fractional professional, not someone looking for a bridge job or contract-to-hire.

• Experienced with Multiple Clients: Routine and comfortable working with multiple clients.

• Onboard Immediately: Understands product management, your industry, and your situation immediately.

• Outcome-Focused: Obsessed with achieving your goals.

• Available and Connected: Excellent communicator.

Questions When Considering a Fractional Product Management Leader ❓

• Is a contract-to-hire arrangement a good alternative? While contract-to-hire can provide familiarity with potential hires, it lacks the guaranteed high-level expertise and flexibility of fractional leadership. A fractional leader can also use their network to help find and onboard the right permanent leader.

• Do I need better continuity? Think of your fractional product management leader as an internal team member. They ensure excellent communication and documentation, expecting eventual turnover while maintaining continuity.

• Will I have enough time and access to my leader? An experienced fractional leader will implement systems to ensure availability and effective communication. A common scenario is to have a dedicated day and a block of floating hours each week for focused work and flexibility.

Tips for a Successful Relationship 🤝

• Compatibility: Ensure compatibility in communication and leadership styles.

• Onboarding: A good fractional leader will 'get it' from the first conversation, requiring minimal onboarding.

• Beyond the Paycheck: Ideally, hire someone who believes in your actions and is emotionally invested in the outcome.

• Clear Objectives: The more precise the objectives, the smoother the relationship. An excellent fractional leader ensures clarity before engagement.

• Know When to Switch: Don’t hesitate to make a change. One key benefit of the fractional approach is the seamless transfer of knowledge.

Wrap Up 📌

Fractional product management leaders are a strategic advantage for startups, early-growth-stage companies, and established organizations needing flexible, high-impact expertise. By adopting this model, organizations reduce risks and operational costs, optimize time, and access top-tier management expertise without the long-term commitments and financial impact of full-time positions. This approach enhances organizational agility and ensures that leadership capabilities scale dynamically with business needs.

⚡ Let's Collaborate

Based in San Francisco but working globally. Let’s connect and discuss how we can take your product team to the next level.

• Book a meeting time

• Visit my website

• Read latest posts

Subscribe today to access:

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

From the author:

Connect on LinkedIn

Unlimited Product and Design

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Tuesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week, big news from tech giants in our Quick Hits. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing some fun favorites. This week’s Top Story covers the recent fundraising round from Clay and what it means for SaaS sales. And then we go even deeper into Clay in this week’s Deep Dive. In Social Pulse this week, we have a Sora commercial and sage advice on how to make decisions.

This week:

• ⚡ Quick Hits: News from Waymo, Anthropic, and Shopify

• 🔥 Trending Tools: Clay, HBD Cake, Revid.ai, and more

• 🏆 Top Story: Clay raises $62M Series B at a $500M valuation

• 🔍 Deep Dive: How to GTM with Clay

• 🌐 Social Pulse: AI ads and advice on decision-making

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

🏆 TOP STORY

🐝 Clay raises $62M Series B at a $500M valuation

TLDR

The hottest name in GTM raises $62 million in a Series-B fundraise.

Key points

• Impact on Business Growth: Clay is revolutionizing GTM strategies for companies by enhancing prospecting campaigns and optimizing various outbound tactics. Companies using Clay report a threefold increase in prospecting success from day one.

• Strategic Growth Plans: Clay plans to expand its product suite and enhance its technological infrastructure, ensuring it remains the hottest GTM name in Silicon Valley. This will enable continued investment in cutting-edge workflow features and tools.

• Innovative Solutions: Clay’s platform turns complex growth ideas into actionable workflows at scale. Its AI-driven tools make it indispensable for businesses aiming to exceed their potential and streamline their operations.

Why it matters

Even though Clay is taking the GTM world by storm, it’s taken 7 years to reach this point. This pivotal Series-B raise is a significant milestone for Clay and all of tech, where we’re seeing genAI deliver legitimate use cases and TAM expansion.

1. Empowering Businesses: Clay's innovative platform has catalyzed business growth, providing tools that vastly improve prospecting results and streamline sales processes. As competition intensifies, the ability to harness AI for these tasks is becoming essential. This is the future of outbound.

2. Proven Success: All the talk highlights the transformative impact Clay is having on GTM. From outbound campaigns to data mining and qualification, Clay’s solutions have delivered measurable success and tripled results in prospecting efforts.

3. Community and Support: The collaborative environment within the Clay community underscores the platform's value. Being part of this network allows users to push the boundaries of what's possible with advanced workflows enabled by Clay, fostering innovation and shared growth.

4. Future Prospects: The $62 million investment will fuel Clay's ability to innovate and expand its offerings. Businesses can expect even more advanced features and tools, reinforcing Clay’s role as a critical enabler of growth and efficiency across various industries.

As Clay continues to develop and enhance their platform, the future looks exceedingly promising for anyone already on the bandwagon!

🔗 Read the announcement

🔗 Clay x OpenAI Case Study

🔗 Join the Clay Slack Channel

🔍 DEEP DIVE

An in-depth breakdown of something interesting

How to GTM with Clay

Things you can do with Clay

1. Listbuilding

2. Data enrichment

3. Claygent AI

4. Automate outreach

GTM Insight Triangle

Customer Interview → Data → Message

Customer interview

• What do they care about (motivations)

• What are they doing now?

• What did they do before you?

• What else did they consider?

• How did they consider it?

• What were the results?

Find the data

1. Company

2. Employees

3. Website

4. External Sites

Finding a reason in your message

1. Requirements (needs)

2. Ratios (out of wack)

3. Rates (deltas)

4. Rank (how do they compare)

5. Raises (more money more problems)

6. Reasonable (assumptions)

7. Risks (dangerous)

8. Relations (trust)

9. Riches (make them money)

10. References (customers)

11. Reveal (facts)

12. Resources (free)

13. Recently (change)

Case study: Problem reveal magnet by scraping for bad reviews

Use case: finding and selling your e-commerce reviews solution

Target: find businesses with bad reviews

Clay flow: finds bad reviews and reaches out accordingly

> Check if the e-commerce is active
> Find the email in the footer
> Find the phone number in the footer
> Validate the email with Debounce
> Scrape Google reviews and check if score < 4
> Scrape Trustpilot reviews and check if the score < 4
> Send the email to a Smartlead sequence
> Send the phone to a dialer
> Check if the commerce manager is active on Linkedin
> Send the e-commerce manager to the AE to prospect 1-1

Problem reveal lead magnet is the perfect example: send something tangible that underlines proof the prospect has a problem.

👉 Check out Clay University

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Unlocking Growth with Fractional Product Leadership

www.linkedin.com/pulse/ultimate-guide-fractional-product-leadership-damian-wolfgram-fctcc/?trackingId=d%2F4segg9TqmTrqqwAlYbtg%3D%3D

Subscribe today to access:

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

From the author:

Connect on LinkedIn

Unlimited Product and Design

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Welcome to a special Monday subscriber-only edition.

Today, we're offering a little thank you for being a part of our community.

Let's dive in! 👇

🌟 SPECIAL EDITION

A little thank you to the community

How to Develop a Winning Product Strategy

One of the most frequent questions I get is how to prioritize features to create a winning product strategy. 

The challenge lies in translating a long-term vision into actionable steps that align with both market needs and business goals. 

In this guide, I'll walk you through the essential phases of delivering a product strategy, from observation to action, and share some critical strategic questions to consider along the way. 

Whether at the beginning of your journey or refining an existing strategy, these insights will help you create a way forward that drives growth and unlocks revenue.

And, of course, I’m here as a Fractional Leader if you need a hands-on approach.

📖 Definitions

• Vision: aspirational and long-term, describing where you want to see yourself in the future.

• Strategy: a set of choices that define where to play and how to win.

• Product Roadmap: the first prototype of your strategy.

🏁 5 Phases of Strategy Development

Here are the 5 phases of delivering the product strategy:

1. Observe

Begin by gathering information about your environment. In a new business context, this could mean understanding market conditions, customer needs, or internal issues. The key is to collect as much relevant data as possible to form a comprehensive view of the situation.

2. Orient

Analyze the information collected to make sense of it. This involves synthesizing data from various sources and understanding how different elements interconnect. Develop a model for how everything hangs together, then socialize and validate it (if you can).

3. Socialize

Without strategic alignment your efforts will fail. This step involves socializing data, stories, and context to key stakeholders to build coalition and create momentum.

4. Decide

Based on your analysis, make informed decisions about next steps. The aim is to choose the best possible action quickly, even in the face of uncertainty. Game out other options (if you can).

5. Act

Implement your decision and take action. Acting swiftly and decisively will help your teams carry momentum forward.

🕹️ Where to Begin

Before you start the observation phase, ensure you have a clear understanding of:

• Your vision

• Your "Why"

• Your ideal customer

• Your unique selling point

• How you will win

If you haven’t workshopped these elements, take a half-day to flesh them out before moving forward.

♟️ Strategic Questions

1. What possible futures may or may not play out for us over the next few years?

2. Are there emerging trends relevant to our industry?

3. Are there changes happening right now (even at a small scale) that will influence our future?

4. How can we tap into uncertainty and gain insights into potential outcomes?

5. What can we do today to prepare for tomorrow?

6. How can we ensure our organization is ready for a range of possible, probable, and preferred futures?

7. What are some potential disruptions that could impact our business?

8. What if we take a completely different approach to our business? What would that look like?

9. What "wildcard" scenarios could play out, and how could we prepare for them?

10. How can we ensure our strategies remain resilient in the face of unexpected change?

🧮 Observing and Gathering Data 

The earlier you are in the 0:1 journey, the more you will rely on qualitative and third-party data. The later the stage, the more likely you are to have access to performance analytics, user behaviors, and statistically significant experimentation. 

Quantitative Data

Activation Metrics

Activation Rate: The percentage of users who complete key onboarding steps or reach critical milestones. Example: 30% of new users completing onboarding.

Time-to-Value (TTV): The time it takes for a new user to experience the product’s core value. Example: Average TTV is 3 days.

Engagement Metrics

Daily Active Users (DAU): The number of unique users who engage with the product daily. Example: 5,000 DAUs.

Monthly Active Users (MAU): The number of unique users who engage with the product monthly. Example: 50,000 MAUs.

Stickiness Score (DAU/MAU): The ratio of Daily Active Users to Monthly Active Users, indicating how often users engage with the product. Example: Stickiness score of 0.3 (30%).

Retention Metrics

Retention Rate: The percentage of users who continue to use the product over a given period post-activation. Example: 60% retention after 1 month.

Churn Rate: The percentage of users who stop using the product over a specific period. Example: Monthly churn rate of 5%.

Monetization Metrics

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): The estimated total revenue generated from a user over their entire relationship with the product. Example: CLV is $500.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses. Example: CAC of $150.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): The total revenue from monthly subscriptions. Example: MRR of $20,000.

Conversion Metrics

Trial Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who convert from a free trial to a paid subscription. Example: 25% trial-to-paid conversion rate.

Lead Conversion Rate: The percentage of leads that convert into paying customers. Example: 15% lead-to-customer conversion rate.

Product Usage Metrics

Feature Adoption Rate: The percentage of users who engage with specific product features. Example: 40% of users use the collaboration feature.

Feature Usage Frequency: This track how often specific features are used by active users. Example: The collaboration feature is used five times a week.

Revenue Metrics

Revenue Per User (RPU): Average revenue generated per active user. Example: RPU of $50 per month.

Net Dollar Retention (NDR): Revenue from existing customers through upsells, cross-sells, or add-ons. Example: 114% Net Dollar Retention

Efficiency Metrics

Onboarding Completion Rate: The percentage of users who complete the onboarding process. Example: 75% onboarding completion.

Payback Period: The time it takes to recoup the customer acquisition cost. Example: 6 months.

Qualitative Data

User Feedback:

• Surveys: User satisfaction surveys, NPS surveys, etc.

• Interviews: Direct interviews with users to gather in-depth insights.

• Focus Groups: Group discussions to understand user perceptions and experiences.

• Usability Testing: Observing users as they interact with the product to identify pain points.

• User Reviews: Feedback from app stores, review sites, and social media.

Behavioral Data:

• Session Recordings: Video recordings of user sessions to see how users navigate the product.

• Heatmaps: Visual representations of where users click, scroll, and spend the most time.

• Journey Mapping: Detailed mapping of the user journey to identify critical touchpoints and pain points.

Support Data:

• Support Tickets: Issues reported by users through customer support channels.

• Chat Logs: Transcripts from live chat interactions.

Market Research:

• Competitor Analysis: Insights into how competing products are performing and what features they offer.

• Industry Reports: Data and trends relevant to the industry.

Mixed Methods

• A/B Testing: Comparing two versions of a feature to see which performs better.

• Cohort Analysis: Grouping users based on shared characteristics to analyze retention and engagement over time.

• Performance Analytics: Detailed analytics on how users interact with various features.

Synthesizing Data

• Use AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT to analyze qualitative interview transcripts and extract key themes. Then correlate these themes with survey results to identify patterns.

• Apply thematic analysis to identify recurring themes in your qualitative data. This involves coding the data and grouping similar codes into themes.

• Validate findings using multiple data sources. For instance, create detailed user personas by combining qualitative interview insights with quantitative demographic data.

• Use GenAI for sentiment analysis to gauge user emotions and opinions from qualitative feedback.

• Use visualization tools to combine and present qualitative and quantitative data effectively. Tools like Tableau can integrate both data types into comprehensive dashboards.

🗓️ Now, Next, Later

The "Now, Next, Later" format is highly effective for presenting product roadmaps because it provides clarity, flexibility, and focus, ensuring stakeholders can easily understand and engage with the product development plan.

Reasons to use Now, Next, Later:

1. Clarity and Simplicity: Clear prioritization and simplified communication.

2. Focus on Current Work: Immediate focus and efficient resource allocation.

3. Flexibility and Adaptability: Responsive to change and continuous improvement.

4. Strategic Vision: Long-term planning and balanced approach.

5. Stakeholder Engagement: Enhanced transparency and managed expectations.

6. Prioritization and Decision-Making: Informed decisions and focus on value.

7. Ease of Use: User-friendly and visually appealing format.

🗣️ Socializing Alignment

Here are some quick ideas on building a coalition for your strategy:

Top Down Guidance

• Allocate resources to run an effective product strategy process.

• Push the C-suite to allocate resources at a high level across broad categories.

• Have every exec-level stakeholder provide a short, fully ordered list of their group’s needs.

Bottoms Up Approach

• Push alignment on metrics (Northstar metric, strategic drivers, and constellation of metrics).

• Use weighted scoring models for a structured, data-driven approach.

• Leverage customer interviews as storytelling artifacts and media.

🚅 Data-Driven Decisions

Connect on-the-ground product motions with top-level metrics using the North Star Framework. Assign weights to prioritize features using DHM, RICE, and CBC models.

Northstar Metrics: Amplitude North Star Playbook

Weighted Scoring Models: Assign weights to different types of data based on their importance and calculate scores to prioritize features.

• DHM: Delight, Hard to copy, and Margin-enhancing

• RICE: Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort

• CBC: Committed by Sales, Buzzworthy, and CEO Favorite

If you want to learn more about these weighted models or need specific examples, please email me at damian@productpickle.com.

🎯 Taking Action

Congrats! If you've followed these steps, you have a comprehensive product strategy that translates your vision into customer experiences, driving growth and unlocking revenue.

⚡ Let's Collaborate

Based in San Francisco but working globally. Let’s connect and discuss how we can take your product team to the next level.

• Book a meeting time

• Visit my website

• Read additional articles

Subscribe today to access:

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

From the author:

Connect on LinkedIn

Unlimited Product and Design

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Tuesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week, TikTok and ByteDance are all over our Quick Hits. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing the week’s most exciting products. This week’s Top Story looks at the looming AI data crisis. For this week’s Deep Dive, we review how ChatPLG uses Agentic RAG techniques to copilot go-to-market strategies. In this week’s Social Pulse, we pull from the Lenny vault with Ramp’s Head of Product, Geoff Charles.

This week:

• ⚡ Quick Hits: News from Amazon, ByteDance, and MIT

• 🔥 Trending Tools: Break The Web, LumosCareer, and more

• 🏆 Top Story: AI Models Running Out of Text Data by 2026

• 🔍 Deep Dive: Using Agentic RAG to power ChatPLG

• 🌐 Social Pulse: Geoff Charles of Ramp and Solano’s Teleport

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

🏆 TOP STORY

⚠️ AI Models Running Out of Text Data by 2026

Made in Midjourney: “a futuristic scene of an empty bookshelf --v 1”

TL;DR: AI models might use all the internet’s available text data by 2026. This scarcity could force tech companies to turn to private information, synthetic data, or lower-quality sources, posing significant ethical and technical challenges.

Key points:

• Data Depletion: AI models could consume the internet's freely available text data by as early as 2026.

• Future Data Sources: To continue improving, AI might need to use private data, synthetic data, or low-quality sources.

• Quality Concerns: Algorithms trained on insufficient or low-quality data produce unreliable outputs.

• Legal and Ethical Issues: Harvesting private or intellectual property data without permission could lead to legal battles.

• Other Bottlenecks: Future AI advancements could be hindered by power consumption, training costs, and hardware availability.

Why it matters?

AI models' potential exhaustion of internet text data underscores an era in LLM development. As high-quality data runs out, relying on private or synthetic data introduces severe ethical concerns and legal challenges.

Moreover, this shift could compromise the quality and reliability of AI outputs, affecting various applications from everyday technology to critical systems. The tech industry's ability to adapt to these changes while maintaining ethical standards will be crucial.

🔗 Read more

🔍 DEEP DIVE

An in-depth breakdown of something interesting

Using Agentic RAG to power ChatPLG

Today, we’re diving into something super cool in the world of AI called Agentic RAG. 

Most tech professionals have probably heard of RAG, but Agentic RAG takes knowledge-gathering a step further by using multiple agents.

Introducing RAG

Imagine you have a giant library in your brain. That’s an LLM. It is trained on millions of pages of data. But sometimes, LLMs get a little stuck because they can only use what they already know.

This is where RAG steps in. RAG stands for Retrieval Augmented Generation, a technique that combines the strengths of retrieval- and generative-based artificial intelligence.

RAG acts like a supercharged librarian, pulling together the most relevant info from vast resources. It finds the correct information and helps the LLMs give better answers. 

RAG-based startups have been the talk of the town. They’ve been snatching venture capital for several years, mainly for their timing and monetizable use cases, like customer service and sales.

ChatPLG RAG setup

• Instructions

• Role

  • Objectives

  • Tasks

  • Desired behavior

  • Expertise

  • Prompt security

• Vector Database 

  • General knowledge

  • RAG tools (building agentic inside)

Imagine having a team of genius assistants at your fingertips, always ready to provide accurate and insightful answers. Agentic RAG is like that, but each genius is called an agent and has a particular skill. When you ask a tricky or multi-threaded question, these agents work together to find the best information, compare facts, and even ask more questions to ensure they get everything right.

ChatPLG uses RAG in its current workflow (with primitive Agentic) powered by GPT-4 and uses the following architecture:

How Do These Smart Agents Work?

1. Breaking Down Questions: If you ask a big question like, "What are the latest discoveries in space?" agents will split it into smaller questions like "What new planets have been found?" and "How do these discoveries affect our knowledge of space?"

2. Finding Information: Each agent searches for the best information, just like a detective looking for clues. They use different tools and databases to get the most accurate answers.

3. Putting It All Together: After gathering all the info, agents work together to give you a complete, well-thought-out answer.

Seeing ChatPLG RAG in action

For this demo, I’ve considered creating a SF Dinner Series for Jobseeking Product Managers. The demo below shows how easy it it easy to generate actionable strategy with assistants like ChatPLG.

There are several “notice this RAG” moments in the video below:

• The feature list

• The url scraper

• It’s generative in examples

• It’s step fashion

Here is a 60-second video of me using ChatPLG to bootstrap GTM for this Product Manager Dinner Series concept:

Why is Agentic RAG So Cool?

🧠 Smart Planning: Agents carefully plan their steps, breaking down big questions into smaller, manageable tasks to ensure they gather the most accurate and relevant information.

🛠️ Resourceful Tool Use: These agents can access and utilize various tools and resources, from private on-premise servers to internet search engines, to find the best and most up-to-date answers quickly and reliably.

🔄 Continuous Learning: The more agents work, the smarter they become. They learn from each question and answer, constantly improving their ability to handle complex queries to provide better results.

Real-Life Superpowers

Agentic RAG can help in many incredible ways, such as:

📚 Helping Students: Imagine having a super smart tutor who can answer any question, help with homework, and provide detailed explanations for complex topics, making learning easier and more fun.

🔬 Assisting Scientists: Scientists can use Agentic RAG to quickly gather and understand new research, compare findings across multiple studies, and even generate summaries of the latest discoveries, speeding up their work and leading to new breakthroughs.

🤝 Enhancing Customer Service: Companies can use Agentic RAG to handle customer inquiries with precision, providing quick and accurate responses to tricky questions, solving problems efficiently, and improving overall customer satisfaction.

⚕️ Supporting Doctors: In the medical field, doctors can use Agentic RAG to access the latest medical research, diagnose conditions more accurately, and find the best treatment options, enhancing patient care.

✍️ Empowering Writers: Authors and content creators can leverage Agentic RAG to generate ideas, conduct in-depth research, and even draft content, making the writing process faster and more innovative.

⚖️ Boosting Legal Research: Lawyers can utilize Agentic RAG to sift through vast amounts of legal documents, precedents, and case studies, helping them build stronger cases and stay updated on legal developments.

🏫 Improving Education Systems: Schools and educators can use Agentic RAG to create personalized learning plans, develop curriculum materials, and provide additional support to students, enhancing the educational experience.

📈 Enhancing Business Decisions: Businesses can rely on Agentic RAG to analyze market trends, gather competitive intelligence, and provide data-driven insights, leading to better strategic decisions and growth opportunities.

💻 Facilitating E-Learning: Online learning platforms can integrate Agentic RAG to offer personalized study materials, real-time feedback, and interactive learning experiences, making education more accessible and engaging.

🔍 Optimizing Research Projects: Researchers across various fields can use Agentic RAG to compile and analyze data, generate hypotheses, and synthesize information from diverse sources, driving innovation and discovery.

The Future of RAG

As technology continues to advance, RAG and Agentic RAG techniques will become more mainstream.

The future of AI is bright and full of possibilities. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or simply curious, understanding the basic principles of RAG can dramatically enhance your workflows and your understanding of how to apply generative AI.

👉 Go even deeper

🔗 Published Study

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

Twitter tweet

Subscribe today to access:

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

From the author:

Connect on LinkedIn

Get unlimited product and design

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Wednesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week, we cover Apple and Nvidia in Quick Hits. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing some fantastic new product launches. This week’s Top Story covers Nvidia’s latest data generation model. For our Deep Dive, we go deep into Situational Awareness and the Future of AI. We’ve got a handful of great posts in this week’s Social Pulse, including helpful commentary on product-market-fit.

This week:

• ⚡ Quick Hits: News from Apple, Nvidia, and ChatGPT

• 🔥 Trending Tools: SnipOwl, Rectangle, Ketchup Mail, and more

• 🏆 Top Story: Nvidia Releases Open Synthetic Data Model

• 🔍 Deep Dive: Situational Awareness and the decade ahead in AI

• 🌐 Social Pulse: Robotics, PMF, and Founder Flywheel

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

🏆 TOP STORY

🤖 Nvidia Releases Synthetic Data Model that Rivals GPT-4

Nvidia has once again demonstrated its leadership in AI innovation with the release of “Nemotron-4 340B,” a cutting-edge family of open models designed to revolutionize the generation of synthetic data for training large language models (LLMs). This development is poised to transform various industries by enabling the creation of powerful, domain-specific LLMs without the need for costly real-world datasets.

The Nemotron-4 340B family includes base, instruct, and reward models, forming a comprehensive pipeline for generating high-quality synthetic data. With 9 trillion tokens used in training, a 4,000 context window, and support for over 50 natural languages and 40 programming languages, Nemotron-4 340B sets a new benchmark in the AI field, outshining competitors such as Mistral’s Mixtral-8x22B, Anthropic’s Claude-Sonnet, Meta’s Llama3-70B, and Qwen-2, and even rivaling GPT-4.

One standout feature of Nemotron-4 340B is its commercially-friendly licensing. As emphasized by Somshubra Majumdar, Senior Deep Learning Research Engineer, on X.com, “The license is commercially viable. Yeah, you can use this to generate all the data you want.”

Twitter tweet

Comprehensive Pipeline for Synthetic Data Generation

Nemotron-4 340B offers unmatched performance and versatility. It includes base, instruct, and reward models that form a pipeline to generate synthetic data. This pipeline begins with the instruct model, which creates diverse synthetic data mimicking real-world data. The reward model then grades this data on attributes like helpfulness, correctness, and coherence, ensuring high-quality outputs.

The model’s impressive capabilities and commercially-friendly licensing are set to democratize AI, allowing businesses of all sizes to harness the power of LLMs and create custom models tailored to their specific needs. The HelpSteer2 dataset, which has propelled the Nemotron-4 340B Reward model to the top of the RewardBench leaderboard on Hugging Face, further underscores Nvidia’s commitment to advancing the AI community.

Potential Impact Across Industries

The potential impact of Nemotron-4 340B across various industries is immense. In healthcare, synthetic data generation could lead to breakthroughs in drug discovery and personalized medicine. In finance, custom LLMs trained on synthetic data could revolutionize fraud detection and risk assessment. Manufacturing and retail industries could benefit from predictive maintenance, supply chain optimization, and personalized customer experiences.

However, Nvidia’s success with Nemotron-4 340B also highlights the intensifying competition in the AI chip market. As companies like Intel, AMD, and Apple ramp up their AI efforts, Nvidia will need to continue pushing the boundaries of innovation to maintain its leadership position.

Ethical and Security Considerations

The release of Nemotron-4 340B also raises important questions about data privacy and security. As synthetic data becomes more prevalent, businesses must ensure robust safeguards to protect sensitive information and prevent misuse. The ethical implications of using synthetic data for AI training must also be carefully considered to avoid biases and inaccuracies.

Despite these challenges, the AI community has greeted Nemotron-4 340B with enthusiasm. Early feedback from users has been overwhelmingly positive, praising its performance and domain-specific knowledge. As more businesses adopt Nemotron-4 340B and begin generating their synthetic data, a wave of innovation and disruption across industries is expected.

Nvidia’s visionary leadership and commitment to advancing AI technology have once again positioned the company at the forefront of the AI revolution, with profound impacts on the future of business and society.

🔗 Nvidia blog announcement

🔍 DEEP DIVE

An in-depth breakdown of something interesting

Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead

tldr: OpenAI Engineer writes 140+ pages exploring the imminent and shocking implications of AI in a document called “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead”.

Key points:

1. AGI Likely by 2027: AI advancements from GPT-2 to GPT-4 show a trajectory towards AGI within a few years.

2. Beyond Human-Level AI: Future AI will perform tasks like reading all ML papers, writing and optimizing code, and training millions simultaneously.

3. Security Concerns: Protecting AI innovations is crucial as they have the power to alter humanity’s future.

4. Superintelligence and Strategy: The emergence of superintelligent AI necessitates strategic steps to ensure they remain under human control.

5. Industry Mobilization: Massive investments in AI infrastructure are expected, with trillion-dollar compute clusters and extensive energy contracts.

Why it matters:

The rapid advancement towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has profound implications for every aspect of society. As AGI systems surpass human intelligence and capabilities, they could revolutionize industries, reshape economies, and redefine global power structures. Understanding these developments is crucial for several reasons:

1. Economic Impact: AGI can automate complex tasks across various sectors, potentially leading to unprecedented productivity gains and economic growth. However, this also raises questions about job displacement and the future of work.

2. Security and Control: The entities that develop and control AGI will wield immense power. Ensuring that these technologies are secure and used responsibly is critical to preventing misuse and maintaining global stability.

3. Strategic Superiority: AGI could provide significant military and strategic advantages. Nations that lead in AGI development may gain decisive superiority, influencing global geopolitics and national security policies.

4. Ethical and Societal Considerations: The deployment of AGI will bring ethical challenges, including ensuring fairness, preventing bias, and safeguarding human rights. Addressing these issues proactively is essential for a just and equitable future.

5. Existential Risks: The potential for AGI to surpass human control poses existential risks. Developing robust alignment strategies to ensure AGI systems act in humanity’s best interest is imperative to avoid catastrophic outcomes.

In essence, the future of AGI is not just a technological milestone but a pivotal moment in human history that demands our attention, preparation, and thoughtful governance.

🔗 Link to full document

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Subscribe today to access:

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

From the author:

Connect on LinkedIn

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Tuesday! Last week was action-packed, and the news keeps heating up.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week, we cover top tech giants and innovators in Quick Hits. For Trending Tools, we’re showcasing some fantastic new fast-rising products. This week’s Top Story covers The Figma Drafts Debacle and the continued fallout. For this week’s Productpickle, we look at recent website changes and a new demo video. For our Deep Dive, we review the fervor over Apple’s AI announcements. We’ve got a handful of great posts in this week’s Social Pulse, including a fun post on Design Challenges.

This week:

• ⚡ Quick Hits: News from Big Tech, Mistral, and TikTok

• 🔥 Trending Tools: Figgy, Linkz, Dupdub, Photopea, and Cello

• 🏆 Top Story: Figma turns its Back on Freelancers

• 🥒 Productpickle: A website rehaul and a new demo video

• 🔍 Deep Dive: Apple WWDC24 hot off the press

• 🌐 Social Pulse: Design Challenges, Beehiive, and more

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

🏆 TOP STORY

👀 The Figma Drafts Debacle

tldr: This week, Figma relocates drafts to team spaces, causing an internet uproar and disruption to designers everywhere.

Key Points:

• Draft Relocation: Drafts will move to a space called “Drafts to move,” and users can relocate them to the appropriate team spaces. (I only had 176 files to move.)

• Team Association: All drafts must now be associated with a team, ensuring access to paid features and improved security.

• Collaborator Management: Draft editors must be full team members; non-members will be reset to viewers.

Twitter tweet

Why this matters:

• Displacing Freelancers: The draft debacle creates another headache for an already strained class of freelancers. Figma issues free-lancers their eviction notice.

• Clarity and Confusion: Although Figma says these changes address unclear ownership and inconsistent product experiences, only time will tell if this and the next Drafts experience will be worth the cost.

• Bad Week for Design: It was a terrible week for the two biggest design companies between this drama and the backlash to Adobe’s new terms of service.

What you can do:

• Give clients view access only

• Send your client the .fig to add to their own account

• Ask your client to host the file instead of you

• Create a sh*tload of teams

🔗 Dylan Field’s Response

🔗 Figma’s Blog Post

🔗 Adobe Backlash on Training Data

🥒 PRODUCT PICKLE

Weekly anecdotes from the front lines

This week I rehauled productpickle.com with several new changes:

• NEW demo journey

• NEW hourly pricing

• NEW service pages

• NEW expertise pages

The changes aimed to articulate better who we serve and what we do. I hope these updates improve conversations with strategic partners and make referring potential clients to Productpickle easier.

We cleaned up our funnel with this new demo video:

Using AI to create hero images

I had some fun generating these hero images in Midjourney. Once I had the asset I wanted, I used Photopea to remove background elements. From there, I used Figma to place the UI elements in the image.

Image: © Productpickle

Here is the hero image for the new AI page:

Image: © Productpickle

🔍 DEEP DIVE

An in-depth breakdown of something interesting

WWDC 2024: Apple's New Era of AI and Major Software Updates

Image: © Justin Sullivan/Getty/Apple

Apple launched a new era of AI — branded as Apple Intelligence — showcasing AI-powered features set to debut on the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and devices with Apple's M series chips. These features include:

• Writing Assistance: Enhanced suggestions for tone and formatting in Mail.

• Image Editing: Create custom emojis and use the Image Playground to generate graphics from prompts.

• Photo Tools: A Magic Eraser-like feature for removing background objects and a story creation tool that compiles photos and videos based on prompts.

• Security Focus: Apple ensures that data related to Apple Intelligence remains private, processed either on-device or through secure Apple services without being stored.

On the final bullet, Elon immediately fired shots:

Twitter tweet

ChatGPT will be equipped on iPhones

1. Access ChatGPT from Siri

2. Share photos with ChatGPT and get suggestions

3. Create images and texts within documents

Products impacted by Apple News:

• Grammarly —> Apple Intelligence

• Midjourney —> image generation

• Calculator apps —> math app

• 1Password —> password app

• Humane and Rabbit —> Apple Watch

• Athlytics —> Apple Watch

• Whoop —> Apple Watch

• AllTrails —> Apple Maps

• Magnet —> window snapping

• Bezel —> iPhone mirroring

• ChatGPT wrappers —> ChatGPT

• Tape a Call —> record from phone

• Soulver —> math notes

• Newji —> genmoji

Siri's AI Boost

Siri receives a significant upgrade with deep integration into iPhone functions, powered by large language models (LLMs). New capabilities include:

• App Control: Search within emails, surface-specific photos.

• ChatGPT Integration: Use ChatGPT through Siri for enhanced query responses.

Additional AI Features Across Apps

- Mail: Summarize emails and generate responses.

- Photos: Search using natural language, and clean up background objects.

- Notes & Phone: AI-powered transcriptions and summaries.

🔗 13 Biggest Announcements

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Subscribe today to access:

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

From the author:

Connect on LinkedIn

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Monday! Welcome to our third edition. Time flies! Based on your feedback, we’ve been optimizing the newsletter. We hope you like the most recent changes!

Let's dive in! 👇

This week, we introduce Quick Hits, a weekly collection of the latest news from top tech giants and innovators. You won’t want to miss our subscriber section, Trending Tools, where we’re highlighting no-code backend builders. This week’s Top Story covers the FAA approval for Amazon Prime Air. We also do our first-ever Deep Dive with a look into The State of No Code. We’ve got a handful of great posts in this week’s Social Pulse. And you won’t want to miss our Video of the Week with Mr. Beast!

This week:

• ⚡ Quick Hits: News from China, Anthropic, Microsoft, and xAI.

• 🔥 Trending Tools: Summit, Buildship, Replit, Xano, and Retool.

• 🏆 Top Story: Amazon Prime Air Gets FAA Approval.

• 🔍 Deep Dive: The State of No Code.

• 🌐 Social Pulse: AI Agents, Viral Shorts, and More.

• 🍿 Video of the Week: Mr. Beast on How to Fail.

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

🏆 TOP STORY

🚁 Amazon gets FAA approval to expand drone deliveries

tldr: Amazon received FAA approval to operate its Prime Air drone fleet for commercial deliveries. Amazon's drones can now fly Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), marking a significant step in its delivery strategy.

Key Points:

• Prime Air Service: Goal to deliver 500 million packages annually by 2029.

• Detect-and-Avoid Technology: Proprietary system with cameras that ensure safe navigation by avoiding obstacles and other aircraft.

• Initial Deployment: Expanded delivery in College Station, Texas, and upcoming operations in Phoenix with next-gen drones.

Why this matters:

These advancements highlight Amazon’s continuous push to integrate cutting-edge technology into its services, even at the risk of significant investment in overcoming regulatory obstacles. Here's why it matters:

1. Scalability: BVLOS approval allows Amazon to scale its Prime Air service to more customers and regions.

2. Safety and Innovation: Amazon's advanced detect-and-avoid technology addresses safety concerns and demonstrates the potential for drones to coexist with other air traffic.

3. Regulatory Precedent: This sets a benchmark for regulatory approval, encouraging other companies to develop similar technologies and seek permissions, fostering further innovation.

4. Economic Impact: Faster and more efficient deliveries can reduce operational costs and improve customer satisfaction, driving economic growth in the e-commerce sector.

5. Global Expansion: The ability to operate BVLOS accelerates Amazon's plan for worldwide drone delivery, potentially transforming logistics and setting new standards for quick, reliable shipping.

🔗 Amazon Announcement

🔍 DEEP DIVE

An in-depth breakdown of something interesting

The State of No Code

The no-code movement is dramatically transforming the entrepreneurial landscape, enabling anyone to create digital solutions without writing a single line of code.

Let's journey through the evolution of no-code, from its experimental beginnings to today's advanced platforms.

2007: Experiment Age

The no-code journey began in the Experiment Age, around 2007, with early attempts to simplify the connection between digital components.

Tools like Yahoo Pipes, WordPress, and Wix were pioneers in this era.

Yahoo Pipes allowed users to manipulate and aggregate content from around the web through a visual interface, laying the groundwork for future no-code platforms.

WordPress, which started in 2003 but gained significant traction by 2007, enabled users to create and manage websites with minimal technical knowledge.

Similarly, Wix provided a drag-and-drop website builder that made web design accessible to everyone, showcasing non-coders' potential to create functional digital products.

• 👉 Go deeper: Pipe Dreams: The life and times of Yahoo Pipes

2011: Plumbing Age

By 2011, the no-code landscape had entered the Plumbing Age. This era was characterized by a focus on integrating and automating processes between different applications, akin to laying the plumbing for a digital ecosystem.

Tools like IFTTT (If This Then That) and Zapier emerged as key players.

IFTTT allowed users to create simple "applets" that automated tasks between web services, making it easy to connect apps and devices.

Zapier launched the same year, provided a more robust platform for automating workflows, enabling users to extract and load data across multiple services without writing code.

• 👉 Go deeper: Zapier data report: The rise of no-code

2024: Transformation Age

Fast forward to 2024, and we are now in the Transformation Age of no-code development. This era focuses on transforming data between triggers and actions, enabling the creation of sophisticated applications through full-stack and advanced visual builders.

Platforms like Summit, Buildship, Bubble, and Flutterflow exemplify this transformation.

Bubble allows users to design, develop, and launch full-fledged web applications. Flutterflow, leveraging Google's Flutter framework, enables the creation of natively compiled mobile, web, and desktop applications through a visual builder. Summit and Buildship provide tools for data transformation and workflow automation, allowing people to build complex apps that can handle many different use cases.

• 👉 Go deeper: 8 best no-code app builders

• 👉 Go deeper: 14 Bubble Business Models

• 👉 Go deeper: Buildship walkthrough

• 👉 Go deeper: How to use AI in your Summit models

Going forward

Advancements have reached a point where the boundaries of what can be achieved without coding are limited only by our imaginations. Integrating AI into no-code platforms means users can leverage pre-trained models without understanding the underlying code. And in instances where they need to write code, they can ask ChatGPT for it!

Something to look for: Enhanced security features and compliance measures ensure that applications built on no-code platforms meet industry standards and regulations, making them suitable for mission-critical tasks.

If you remember one thing

The no-code movement is not just a trend, a subset, or a community, it's a fundamental shift in how we create and interact with technology.

If you can imagine it, you can build it! Let’s go!

🌐 SOCIAL PULSE

Highlights from social media and key topics of the week

What are AI agents? A comprehensive guide | Zapier

Learn about AI agents and how they can use artificial intelligence to complete tasks with little human intervention.

zapier.com/blog/ai-agent

The Most Accessible Product and Design Service Available

Every second counts ⏳. That's why I obsess over time-to-value metrics.

www.linkedin.com/pulse/most-accessible-product-service-earth-productpickle-i8sdc/?trackingId=OPDmUXovwNXaVZT9oiOJOw%3D%3D

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

🍿 VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Subscribe today to access:

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to deep-dives, guides, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community offers and opportunities

From the author:

Connect on LinkedIn

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community!

Welcome, tech friends

Happy Tuesday! I hope everyone had an awesome Memorial Day Weekend.

Check out our subscribers’ section, Trending Tools, for the hottest list of tools and upcoming startups. For The Biggest Thing, we’re learning more about Duolingo’s first Chief Design Officer this week. We also get a sneak preview at Productpickle’s launch of ChatPLG.ai, AI that collaborates with you to strengthen your product while coaching you to become an elite PLG expert. We learn a couple of tricks for managing browser tabs in this week’s Product Tip. We’ve got a handful of great Snapshots from the past week on the internet, including a First Round’s 4 Levels of PMF. And this week’s video is a tutorial on how to create an Open AI Vision app.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week:

• 🔥 Trending: Uizard, Hue Mint, Findr 2.0, Captions.ai, and more

• 🧐 The Biggest Thing: Duolingo hires their first CDO

• 🥒 Product Pickle: Launching ChatPLG.ai

• 💡 Product Tips: Managing your Chrome tabs

• 🔗 Snapshots: First Round releases “The 4 Levels of PMF”

• 🍿 Video of the Week: Building a no-code OpenAI Vision app

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

🔒 Subscribe to gain access to this feature.

🧐 THE BIGGEST THING

Duolingo promotes Ryan Sims to be its first Chief Design Officer

Pictured: Ryan Sims. (Photo credit: Duolingo, used with permission)

tldr: Duolingo has promoted Ryan Sims to its newly created role of Chief Design Officer, highlighting the company's focus on design innovation and user experience.

Key Points:

• New Role: Ryan Sims, previously VP of Design, is now Duolingo's first Chief Design Officer.

• Background: Sims joined Duolingo in 2022 and has been instrumental in leading design initiatives that enhance the app's user experience.

• Experience: Before Duolingo, Sims held design leadership roles at Airbnb and R/GA, bringing extensive expertise to his new position.

Why this matters:

I had a rare opportunity to collaborate with Duolingo in 2020-2021 while at CMB. We had the same investors. I was impressed by their obsession with testing and experimentation at the time. Their onboarding, gamification, and product loops are best-in-class examples for B2C startups.

So, it’s important news that they just hired their first CDO. Duolingo’s promotion of Ryan Sims to Chief Design Officer underscores the company’s commitment to elevating design as a core component of its strategy. With Sims' extensive background and proven track record, Duolingo aims to enhance its user experience further, making language learning even more engaging and effective for its global user base.

🔗 Go deeper

🥒 PRODUCT PICKLE

Weekly anecdotes from the front lines

ChatPLG First Look 👀

The official soft launch of my most recent project, ChatPLG.ai! 👏 

I plan to launch on Product Hunt and other platforms in the upcoming days, but I wanted to share this exciting news with subscribers first.

I created ChatPLG, an on-demand Product-Led Growth expert who will help you craft winning PLG strategies and strengthen your product.

After years of studying user activation, monetization, and growth, I created ChatPLG to offer entrepreneurs and startup founders unique value that doesn’t exist in today’s market. I wanted to put something useful into the world that isn’t just another ebook. There are many PLG resources, but this is the first free GPT of its kind, and I think there is already a case to be made that this is the most advanced product co-pilot available.

How does it work?

ChatPLG will fast-track your strategy. Use it as a boilerplate to bootstrap docs and revise existing products and features. ChatPLG is also a great general product coach and brainstorming buddy.

With ChatPLG, you can:

1. ♟️ Craft Winning PLG Strategy

2. 📈 Common PLG Metrics

3. ✨ Solve My Impossible Problem

4. 💯 Product Led Growth Scorecard

5. 💡 Identify Aha Moment

6. ⏳ Reduce Time-to-Value

7. 🚧 Common PLG Pitfalls

8. 🔨 Implement PLG

9. 🙋 PLG Organizational Change

10. 🚀 Product Led Growth Strategies

I've been sitting on this idea for a while and am thrilled to offer it for free.

I would LOVE to hear how ChatPLG works for you, where I could improve it, and when it sounds like a lame generic chatbot. Tell your friends about it! Give it a test drive, and let me know what you think!

🔗 Access to ChatPLG

💡  PRODUCT TIPS

Tips for managing Chrome tabs

Before you ask, yes, I tried Arc, but I’m not sold.

Here are the two ways I manage my tabs in Chrome:

1. Workona

2. Chrome Groups

Workona

I’ve been using Workona for several years. When managing multiple workspaces, using Workona is a no-brainer!

Workona includes a Chrome extension, making saving and organizing resources easy.

Chrome Tab Groups

More recently, I’ve been also using Chrome Groups

You can group tabs to keep related pages together in one workspace. To create a tab group, just right-click any tab and select Add tab to new group.

Here is my current view with Workona pinned and my Chrome group tabs across the top:

🔗 SNAPSHOTS

Direct links to relevant articles and social media posts.

The 4 Levels of PMF

A new framework to help B2B founders find PMF, faster.

pmf.firstround.com/levels

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

🍿 VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Twitter tweet

Subscribe today to access:

✔️ Weekly curated tool lists

✔️ Access to step-by-step guides, frameworks, and templates

✔️ Subscriber-only community with meetups and special offers

From the author:

Connect on LinkedIn here

PS. Now that you’ve signed up for the newsletter, you’ll receive updates in your inbox. You can also log in to the website to read the full archives and other posts as they’re published.

🛎️ General Housekeeping Notice: Check your spam folder if you can’t find the newsletter. And please mark this address as ‘not spam.’ If the newsletter isn’t in your spam folder, look in the Promotions tab.

You can always see everything on the website.

Thanks again, and please tell a few friends about this community if you like it.

Welcome, tech friends

Welcome to our first edition!

Check out our hot AI tools on this week’s Trending Tools list. For The Biggest Thing, we’re analyzing the release of OpenAI’s latest flagship model GPT-4o. We discuss stepping away from creative work to create new jolts of inspiration. You won’t want to miss our Product Tip this week on how to take photos in video mode on your iPhone. We’ve got a handful of great Snapshots from the past week on the internet, including a post on strategy from Dave Kellogg. And you won’t want to miss this week’s video that explores the current state of the 2024 tech job market.

Let's dive in! 👇

This week:

• 🔥 Trending: Spaceship, ChatPRD, You, Hero Icons, and Contra

• 🧐 The Biggest Thing: OpenAI releases GPT-4o

• 🥒 A Product Pickle: The art of stepping away

• 💡 Product Tips: Take photos while filming on your iPhone

• 🔗 Snapshots: Dave Kellogg discusses strategy and beliefs

• 🍿 Video of the Week: 2024 State of the Tech Job Market

🔥 TRENDING TOOLS

• 🚀 Spaceship - The best place for domains from the makers of Namecheap (link)

• 💬 ChatPRD - An on-demand Chief Product Officer that writes & improves your PRDs (link)

• 🤖 You - Test the latest GPT models: GPT-4o, Claude 3 Opus, and Llama 3 (link)

• ✨ Hero Icons - Free, easy-to-use library of SVGs (link)

• 🔄 Contra - Fastest-growing freelancer marketplace (link)

🧐 THE BIGGEST THING

OpenAI releases GPT-4o

Image Credits: OpenAI

tldr: OpenAI released it’s latest flagship model GPT-4o. It’s faster, cheaper, and more lifelike.

Key Points:

• The “o” in GPT-4o stands for “omni,” and it introduces multimodal with real-time audio and visual interactions

• GPT-4o outperforms GPT-4T (actually, all models) across almost every single benchmark

• All users, including free, can now experience GPT-4 level intelligence with features like memory, data analysis, and the custom GPT store

• There is a new MacOS desktop version of ChatGPT (Apple silicone-only)

• AI hyper scalers are in a race to arms

Cheaper API pricing:

• 50% lower pricing. GPT-4o is 50% cheaper than GPT-4 Turbo, across both input tokens ($5 per 1 million tokens) and output tokens ($15 per 1 million tokens).

• 2x faster latency. GPT-4o is 2x faster than GPT-4 Turbo.

• 5x higher rate limits.

Why this matters:

The way we interact with GPT’s going forward has fundamentally changed. Omni features unlock many innovative use cases. We’re already seeing the proliferation of novel ideas showing up on X. The next generation of AI agents, tools, and pipelines will benefit from faster, cheaper, and more democratized access to Open AI’s models.

🔗 Read OpenAI blog post

🔗 See GPT-4o demos on X

🔗 GPT-4o YouTube deep dive

🔗 Download Desktop ChatGPT for MacOS (M1/M2/M3)

🥒 PRODUCT PICKLE

Weekly anecdotes from the front lines

The art of stepping away

I’ve been working feverishly this year. My days are split between multiple projects. Client work. Personal work. Job searching. And launching new products and services, like this newsletter here.

In the realm of creativity, pursuing excellence often leads me to intense, immersive work sessions where I pour every ounce of my energy into my projects. I’ve noticed how I can get so immersed in THE WORK that I can begin to stress myself out if I'm not careful.

Luckily, and quite surprisingly, one trick I’ve been employing is simply putting it away. That’s right, put the computer down and do something else.

The Magic of Distance

One of the most powerful tools in a creative's arsenal is not constant creation but the act of stepping away. Deliberately taking a break from work can lead to profound insights, renewed energy, and a deeper connection to our creative vision.

When deeply involved in a project, we can become so close to the work that our perspective narrows. A good thing! We lose sight of the broader picture, entangled in the minutiae of our efforts. By stepping away, we create distance—a mental and emotional space that allows us to view our work with fresh eyes. This distance fosters clarity, enabling us to see previously overlooked aspects and discover new pathways that take our projects to new heights.

Tips for Achieving Fresh Eyes

1. Take scheduled breaks

2. Engage in a different form of creativity

3. Nature retreats

💡  PRODUCT TIPS

Did you know… you can take photos while filming video on your iPhone? Apple calls this a QuickTake video, which allows you to take photos while recording.

How to do this: Open Camera, then touch and hold the Shutter button to start recording a QuickTake video. Slide the Shutter button to the right and let go over the lock for hands-free recording. Tap the Capture Photo button on the right to automatically take still photos.

🔗 SNAPSHOTS

Direct links to relevant articles and social media posts.

Twitter tweet

Twitter tweet

The Seven Layers of Product Design

www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7194232377026428930

How much does a VP of Product at a Series B company make in SF?

Base Salary: $230K - $300k Equity: 0.24% - 0.9%

www.linkedin.com/posts/marcbaselga_how-much-does-a-vp-of-product-at-a-series-ugcPost-7195083256562647040-rKd9?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

More interesting posts:

🔗 Interacting with tables and charts in ChatGPT (Link)

🔗 Reach Capital releases their Ed Tech Playbooks (Link)

🍿 VIDEO OF THE WEEK

2024 State of the Tech Job Market