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. If you’ve been forwarded this you can sign up and check previous editions here.

What’s cooking? 🧑‍🍳 

📰 Not Boring - Buckle up for another packed week of news. Zoom's CEO has a vision for clones in meetings, and we're on the cusp of Apple's WWDC event with iOS 18 updates and potential OpenAI deals. Spotify is shaking things up with a new UK music-only subscription tier, and AI continues to dominate with Nvidia and AMD integrating Copilot Plus AI features into gaming laptops. Plus, Google’s NotebookLM expands globally, and Coda introduces an enterprise AI platform. Perplexity and ElevenLabs also launch exciting new tools. From Instagram's unskippable ads to Discord's gaming refocus, there’s plenty more to dive into too.

⌚️ Time-Saving Tools & GPTs - Are GPTs dead? Maybe not, but let us know if you find any standouts. Meanwhile, explore our curated tools this week: Hanabi for REST APIs, buglab for bug detection, Airnotes for smarter note-taking, Layerpath for product demos, timeOS for productivity, Formshare for AI forms, and Exante for contract management.

🍔 Blog Bites - Essential reads for product teams this week include a case study on Canva’s use of scarcity and identity biases for hype-building, Peter Ramsay's UX insights, and Kelley Gordon’s breakdown of design systems vs. style guides. Plus, check out Atlassian's 25 AI prompts to make product managers' lives easier, covering everything from customer feedback analysis to predictive forecasting.

🎙️ Pod Shots - Still on the Canva theme we cover the latest Lenny’s Podcast episode featuring Cameron Adams, co-founder and CPO of Canva. Learn about Canva's unique culture, product management strategies, and growth tactics. Discover how Canva grew larger than Figma, Miro, and Webflow combined, achieving $2.3 billion in ARR and maintaining profitability for seven years 💥.

Plenty to get stuck into - off we go! 🚀👇

📰 Not boring

• Zoom CEO wants to clone you. Well OK he just wants clones of you in Zoom meetings

• Apple’s WWDC event is next week. If you can’t wait, here’s some of what’s expected. Spoiler alert; iOS 18 updates, AI (obvs) and more

  • Reports are also saying Apple is likely to announce a deal with OpenAI

• Spotify is increasing US prices for the second time in a year

  • Whilst also launching a music only subscription tier in the UK

• AI for everything episode 1456… Nvidia and AMD are bringing Microsoft’s Copilot Plus AI features to gaming laptops

  • Whilst on the topic, unsurprisingly, Nvidia passes Apple in market cap as second-most valuable public U.S. company

• Google’s updated AI-powered NotebookLM expands to India, UK and more. Try it here

• Coda introduces Coda Brain “a turnkey AI platform that helps teams spend less time hunting for information—and more time putting data to work” - aimed squarely at the enterprise, it should help teams find data and information faster from across the organisation’s data sources

• Perplexity launches pages, its document editor to share the AI content Perplexity creates. It scores highly on looks although content still requires the usual cross-checking that LLM written articles need

• Google AI Overviews now only show 15% of the time, down from 84% at peak - has accuracy (or lack thereof) caused this dropoff?

• GetWhy, a market research AI platform that extracts insights from video interviews, raises $34.5M

• Instagram is testing unskippable ads 👀 

• Microsoft’s recently announced Recall continues to get privacy related heat. This time it’s over how others could easily access your data. This sort of tool is no doubt incredibly useful, but wonder whether enterprise players will back out and leave it to risk-taking startups to figure this stuff out first

• ElevenLabs moves beyond speech with AI-generated Sound Effects

• Discord reflects on 9 years, and goes back to its core - refocusing on gaming with a redesign

• Meta seeks to revitalise Facebook's image among Gen Z with new product push (just 32% of teens use FB vs. 80% Instagram, 72% Tiktok)

  • However, Threads is extremely popular in Taiwan, especially for political activists

• Want even more news?? View more here → 

⌚️ Time-Saving Tools & GPTs

Are GPTs dead? I haven’t featured a decent one for ages. Let me know if you find any that are your go-tos. In the meantime we’ve got a stack of useful tools this week. Would love to know ay you try and love (or hate!).

• Hanabi: “Build a REST API from natural language and screenshots using AI, deploy it on Cloudflare Workers, and immediately roll it out globally”. Bosh

• buglab: Automatically detect bugs and UI/UX discrepancies

• Airnotes: helps improve your note taking with smarter categorisation

• Layerpath: create interactive product demos in minutes

• timeOS: “productivity companion that captures and summarises your day, organises all relevant information within the right tool, and proactively surfaces the knowledge you need, when you need it”

• Formshare: Create conversational AI forms for free

• Exante: AI-powered contract repository; get actionable insights and extract key contract data automatically

🍔 Blog Bites - Essential Reads for Product Teams

Case Study: Forget Waitlists. Reserve a Username.

Here’s an interesting Strategy Breakdown of how Canva used the scarcity effect, identity formation along with consistency, commitment and expectation biases to help drive fomo and generate hype before launching.

Design: UX Bites; Headspace, Zomato & More…

Peter Ramsay is back with another 5 “moments of UX magic”. From reminding you of benefits, to social proof and reassurance there’s loads packed into this latest super short update from Built for Mars.

Up-skill: Design Systems vs. Style Guides

Design systems and style guides are highly related and often confused, but they aren’t the same. Get the lowdown on the differences in this article by Kelley Gordon

Up-skill: 25 AI prompts to make product managers’ lives easier

Whilst there aren’t actually 25 copy, paste prompts within this Atlassian article (confusing I know) it does have a good selection of ideas and bases for those prompts. So it’s a useful starter/place for ideas around how AI can be useful to you.

🎙️ Pod Shots

Today we cover the recent Lenny’s Podcast exploring the unique aspects of Canva's culture, product management strategies, and growth tactics, based on insights from Cameron Adams, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva. Canva has achieved remarkable success, growing larger than Figma, Miro, and Webflow combined, generating $2.3 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and maintaining profitability for seven years.

⚒️ Inside Canva: Coaching, Giving Away Your Lego, and Running Profitably

🎥 Watch the full episode here 

📆 Published: June 2nd, 2024

🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes. Time saved: 61 minutes🔥 

🏅 Canva's Unique Culture: Coaches, Not Managers

Key Takeaways:

1. Coaching Over Managing: Canva's approach to team development focuses on coaching rather than traditional management. Coaches are dedicated to helping individuals improve their skills and prepare for the next levels in their careers.

2. Team and Culture Fit: Emphasising a strong cultural fit, Canva prioritises homegrown leaders and promotes from within, ensuring that new hires align with the company's vision and values.

3. Visual Communication: As a company focused on visual design, Canva integrates visual thinking into its culture, requiring team members to present ideas and strategies visually.

🚀 Building and Scaling Teams: The "Giving Away Your Lego" Philosophy

Key Takeaways:

1. Embracing Growth: As startups scale, roles and responsibilities must evolve. The "giving away your Lego" concept encourages team members to pass on their tasks and embrace new challenges, ensuring continuous personal and organisational growth.

2. Fostering Flexibility: Flexibility is essential in a rapidly growing company. Canva's culture encourages employees to be adaptable, ready to tackle new roles and responsibilities as the company scales.

3. Developing Leaders: By promoting from within and focusing on internal growth, Canva ensures that leaders are deeply connected to the company's mission and culture.

🧩 Product Management at Canva: Connected and Customer-Centric

Key Takeaways:

1. Product Management Philosophy: Canva's product managers are deeply connected to their teams, integrating ideas, data, and customer feedback to drive product development.

2. Experience-Driven: Unlike other companies (e.g. Google) where product management may focus more heavily on technical Product Management, Canva emphasises creating delightful and visually engaging experiences for users.

3. Evolution of Roles: Initially, Canva resisted the traditional product manager role, evolving its approach over time to fit the company's unique culture and needs.

⚡ Overcoming Challenges: Resilience and Adaptability

Key Takeaways:

1. Navigating Setbacks: Despite its success, Canva faced significant challenges, such as a major investor backing out of a funding round at the last minute. Resilience and quick thinking allowed the company to secure better terms and continue its growth trajectory.

2. Profitability Focus: Learning from early funding challenges, Canva prioritised profitability to maintain independence and avoid reliance on external investors.

🌍 Growth Strategies: SEO, Internationalisation, and Freemium Model

Key Takeaways:

1. Effective SEO: Canva's SEO strategy focused on understanding user intent and creating targeted content that seamlessly integrated with the product's capabilities, driving significant organic growth.

2. Internationalisation: Early and aggressive localisation efforts allowed Canva to capture global markets, with a focus on delivering a tailored experience to users in different regions.

3. Freemium Model: Balancing mission and monetisation, Canva's freemium model with a killer onboarding journey ensures widespread access to the product while generating revenue through premium features.

🤖 Harnessing AI: Enhancing User Experience

Key Takeaways:

1. AI Integration: Canva uses AI to enhance the user experience, from recommending templates to enabling advanced design features like photo editing and text summarisation.

2. Three-Pillar Approach: Canva's AI strategy involves building proprietary AI tools, partnering with leading AI providers, and leveraging an app ecosystem to integrate diverse AI capabilities.

3. Focus on User Goals: AI is implemented to help users achieve their design goals more efficiently and effectively, rather than simply adding trendy features.

🎯 Conclusion

This summary barely does the amazing story of Canava’s growth justice. Canva's journey offers a stack of great lessons for founders and product managers so the full podcast is well worth a listen if you have the time.

There’s nuggets about how they shirked Product theory by taking their time to release their “MVP” and built for themselves (normally a classic no-no). Plus a common theme of how by fostering a unique culture that prioritises coaching over managing, embracing flexibility, and focusing on user experience, Canva has built a robust and scalable business.

Their success in SEO, internationalisation, and the freemium model, coupled with innovative use of AI, demonstrates the power of aligning product development with a clear mission and vision.

As announced in last week’s newsletter, they’ve just pulled the covers off their enterprise offer. Whilst the launch was incredibly cringe, no doubt their product will continue to deliver incredible hockey stick growth for the business.

Want to know more quickly? Just ask the episode below via the chatbot trained on it [web only]👇️ 🤯 or if you prefer, 🎥 Watch the full episode here 

📅 Timestamps:

• [00:00:37] Coaching concept at Canva.

• [00:05:16] A challenging business moment.

• [00:10:06] Financial focus at board meetings (or not!)

• [00:12:26] Promoting internal talent within company.

• [00:16:42] Giving away your Lego.

• [00:22:57] Coaching and growth at Canva.

• [00:27:01] Product managers' key role.

• [00:30:39] Building a successful MVP.

• [00:33:49] Building a successful product.

• [00:39:18] Focus on target audience.

• [00:41:38] The power of onboarding.

• [00:43:54] Learn and Play.

• [00:49:09] Internationalisation strategy.

• [00:50:59] Freemium model for democratising design.

• [00:54:45] AI integration into products.

• [00:58:49] Canva Create event in LA.

• [01:02:17] The joy of design.

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 🍽️.