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Welcome to this week’s 🌮 Product Tapas.

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What’s sizzling this week? 🥘 

Apple also wants to own search (Siri gets smart), Atlassian drops $610M on a browser (browsers are hot), AI agents start paying bills (automation meets money), and SaaS valuations get brutal reality checks (workflows > dashboards).

• 📰 Not Boring → Search wars heat up, agent economics arrive, M&A sprint begins

• ⌚️ Productivity Tapas → AI-native slides, text-to-diagrams, chat-based automations

• 🍔 Blog Bites → Anticipatory UX patterns, hidden strategy DNA, beehiiv's $20M playbook

• 🎙️ Pod Shots → Value Driver analysis and feature impact modelling without spreadsheet pain (AI does the maths)

Let's go 🚀

📰 Not boring

Who wants to own search (and the browser)?

• Apple plans AI‑Powered web search tool for Siri to rival OpenAI, Perplexity. EVERYONE WANTS TO OWN SEARCH in the new AI world

• Apple's new AirPods Pro3  can do live translation — another surface where Apple controls the answer layer

• Atlassian agrees to acquire The Browser Co. for $610 million - MORE search battles….

• Here’s the reason why (beyond the $610m): The Browser Company is being acquired (TL;DR to bring Dia to the masses)

Search is no longer just a ranking game — it’s about who can summarise, act and control the surface that people use (voice + browser + system UI). Apple trying to turn Siri into an “answer engine” and Atlassian buying a fast, AI 1st browser feel like two sides of the same playbook: control where the answers appear and what UX those answers sit inside. If you build content, interfaces, or enterprise workflows, start asking not “How do I rank?” but “How do I get surfaced as the trusted source inside an answer+agent?” 

Agents, hiring, and the productisation of workflows

• LinkedIn is rolling out an AI‑powered 'Hiring Assistant' by the end of the month. Interested to see how this one lands — LinkedIn’s AI rollouts so far have been noisy, spammy, and thin.

• But on that, OpenAI announces AI‑powered hiring platform to take on LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s advantage is data + workflows + integrations; OpenAI’s is platform reach and brand. The fight will be about who owns the candidate data, the ATS integrations, and recruiter trust — and whether candidates accept being screened and messaged by agents at scale 

Tools shipping today — small features, big behaviour changes

• NotebookLM has rolled out new “deep dive”, “critique” and “debate” audio overview formats.

• Google Photos now lets you animate your camera roll with Veo 3 for free USonly:(US only :(USonly:(

• Google Vids now lets you make videos from imported Google slides, which could be pretty good for broader, faster sharing of strategy decks, research, roadmaps, you name it.

Plus:

• Startup Alterego demos "near-telepathic" wearable for silent communication at thought speed.

• Chinese company Plaud hits 1M+ units sold since 2023, ~$250M ARR focusing on hands-free note-taking for professionals (doctors, lawyers, sales). Wearables are coming; focus wins (founders of the world take note!)

• Perplexity now works on WhatsApp — save '+1 (833) 436-3285' and chat directly.

None of these are ground-breaking on their own, well maybe wearable will become that, but they’re behaviour multipliers. Short formatted audio summaries, tiny in‑app video creation from slides, and simple “animate my photos” tools reduce friction on content capture and sharing — which accelerates the loop between ideas and audiences. As a product person, ask: what friction still exists between "insight" and "distribution" in your experience? Google and NotebookLM are quietly lowering it. Although NotebookLM usage is down from peak so time will tell if this is sticky.

Infrastructure, payments, and the agentic backend

• Another week another blockchain; Stripe enlists a who’s who, including Anthropic, OpenAI, and Paradigm, to build a new blockchain: betting on it being backbone of agentic payments to remittances #futureoffranceIYKYK\#futureoffrance IYKYK#futureoffranceIYKYK

• Google ADK Hackathon winners signal a shift to autonomous, multi‑agent AI

  • Multi‑agent orchestration is now practical and Domain‑aware AI (LLMs + rules/data) now deliver higher‑fidelity, validated outputs for sensitive domains

  • So businesses can automate complex processes (sales, operations, trading) end‑to‑end, cutting manual work and education & research can scale personalized tutoring and automate scientific reasoning and validation

This is the part of the market where models meet money and rules. Stripe recruiting the usual suspects to help design a payments chain is betting that agentic UXs will demand a new, programmatic rails layer — identity, atomic-value transfers, and off‑ramp guarantees for autonomous agents. At the same time, the ADK hackathon shows multi‑agent systems are moving out of labs into proof‑of‑value demos. Combine those and you have agents that not only decide, but also pay — which is great news for B2B product teams who want to automate end‑to‑end workflows, and terrifying if you’ve built a process people are paid to run.

The economics & M&A framing

Commerce & M&A

• Amazon launches Lens Live: Instant scanning, real-time product matches, and insights from Amazon's AI Shopping Assistant

• Amazon is also ready to enter the AI agent race in a big way, according to internal documents

• AI's M&A Blitz: SaaS Under Threat, Valuations Re-Calibrated - Buyers are racing to fold AI, data and models into products because standalone SaaS is being re‑valued: generative agents can subsume user workflows, so incumbents without embedded AI look vulnerable

When a new abstraction (agents + models) can subsume the old surface (manual UI + spreadsheets + SaaS), valuations reprice and acquirers sprint. If your product is a workflow, not just UI, start threading models into the value chain now — seems the M&A market is rewarding product teams that can show measurable automation outcomes, not just nicer dashboards.

Everything else

• OpenAI adds larger file uploads, more customisation settings  and “projects” for free users. 

• Remember that MIT study claiming only 5% of AI projects succeed? Turns out it might be flawed — bias and clickbait strikes again.

• Google releases prompting tips for better NanoBanana results.

• Apple launched thinner, faster iPhones and updated watches (the usual).

How 433 Investors Unlocked 400X Return Potential

Institutional investors back startups to unlock outsized returns. Regular investors have to wait. But not anymore. Thanks to regulatory updates, some companies are doing things differently.

Take Revolut. In 2016, 433 regular people invested an average of $2,730. Today? They got a 400X buyout offer from the company, as Revolut’s valuation increased 89,900% in the same timeframe.

No wonder 10K+ everyday people are taking the chance on Pacaso.

Founded by a former Zillow exec, Pacaso’s co-ownership tech reshapes the $1.3T vacation home market. They’ve earned $110M+ in gross profit to date, including 41% YoY growth in 2024 alone. They even reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.

The same institutional investors behind Uber, Venmo, and eBay backed Pacaso. And you can join them. But not for long. Pacaso’s investment opportunity ends September 18.

Invest While You Still Can

_{Paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals.}

⌚️ Productivity Tapas: Time-Saving Tools & GPTs

• Ghost: Stunning presentations at the speed of thought. AI-native slide editor that helps you go from idea to deck in minutes.

• Bhava: Turn simple text into live diagrams. Describe the flow, and get an editable flowchart, architecture map, swimlane, UML, or ERD. It auto‑picks the right cloud icons, keeps connectors tidy, and exports cleanly.

• Sidekick: “Loveable for automations”. Build Zapier-style automations using only a chat interface. AI adds connectors, configures logic, and handles errors.

  Remember. Product Tapas subscribers get our complete toolkit - 460+ personally tailored, time-saving tools for PMs and founders. Your shortcut to efficiency and what's hot in product management 🔥

Check the link here to access.

🍔 Blog Bites - Essential Reads for Product Teams

UX Design: Five Clever Interface Patterns That Anticipate User Needs

I love Built for Mars, you love Built for Mars. We all love Built for Mars. If you’ve been living under a rock, Peter’s UX bites are a great list/go-to of great UX examples (and what makes them so great). Recently he’s covered: AI integration patterns, Privacy-conscious sharing, Team onboarding, Contextual permission requests and Progressive feature discovery - all basically showcasing patterns that demonstrate how modern interfaces are becoming more contextually aware and user-centric. Check out his latest UX Bites here.

💡 "During set-up, Clerk includes a pre-built prompt that you can copy into an AI tool of your choice. (I expect we'll start to see a lot more of this)"

This caught my attention as it shows how companies are beginning to bridge the gap between their products and AI tools, recognising that users increasingly rely on AI assistance for implementation tasks.

Strategy: Uncovering Your Product's Hidden Strategic DNA

Paweł Huryn and Mike Goitein explore the critical gap between what companies say their strategy is and what their actions actually reveal. They present a detective-like approach to reverse-engineering strategy by analysing real decisions, resource allocation, and user behaviour patterns rather than relying on official strategy documents. Read the full article here.

💡 "Every product already has a strategy. The question isn't whether you have one. The question is whether you know what it actually is."

Strategy: How beehiiv Sprinted from Zero to $20M ARR in Five Years

Bill Kerr and Tony Varghese explores beehiiv's meteoric rise from startup to industry leader, revealing how they disrupted the newsletter space through product-led growth and creator-first thinking. Their approach centred on removing barriers, building growth loops directly into the product, and maintaining relentless shipping velocity. Read the full article here.

💡 "If there's one lesson from growing beehiiv to $20M ARR in under five years, it's this: data gives you direction, but the best moves often come from gut instinct, fast iteration, and listening more than your competitors."

🎙️ Pod Shots - Bitesized Podcast Summaries

Remember, we've built an ever-growing library of our top podcast summaries. Whether you need a quick refresher, want to preview an episode, or need to get up to speed fast - we've got you covered.

Check it out here

Remember, we've built an ever-growing library of our top podcast summaries. Whether you need a quick refresher, want to preview an episode, or need to get up to speed fast – we've got you covered. Check it out here 

🎯 How to Do Better Product Analysis in Minutes Using Shortcut

Ever needed to quickly model the revenue impact of a new feature but felt it was overkill or you just don’t have the time? Or wanted to create growth forecasts for your product roadmap without bothering the finance team? Shortcut could be the answer for you. I featured it a month or so ago back on the Time Saving Tools section so thought I’d cover the recent Greg Eisenberg Podcast that dives deeper into how Shortcut transforms anyone into an Excel wizard.

In the Pod he chats to Nico, the co-founder of Shortcut, who doesn’t just talk about the product—he builds real financial models live on screen, showing exactly how to prompt the AI, handle errors, and create professional dashboards. From updating DCF models with fresh 10-K data to building custom utilisation trackers, this is your complete playbook for AI-powered spreadsheet mastery that every product manager can apply to feature impact analysis, growth forecasting, and business case development.

🎥 Watch the full episode here
📆 Published: 29th July 2025
🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 4 mins. Time saved: 40+ mins! 🔥

🏗️ Step 1: Understanding What You're Actually Getting

Shortcut isn't another Excel add-on—it's Excel completely rebuilt for the AI era. The interface looks identical to Excel, but underneath lies an AI agent that can handle 90% of your spreadsheet work autonomously. Instead of helping you write formulas, it writes entire financial models.

The smartest starting approach isn't building from scratch. Import your existing Excel files directly into Shortcut and let the AI manipulate them. During the demo, Nico opens a complex Microsoft DCF model that would typically require half a day to build manually, then delegates the entire update process to the AI.

The time-saving reality is dramatic. Tasks that consume hours of manual work get completed in 10-15 minutes. But this requires a mindset shift from seeking assistance to full delegation—you're not getting help with Excel, you're supervising an AI that's doing Excel for you.

Key Takeaways:

• Import existing Excel files rather than starting from scratch

• Think delegation, not assistance—let AI do 90% of the work

• Complex models that take hours complete in 10-15 minutes

• The interface remains familiar while capabilities transform completely

🧠 Step 2: The Counter-Intuitive Prompting Strategyintro:

Most people assume AI requires detailed, specific prompts. Nico demonstrates the opposite approach works better. Deliberately vague prompts force the AI to get creative and ask clarifying questions, leading to better results than trying to specify everything upfront……

Continued here and on the link below 👇️ 

Don’t worry - NO sub requirement, just making the newsletter more compact and the Pod Shots more easily searchable.

CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO CONTINUE READING 👇️ 

That’s a wrap.

As always, the journey doesn't end here!

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

Alastair 🍽️.