We track Product so you don't have to. Top Podcasts summarised, the latest AI tools, plus research and news in a 5 min digest.

Hey Product fans!

Welcome to the hoards of new followers from last week - well 27 to be precise. Your presence is very much welcomed.

Also, the people have spoken. As you can see, we’re back to Monday. Seems Sunday remains a day of rest and you prefer starting the week with a dose of Prouct updates 🌮.

PLUS there are a few tweaks to the newsletter today 🤩. You can jump to a section from this intro thanks to our new links (welcome to the 90s) 😎. And we’ve revamped our Blog-Bites section following some feedback. Now you’ll get many more bite-sized summaries and links to other articles, instead of one longer summary.

So without further ado. What’s on the menu? 🥘 

📰 Not Boring: Meta's valuation crossed a pretty impressive threshold and Netflix beat expectations, we also cover news of Apple Podcasts introducing auto-generated transcripts in iOS 17.4, AND the Jellypod app that allows you to convert this very newsletter back into a podcast ➰… We also cover more lay-off news 🥹 and a heap of product innovations from Instagram, Klarna and more! 🌍💡

🤖 GPT & Time-Saving Tools: Today, we're spotlighting another workflow aid from Vectorshift, we cover some handy tools to speed up your recruitment and some great apps for schedulers, designers and the easily distracted amongst us…! 🛠️💼 

🎧 In today's Pod Shots, we dive into the inspiring journey of Fireflies.ai's Krish Ramineni. From early challenges to pioneering product-led growth, this episode is a great read on innovation and perseverance. 🎙️🔬

Plus, our 🍔 Blog Bites section is getting a makeover! We're bringing you a curated selection of articles. Take a look at the nuances of product management, AI, and the art of managing up - your brain will thank you for it! 🧠📚

Ready to dig into this week's smorgasbord of Product Tapas?

LFG! 🚀👇

📰 Not boring

• Meta passed $1 trillion market cap last week 💰️🤑 

• Apple Podcasts is getting auto-generated transcripts with iOS 17.4. Watching this closely as we’re obviously fans of podcast transcripts!

• Annnnnd right back the other way, Jellypod turns newsletters into podcasts. Product Tapas Podcast anyone? 🎧️ 

• OpenAi supposedly cures ChatGPT’s “laziness” problem “where the model doesn’t complete a task”

• Auzzie kids top the charts when it comes to AI usage

• More lay-off news

  • eBay announces fresh round of cuts, letting 9% go

  • Brex is cutting 20%

• Instagram’s new ‘nighttime nudges’ aim to reduce teens’ time on the app by reminding them it’s late - encouraging them to go to sleep. EU anti-digital law redrafting will likely mean we see more like this

• Netflix outperformed expectations (+13m subs, $8.8bn revenue in the quarter) but still sub 10% of all UK viewing (full shareholder letter here)

• Google’s 2024 company-wide OKRs leaked

• Klarna to debut $7.99 monthly plan as buy now, pay later firm seeks new revenue sources ahead of IPO

  Want even more news?? View more here →

📰 Time-Saving Tools & GPTs

From helping you recruit faster to creating products by automating workflows, time-saving Golden Kitty winners and more - loads to cover this week.

1. Recruiting? Try:

   1. Talently: Evaluate hundreds of candidates effortlessly and identify top performers using AI

   2. Brainner.ai: Analyse hundreds of CVs in minutes

2. Hot on the back of last week’s workflow automation tools (Modelize.ai and Taskade.com), Vectorshift is another we’ve come across. Teams can automate search across documents or even create support agents

3. Kyugo: very interesting calendar/scheduling app that helps you visualise and set meetings a completely different way

4. Interesting Product Hunt Golden Kitties winners

   • Jitter helps create animations from designs and more

   • Novu won best Open Source project for its Opensource notifications platform

5. Blankspace declutters your iPhone by transforming your home screen to a monochrome distraction-free look

6. Findr: lets you search all of your apps, all at once

🎙️ Pod Shots

Today we’re covering a recent episode of the Product Podcast from Product School.

The podcast episode features Krish Ramineni, the founder and CEO of Fireflies.ai, an AI tool that records, transcribes, and analyzes meetings. Krish discusses the evolution of Fireflies.ai and the challenges they faced in the early stages. He explains that when they started working on the product, it wasn't considered cool or promising. However, they believed in the vision of creating a personal assistant that transcribes and takes notes for meetings. Despite initial doubts and uncertainty, they continued to work on the core technology, focusing on voice recognition. Over time, Fireflies.ai has evolved into a valuable tool for meeting productivity.

🤖 The Evolution of Fireflies.ai: A Journey in Product-Led Growth

🎙️ Listen to the full episode here 

📆 Published: January 23rd, 2024

🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes. Time saved: 31 minutes🔥 

🔬 Theme: Krish Ramineni's Journey as a Product Person

Krish Ramineni shares his journey as a product person, starting from his college days. He and a friend decided to build their own product instead of pursuing internships. They built an events platform for colleges, gaining hands-on experience in product development, design, and marketing. This entrepreneurial experience led Krish to discover his passion for product management. He worked with startups and larger companies like Workday and Microsoft, gaining valuable experience and skills. Krish emphasizes the importance of being a hands-on product person and continuously learning and adapting.

🌉 Theme: Building Fireflies.ai and Pivots

Krish explains the early days of building Fireflies.ai and the multiple pivots they went through. Initially, they focused on building various tools to automate tasks like email prioritisation and project management. However, they realised that the technology was not advanced enough to deliver the desired results. Eventually, they decided to focus on the meeting space, specifically capturing and transcribing meetings. They started with video conferencing but later expanded to in-person meetings and telephony systems. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of their product, and they experienced exponential growth.

🤑 Theme: Bootstrapping and Funding

Krish discusses the challenges of bootstrapping Fireflies.ai and the decision to raise funding. They initially bootstrapped the company, being scrappy and resourceful. They believed in building a product that could be used by everyone in the workplace, rather than targeting a specific vertical. While some advised them to focus on enterprise solutions and charge higher prices, they stuck to their vision of democratizing AI. Eventually, they raised a Series A funding round in 2021. Krish emphasizes the importance of execution, showing progress, and finding investors who believe in the team's ability to execute.

📈 Theme: Product-led Growth and Marketing Strategy

Fireflies.ai adopted a product-led growth strategy, leveraging their own product as a marketing channel. They focused on creating a great user experience and generating word-of-mouth through their product's value. By being present in meetings and providing transcription and note-taking services, they attracted users organically. This approach allowed them to minimise spending on traditional marketing channels and rely on the virality of their product. Krish highlights the challenges of product-led growth, including the upfront investment in engineering and self-service functions. However, he believes that focusing on user satisfaction and value creation is key to success.

🤖 Theme: Future Plans and AI in Product Management

Krish discusses the future plans for Fireflies.ai, envisioning it as a platform for unlocking knowledge within enterprises. They aim to go beyond meeting transcription and notes, exploring other types of knowledge extraction from conversations. For example, they could build an app to extract feature requests from user interviews. Krish emphasizes the importance of AI as a tool to automate and ease workflows, rather than just a cool technology. He encourages product managers to think about how AI can be deeply integrated into the product, rather than just adding superficial AI features.

🧠 What can I do with this as a founder or PM?

As a Product Manager, there are several key takeaways from this podcast episode that you can apply to your own role and product development:

1. Focus on solving real problems: Rather than being driven solely by the latest technology trends, prioritise identifying and addressing the pain points of your target users. Understand their needs and build products that provide tangible value and improve their workflows.

2. Embrace a product-led growth strategy: Consider leveraging your own product as a marketing channel and creating a great user experience that generates word-of-mouth. By focusing on user satisfaction and value creation, you can attract more users organically and minimize spending on traditional marketing channels.

3. Adapt and learn from experience: Be open to learning and adapting as a product person. Gain hands-on experience, continuously improve your skills, and stay up-to-date with industry trends. Embrace a growth mindset and be willing to make pivots and adjustments based on user feedback and market dynamics.

4. Understand the value and limitations of AI: AI can be a powerful tool in product development, but it's important to understand its upper and lower bounds. Avoid adding superficial AI features and instead focus on integrating AI in a meaningful way that automates workflows and provides real value to users.

5. Think beyond features to platforms and ecosystems: Consider the potential for your product to evolve into a platform or ecosystem. Explore opportunities to expand your product's capabilities, integrate with other tools, and allow third-party developers to build on top of your core product. This can create additional value and drive further adoption.

6. Balance simplicity and execution: While it's important to have a clear vision, also prioritize simplicity in your product development. Focus on executing well and delivering a great user experience. Avoid overcomplicating ideas and instead strive for a product that is easy to understand and use.

If these sound like they resonate dig in more below.

Want to quickly know more? Just ask the episode below👇️ 🤯 
or if you prefer, 🎙️ Listen to the full episode here 

⏰ Timestamps:

• [00:01:24] Uncertainty around the technology.

• [00:04:26] Building products before official title.

• [00:08:02] Product evolution and growth.

• [00:13:22] Applying technology to meetings.

• [00:16:09] Fall in love with the problem.

• [00:19:42] Infrastructure challenges in scaling.

• [00:24:01] Generative AI features and customer requests.

• [00:28:06] Product-led growth before it was cool.

• [00:31:43] AI in product management.

🍔 Blog Bites

We’re trialling a new format for the blog-bites section of the newsletter after some feedback:

• Not all articles are relevant to everyone

• It only takes a few minutes to read an article (unlike a podcast that’s usually ½ hour minimum) so a summary isn’t really that useful

• There are SO many articles you don’t cover each week (OK that’s one I added)

So instead of a review of just one we’re going to start listing a few that make the cut that you should go deep-dive on yourselves.

Hope you like it. Let us know in the poll at the end of the section below!

When (and why) noise creates churn

“Have you ever turned off an extractor fan, and been immediately surprised by how much quieter the room is?

The human brain has an amazing ability to "turn down" a specific stimulus, but the relief of sudden silence demonstrates that it was still weighing on your subconscious. 

This is one reason why true focus can be so exhausting—it requires a higher 🧠 Cognitive Load to shut out everything else.

In other words, noise carries a cost. Attention is relatively finite, potential distractions are not.”

This great case study from Peter Ramsay at builtformars digs deep into this and shows how LinkedIn gets it wrong.

Free PM Resources (2024)

List of books, videos, templates, PM courses, websites, People skills assessments and apps from Pawel at the Product Compass here

The critical role of product managers in the world of AI

Interview with Cassie Kozrkov the CEO at Data Scientific and Google's first Chief Decision Scientist, to delve into the world of data, artificial intelligence (AI), and the crucial role of product managers in navigating this ever-evolving landscape from MTP.com here 

Product management podcasts to listen to in 2024

We’ve search a list of over 50 Podcasts for our PodShots section, but here’s a good summary of 8 you can did into courtesy of mtp.com again

How to manage your manager

Done effectively, managing up is the art of working well with your manager.  Susan Belcher covers some great tips of how to make it work in this HustleBadger article

The Modern AI Stack: Design Principles for the Future of Enterprise AI Architectures

The future of the modern AI stack is being decided now. Find out more in this article.

Please, one last thing - share the love!

• ONE: Get one person to sign up and get access to our curated selection of Product GPTs; handpicked from our review of over 15,000 GPTs (and counting)

• FIVE: Send this to five people who sign up and get our free Product Maturity Audit

• TEN: Get three 1:1 coaching/mentoring sessions with me.

That’s a wrap.

As always, the journey doesn't end here!

Keep exploring, keep questioning, and most importantly, keep growing in your product journey.

Please do share to help us continue to grow and let us know what you would like to see more or less of so we can continue to improve your Product Tapas. 🚀👋

Alastair & the Product Tapas Team 🍽️.