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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 this week’s 🌮 Product Tapas.

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What’s on the specials board? 🥘 

AI Browsers are still hot apparently (just don’t mention security), Agents continue to make it out into the wild and OpenAI's prepping a trillion-dollar IPO (casual). Some signs design is finding it harder to stay ahead of engineering whilst both Figma and Canva move closer towards platform plays (of course AI will help!).

• 📰 Not Boring → Agents that do things, design tools go platform, Google's Gemini everywhere, Big Tech's strategy splits, trillion-dollar valuations

• ⌚️ Productivity Tapas → Viral video generation, 6500+ MCP servers, AI agents for customer support, monetisation infrastructure

•  🍔 Blog Bites → Why Discovery seasons kill progress, strategic thinking without frameworks, five brilliant AI-powered micro-interactions

• 🎙️ Pod Shots → Wade Foster on the uncomfortable truth about AI agents (spoiler: you probably just need a workflow)

  Let's go 🚀

📰 Not boring

The Agents are coming: When AI Actually Does Things

• Browsers are still hot it seems

  • Open AI announce agent mode for ChatGPT Atlas to take action on your behalf in Atlas.

  • Google's AI Mode gets new agentic capabilities to help book event tickets and beauty appointments (US only). 

  • And Dia's AI browser starts adding Arc's 'greatest hits' to its feature set

  • But in related news, those worried about their data may want to consider how the "agentic flow and integration of external sources (email, docs) amplify risks of propagation, exfiltration, or unintended inference of personal data, mainly but not only due to the risk of prompt injections." As per this article

• OpenAI also released Aardvark an agent that finds and fixes security bugs using GPT-5 [beta]

• Microsoft 365 Copilot now enables you to build apps and workflows e.g. Create an app for a product launch process, send a Teams update every Monday with upcoming launch deadlines and key tasks and build an agent that answers product launch questions

• Cursor launched Cursor 2.0 a new version that introduces a more agentic coding approach

Everyone's racing to ship agents that can actually do things- book tickets, fix bugs, build workflows. OpenAI's Atlas, Google's AI Mode, Microsoft's Copilot apps. The promise has potential (I think). But the risk is very real. That warning about prompt injections isn't theoretical- when your AI agent has access to email, docs, and calendar, one malicious prompt could exfiltrate everything. We're building the future before we've secured the present.

Design Tools Go All-In on AI

• Figma Schema 2025 launched tools bridging design-to-code workflows: the MCP server and Code Connect UI enable AI-assisted development, extended collections manage multi-brand design systems, and Check designs audits design system compliance before handoff. 

• Figma has also acquired AI-powered media generation company Weavy- web tools that offer users pro editing tools to create high-quality images and videos for use in product mock-ups or brand styling

• Canva has rolled out new 'Creative Operating System' with new design-focused AI model and end-to-end marketing features

Figma's not just adding AI features - they're buying Weavy to own media generation, shipping design-to-code tools, and building compliance checking into the handoff. Canva's calling their update a "Creative Operating System. " Both feel like a move towards a platform play for who owns the creative workflow when AI does half the work.

Google Corner - Gemini Platform Expansion

• Google announced you can now create presentations in the Gemini app - pretty decent apart from generic imagery. Video here

• Google Maps has now also baked in Gemini to improve navigation and hands-free use (including interesting localisation upgrades for India)

• Google makes it easier to access AI Mode in Chrome on iOS and Android

Google's integrating Gemini everywhere - presentations, navigation, browsers. The strategy is obvious: own every surface where people might want AI assistance. The execution's getting better (though those presentation images are still painfully generic). Distribution at Google's scale means even incremental AI features reach billions.

Big Tech's Big Moves

• 'It's culture': Amazon CEO says massive corporate layoffs were about agility and culture - not AI or cost-cutting. Interesting if true, that said changing culture is not the thing of a just a minute to fix

• Airbnb CEO says ChatGPT isn't ready just yet for tie-up

• Apple nears deal to pay Google $1B annually to power new Siri

• Apple prepares to enter the low-cost laptop market for the first time

• After nine straight quarters of subscriber declines, Tinder is to use AI to get to know users, and tap into their Camera Roll photos

• WhatsApp launches long-awaited Apple Watch app

Three CEOs, three different calls on Strategy. Amazon's betting on culture over headcount. Apple's buying capability rather than building it. Chesky's waiting until the tech's actually ready. Different strategies, same reality: the big decisions that matter aren't about features, they're about foundations.

The Money, the Models, Stats and Everything Else

• OpenAI lays groundwork for juggernaut IPO at up to $1 trillion valuation

• Anthropic projects $70B in revenue by 2028: Report

• 16 charts that explain the AI boom [US centric but still super interesting]

• OpenAI adds reusable 'characters' and video stitching to Sora

• Perplexity's new AI tool aims to simplify patent research

• Brands are seemingly rushing to advertise on Reddit after a leaked deck shows paying ads on Reddit can boost AI search visibility

• Here's an interesting thought piece on how design is finding it harder to stay ahead of engineering as it's getting faster to ship code

OpenAI's trillion-dollar IPO, Anthropic projecting $70B revenue by 2028, brands suddenly caring about Reddit because of AI search visibility. The money's very real, the path to profitability is clearer than it was, and the companies with actual enterprise traction may start pulling away. The bubble question isn't whether AI works - it clearly does. It's whether these valuations assume every knowledge worker becomes 10x more productive, or just 2x.

⌚️ Productivity Tapas: Time-Saving Tools & Workflow Automation

• Topview: turn your product into viral videos

• Pulse MCP Server Directory: About 6500 MCP servers (and growing!)

• Brainfish: learns from your product videos and data to deliver AI agents that contextually support users across every channel

• Metronome: Infrastructure for monetisation. Real-time monetisation infrastructure at scale

  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.

Find your customers on Roku this Black Friday

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Once you’ve done this, then you can easily set up A/B tests to flight different creative variants and Black Friday offers. If you’re a Shopify brand, you can even run shoppable ads directly on-screen so viewers can purchase with just a click of their Roku remote.

Bonus: we’re gifting you $5K in ad credits when you spend your first $5K on Roku Ads Manager. Just sign up and use code GET5K. Terms apply.

Use code GET5K now

🍔 Blog Bites - Essential Reads for Product Teams

Product Strategy: Why Discovery Seasons Kill Product Progress

Tim Herbig explores why treating Discovery as a quarterly phase creates resistance and separates learning from building. He advocates for continuous uncertainty reduction rather than ceremonial Discovery rituals [not rocket science… but probably needs to be said!]. Read the full article here.

💡 "Discovery isn't about running a prescribed set of activities—interviews, prototypes, opportunity solution trees—because you're supposed to. It's about identifying your riskiest assumptions and testing them as cheaply as possible before you commit engineering capacity and organisational credibility."

Strategy: Why Strategic Thinking Is Simpler Than You Think

Tom explores why traditional strategy education fails practitioners and proposes a radically different approach based on information gathering rather than framework memorisation. He argues that strategic effectiveness comes from training your brain to instinctively recognise which datapoints you need, not from studying theoretical models. Read the full article here.

💡 "You don't get better at strategic work by memorising theory and frameworks. You do so by training your brain to instinctively recognise which datapoints you need to answer a question or back up your idea."

UX Design: Five Brilliant Micro-Interactions That Show AI-Powered Personalisation in Action

Peter from Built for Mars has once again curated five standout examples of how leading platforms use AI and dynamic content to create more personalised user experiences. Each example demonstrates thoughtful design that anticipates user needs and adapts interfaces in real-time. Read the full article here.

💡 "Design is thinking. It's anticipating intent. It's understanding nuance. It's experimenting."

🎙️ 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

💡 The Uncomfortable Truth: Most People Asking for AI Agents Actually Just Need Workflows

"Most people when they say I want an agent, you realise they actually just want a workflow—a deterministic automation."

Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier, cuts through the AI agent hype with battle-tested insights from 14 years building automation infrastructure. In this recent conversation, he reveals what actually works in production today versus what just burns tokens—and shares exactly how Zapier went from 0 to 97% AI adoption in under a year.

• 🎥 Watch the full episode here:

• 📆 Published: October 26th 2024

• 🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 10 mins. Time saved: 30+ mins! 🔥

Key insights from the full article:

• 🗺️ The AI automation spectrum — from deterministic workflows to pure inference agents (most production systems live in the middle)

• 📧 100 to 10 emails — how Wade's email triage agent uses natural language to surface what genuinely needs attention

• 🔄 Agents vs workflows — when you actually need inference vs when deterministic rules work better

• 🎯 The 90% rule — AI excels at the middle, humans still needed at input and output 🔧 APIs vs MCPs — complementary approaches for different points on the determinism-inference spectrum

• 🎪 "RIP Zapier" moment — why OpenAI's Agent Builder solves a different problem than workflow orchestration

• 🚀 0 to 97% adoption — hackathons, demos, and hands-on-keyboard time beat CEO memos alone

• 💼 Testing AI fluency — how Zapier evaluates candidates with practical, domain-specific tests

• 🗓️ The calendar test — look at recurring time-consuming activities to find automation opportunities

• 🔮 Small, focused agents win — the "Goldilocks zone" of minimal context beats massive general-purpose agents

👉 Read the full breakdown — sent separately, check your inbox or click below

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 🍽️.