Hey Product Fans!

Merry Christmas. Hope those that celebrate are enjoying some well deserved time off.

Welcome to this week’s 🌮 Product Tapas.

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What’s cooking this week? 🦃

Amazon rams AI into Kindles with zero opt-outs, ChatGPT hits $3bn faster than Disney+, and Notion discovers 50% of revenue now comes from AI features nobody asked for two years ago. Grok goes to the War Department whilst Gemini runs Boxing Day sales, Cloudflare breaks twice in two weeks, and Meta's AI team implodes after hiring a 28-year-old for $14.5bn.

Meanwhile, 84% of developers use AI but 46% don't trust it. Make it make sense.

Happy Boxing Day - turns out the AI arms race doesn't take Christmas off. Neither can I apparently. Over two years, never missed a newsletter. Goddamn streak has me in a chokehold. 🎄

Let's go 🚀

Amazon's Kindle move shows raw platform power: no author consent, no opt-out, don't care. DoorDash's Zesty reveals existential fear - if you're just logistics, you're infrastructure (although not always a bad thing). But when Google Maps adds AI restaurant discovery, what's the moat? Grok going to the War Department whilst Gemini runs Boxing Day sales suggests we've hit the "race to ubiquity" phase.

ChatGPT hit $3bn in 31 months - nearly twice as fast as Disney+ or TikTok. Companies aren't cutting headcount - they're hiring MORE engineers and shipping faster (Brex data). But Principal engineers saw the only pay decline (-6.58%) despite earning most. Is AI actually replacing that tier?

Instacart insists their pricing tests "were not dynamic pricing"...yet killed them anyway. Perception beats methodology. Apple's Japan concession and debt collector terms show platform power cuts both ways - regulators force openness whilst developers get squeezed harder.

84% of developers use AI tools but 46% actively distrust them (up from 31% in 2024). Experienced developers are MOST sceptical. Yet code output surged 76%. Figma's "prototypes are PRDs" shift creates new gatekeeping - those who can prototype (designers/PMs) vs those who can't.

Luma's Ray3: "shoot once, reimagine everything else" - but makes location scouts redundant whilst claiming to preserve "authenticity." Anthropic's vending machine became profitable...then fell for social engineering (onion futures, imposter CEOs). The helpfulness training that makes Claude useful directly conflicts with profit maximisation. Vitalik's "exit" privilege assumes mobility most people don't have.

Year-end retrospectives create "data awareness" that locks users in. Once you see your year quantified, switching platforms means losing that narrative. Retention disguised as fun. But the shear volume has got a somewhat draining this year for me at least.

Cloudflare knew the fix but "implementation complexity" prevented it - classic execution gap when you're reliability infrastructure for 28% of the web. Meta's drama: LeCun quit after being placed under 28-year-old Wang (hired for $14.5bn), who calls Zuckerberg's control "suffocating." McKinsey claims 50% of work hours are automatable BUT 70% of human skills remain valuable - can both be true?

If you’re a decision maker at your company, you need to be on the bleeding edge of, well, everything. But before you go signing up for seminars, conferences, lunch ‘n learns, and all that jazz, just know there’s a far better (and simpler) way: Subscribing to The Deep View.

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John Cutler uses a restaurant operations analogy to tease out lessons product team dynamics (as only he could), highlighting the disconnect often found in software development. He notes that while kitchen staff thrive on immediate feedback, product teams frequently lack this critical loop, leading to inefficiencies. Read the full article here.

💡 "When diners aren’t getting good food, they just lower their expectations and stop coming back."

Brian Balfour discusses the transformative potential of AI prototyping in product development, emphasising that it's not just about speed, but about the capacity to explore multiple ideas before finalising a solution. This methodology allows teams to make better, more informed decisions by thoroughly comparing alternatives. Read the full article here.

💡 "The real value of AI prototyping isn’t that you move faster. It’s that speed gives you capacity to explore more ideas before you commit."

Tim Herbig explores the dynamics of addressing the same customer problem across different segments. He argues that distinct solutions tailored to various user needs are essential for successful outcomes. Read the full article here.

💡 "Repeating the outcome forces you to define success criteria for each segment, not to accept misleading averages."

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

As we wrap up the year, I've decided to take us back to two years ago this week to a great podcast on Product Operations.

Product operations has evolved from almost non-existent to standard practice at half of all scaling tech companies - and Melissa Perri saw it coming. In this prescient November 2023 conversation, Melissa Perri and Denise Tillis, authors of "Product Operations: How Successful Companies Build Better Products at Scale", laid out the three pillars of product ops, why PMs shouldn't fear this role, and how to roll it out successfully. Two years later, their predictions have proven remarkably accurate.

Key insights from the full article:

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 🍽️.