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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, your go-to for the tastiest bites from the world of Product and Tech!!

If you’ve been forwarded this or just stumbled upon it, you’re in for a treat. For the best reading experience, check out the web version and sign up for future editions here.

What’s on the menu this week? 🧑‍🍳

📰 Not Boring – Meta challenges ChatGPT with a social discovery-powered AI app, Google abandons its cookie-killing plans while YouTube celebrates 20 years of dominance, and Motorola embraces a multi-assistant future. Meanwhile, production of US iPhones moves to India, budget retailers Shein and Temu pivot from discounts to price hikes, and ChatGPT expands into shopping recommendations and citation capabilities.

⌚️ Productivity Tapas – This week's tools help you eliminate tech stack redundancies, break down language barriers in virtual meetings, and transform lengthy podcasts into searchable knowledge bases.

🍔 Blog Bites – Dive into beehiiv's remarkable $50M fundraising journey, explore CJ Gustafson's counterintuitive take on embracing "one-and-done" business models, and get MIT Sloan's evidence-based guidance on navigating the AI strategy landscape.

🎙️ Pod Shots – Daniel Ara, Chief Product & Technology Officer at monday.com, shares the strategies that fuelled their growth to $1B ARR, from radical transparency and ambitious goal-setting to focusing relentlessly on impact over output.

Plenty to get stuck into—off we go! 🚀

📰 Not boring

• Meta launches new ChatGPT competitor app,. It’s killer feature is the Discover feed that lets you see how connections use Meta AI

• NotebookLM podcast feature is now multilingual, available in 50 languages

• In related news, Nari Labs’ Dia launches its competitor to Eleven labs with some excellent voices

• Over in Google land

  • Google gives up on killing cookies

  • But also, Google Slides users get more templates e.g. business proposals, product pitches, quarterly reviews and more

  • And YouTube turns 20 and is on track to be the biggest media company by revenue

• iPhones sold in the US likely to be made in India

• Mortorolla is embedding assistants from Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity into its new phones…

• WhatsApp is working on video and voice calls on the web

• Oh and whilst we’re on the subject of WhatsApp, you can now access Perplexity directly within the app

• After slashing budgets, Shein and Temu now start raising prices

  • Interestingly Shein was over 40% of US fast fashion spending last year

• ChatGPT has some new features; from shopping suggestions to product reviews and even the ability to pull back multiple citations to validate responses

• Lyft’s AI ‘Earnings Assistant’ offers ideas about how drivers can make more money

• New Apple Vision ‘Air’ product could launch this year

• Microsoft rolls Windows Recall out to the public nearly a year after announcing it

• Waymo might be willing to sell you a self-driving car

• Linear introduces Pulse - your personalised feed for what's going on across your product teams

• Mastercard unveils Agent Pay - agentic payments technology

• Not content with “getting rid of UX” Duolingo are now going “AI-first”. Seems their PR team are on a high at least

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⌚️ Productivity Tapas: Time-Saving Tools & GPTs

• Leania: Cut waste and optimise your tech stack. Remove redundant apps. Spot overlaps. Plug capability gaps — with AI

• Ztalk.ai Real-time voice translation for every meeting across Zoom, Google meet and more

• Podwise.ai turn podcasts into searchable notes; (great for research and training)

Remember, as a Product Tapas Pro subscriber you can access the full time saving tools database for fast approaching 400 time-saving tools relevant for product managers and founders 🔥.

Check the link here to access.

🍔 Blog Bites - Essential Reads for Product Teams

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beehiiv's $50M Fundraising Journey: A Masterclass in Startup Capital

As a devoted beehiiv user myself (this newsletter is powered by their platform!), I'm continually impressed by how they've revolutionised the newsletter space. Their growth story represents one of the most exciting product journeys in today's digital landscape, demonstrating how to build and scale a category-defining product with the right capital strategy. Here, Tyler Denk shares the remarkable story of how beehiiv raised nearly $50M across four funding rounds, offering practical insights for founders navigating the fundraising landscape.

💡 "Capital is commoditised. I'd prefer to spend one week raising funds from lesser-known investors than waste ten weeks chasing capital from a 'top-tier' fund (probably with worse terms). Raising money isn't the job, building a product or service that solves customers' problems is."

When Churn Is the Model: Embracing One-and-Done Business Models

This is an interesting angle; CJ Gustafson challenges the SaaS orthodoxy that customer churn is always a problem, exploring businesses deliberately designed for one-time use where market replenishment—not customer retention—drives growth. Read the full article here.

💡 "We don't have power users. We have panicked users." This quote from SimpleClosure's CEO perfectly captures the essence of businesses built for moments of urgent need rather than ongoing engagement.

Strategy: 10 Urgent AI Takeaways for Leaders - Navigating the AI Strategy Landscape

Here, MIT Sloan Management Review offers evidence-based guidance for leaders struggling with AI strategy implementation. They highlight that despite extensive experimentation, many organisations haven't yet achieved the transformative results initially envisioned.

💡 "Despite two years of broad managerial attention and extensive experimentation, we are not seeing the large-scale GenAI-powered business transformations that many people initially envisioned." So hang on…. there may still be a reality gap between AI hype and practical business impact….? 🤔 

🎙️ Pod Shots - Bitesized Podcast Summaries

Remember, Product Tapas Pro subscribers get access to an ever growing database of all the top Podcast summaries we’ve ever created. 

Check it out here

🚀 Inside monday.com’s Transformation: Radical Transparency, Impact Over Output, and the Path to $1B ARR

It’s been a while but we’ve got another great one from Lenny’s Podcast - this time about what it takes to scale a SaaS company from scrappy startup to $1B ARR—and keep your team aligned, ambitious, and focused on what matters.

In this episode, Daniel Ara, Chief Product & Technology Officer at monday.com, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the company’s evolution, sharing the strategies and lessons that fuelled their growth.

You’ll hear how monday.com set “impossible” goals—like building 25 new features in a single month—to unlock bigger thinking and creative problem-solving across the team. Daniel explains how sharing real-time metrics with everyone (even job candidates) built a culture of radical transparency, accountability, and alignment. He dives into why focusing relentlessly on impact, not just output, transformed monday.com’s product culture, and how the company’s decision to launch five new products at once redefined their market position. He also covers his view on the power of “traps” - time-boxed deadlines that drive focus and prevent scope creep - and get a candid look at Daniel’s personal journey through impostor syndrome, scaling pains, and the mental models that keep him grounded.

Whether you’re a founder, product leader, or just passionate about building high-performing teams, this conversation is packed with interesting insights and inspiration for anyone navigating the challenges of growth and change.

 🎥Watch the full episode here

📆 Published: April 27th, 2025

🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 4 mins. Time saved: 88 mins🔥

🏁 The Wake-Up Call: When Competition Becomes a Gift

Early in monday.com’s journey, Daniel and the team realised their competitors were shipping features at a much faster pace. While they were proud of their execution, a competitor’s launch of 30 new column types (compared to monday’s five) forced a moment of reckoning. Instead of denial, the team saw this as a “gift” - proof that more was possible.

They set an audacious goal: build 25 new columns in a month, a task that previously took four months per column. By rethinking their architecture and running a hackathon where each developer owned a column, they achieved the impossible. This experience became a template for future leaps, from dashboards to automations.

Key Takeaways for Product Leaders:

• Use competition as inspiration, not intimidation - let it expand your sense of what’s possible.

• Set goals so ambitious that your current methods can’t possibly achieve them; this forces creative breakthroughs.

• Focus is as important as execution - if you can’t name the most meaningful thing you shipped, you may have a focus problem.

🎯 Impact Over Output: The Relentless PM Mindset

Daniel’s definition of a great PM is simple: someone relentless about achieving and validating real impact. Despite the pace example above, at monday.com, teams are measured not by how much they ship, but by the value they create for customers. This means spending more time defining the problem and the desired outcome than jumping to solutions.

A recent example: after launching AI Blocks (no-code AI actions), the team noticed low adoption despite positive feedback. Instead of building more features, they realised the real impact would come from making the feature accessible to all customers - so they fast-tracked legal changes to open it up, resulting in a massive adoption spike.

Key Takeaways for Product Leaders:

• Work backwards from a clear, measurable goal that drives business growth.

• Regularly ask: “What will be different for our customers in three months?” If the answer is vague, you’re not focused on impact.

• Sometimes, the highest-impact move isn’t building more, but making existing value more accessible.

🪞 Radical Transparency: Sharing Everything (Even the Scary Stuff)

One of monday.com’s most counterintuitive practices is radical transparency. Before going public, every employee—and even interview candidates—could see real-time dashboards of key metrics like paying accounts and churn. Many warned this would demoralise the team, but Daniel found the opposite: it created deep partnership and collective problem-solving.

Even as a public company, monday.com maintains this ethos with internal apps and dashboards, ensuring product managers and teams have access to the data they need to drive impact.

Key Takeaways for Product Leaders:

• Radical transparency aligns everyone around what matters and turns challenges into shared missions.

• Start small: daily numbers updates and visible dashboards can quickly shift company culture.

• Don’t let fear of “bad news” prevent you from sharing; the right people will rise to the challenge.

🦾 Taking Bold Risks: The Power of Leaps, Not Just Steps

As monday.com grew, the team faced a pivotal decision: remain a project management tool or become a multi-product platform. Instead of cautiously launching one new product at a time, they announced five simultaneously—a move many thought was reckless. Some products thrived, others were folded back, but the bold leap redefined the company and its market.

Daniel’s advice: not taking risks is itself a huge risk. The skills and strategies that got you to one stage won’t get you to the next. Be willing to let go of past strengths and embrace new ways of working.

Key Takeaways for Product Leaders:

• Big leaps can be scarier than incremental improvements, but they’re often necessary for transformation.

• Don’t let past success or fear of failure keep you from making bold moves.

• Regularly reassess your own “superpowers”—what worked at one stage may hold you back at the next.

⏳ Time Traps and Shipping Fast: Why More Time Isn’t Always Better

Monday.com uses “time traps”—fixed deadlines that force teams to cut scope and focus on core value. Daniel argues that more time often leads to over-complication and assumptions about what users want. Shipping early, even if imperfect, gets real feedback and prevents “death by a thousand features.”

He encourages teams to celebrate feedback that points out what’s missing, not just what’s working. Not every customer request should drive the roadmap; focus on feedback from those who truly value your product.

Key Takeaways for Product Leaders:

• Time-box projects to force focus and avoid endless scope creep.

• Ship early, get real feedback, and iterate - don’t wait for perfection.

• Use customer feedback wisely; prioritise input from those who are truly invested.

🧠 Personal Growth: Evolving With the Company

Daniel reflects on the personal journey of scaling with monday.com. The strengths that served him as a small-team leader - like knowing every detail - became liabilities as the company grew. He learned to let go, delegate, and focus on what the company needed at each new stage.

He also shares the importance of vulnerability, resilience, and self-care, noting that every leader feels like an imposter at times. The key is to keep learning, stay positive, and bounce back from setbacks.

Key Takeaways for Product Leaders:

• Your role will change dramatically as your company grows; be ready to evolve and let go of old habits.

• Vulnerability and self-reflection are essential for personal and organisational growth.

• Fast growth brings constant change - embrace it as a sign of progress, not chaos.

🏗️ Turning Crisis Into Strategic Advantage

When monday.com faced recurring performance issues as customers pushed the platform to its limits, the team didn’t just patch the problem - they invested in building MondayDB, a new data infrastructure that became a core competitive advantage. Daniel’s lesson: when you hit a wall, look for ways to turn it into a long-term strength.

Key Takeaways for Product Leaders:

• Don’t just fix problems - ask how you can turn them into strategic assets.

• Infrastructure and reliability are as much a part of customer value as features.

• Think 100x, not just 2x, when solving foundational challenges.

🤖 AI in Practice: From MRI Results to Pricing Research

Daniel shares how AI tools like ChatGPT have become indispensable, both personally and professionally. From interpreting medical scans to rapidly researching competitor pricing, AI accelerates learning and decision-making. The challenge for product leaders is to “productise” these capabilities so more people can benefit.

Key Takeaways for Product Leaders:

• AI is a force multiplier—use it to speed up research, analysis, and ideation.

• The real opportunity is making AI accessible and valuable to non-technical users.

• Keep experimenting with new tools and workflows to stay ahead.

🌱 Culture and People: The True Engine of Growth

Daniel closes by emphasising that culture and people are the foundation of monday.com’s success. As the company scaled, maintaining a culture of transparency, ambition, and partnership became even more critical.

Key Takeaways for Product Leaders:

• Culture isn’t just a “nice to have”—it’s the engine that drives execution and innovation.

• Invest in building teams that share your values and vision.

• Celebrate wins, learn from losses, and keep the mission front and centre.

 🎥Watch the full episode here

📅Timestamps:

• (00:00) Introduction to Daniel and monday.com

• (04:20) The pivotal moment: competitors shipping faster

• (08:50) Setting ambitious goals

• (17:44) Focusing on impact rather than features

• (27:07) Transforming your product quarterly

• (32:07) Scaling monday.com: challenges and strategies

• (39:14) How monday.com maintains transparency as a public company

• (45:40) The importance of taking risks

• (51:02) Counterintuitive lessons in product development

• (54:33) The value of timeboxing and deadlines

• (57:28) Embracing user feedback

• (59:54) Adapting leadership styles

• (01:04:43) Personal reflections on leadership

• (01:10:41) Handling crises and strategic planning

• (01:17:28) The role of AI in work and personal life

• (01:22:13) Final thoughts and lightning round

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 🍽️.