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Welcome to this week’s 🌮 Product Tapas.
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What’s cooking this week? 🥘
Netflix signs a $72bn Warner deal (streaming assets only), Paramount goes hostile three days later (higher price, worse buyer, boardroom drama), and Apple employees are borderline giddy about their design VP leaving for Meta (culture crisis dressed as personnel change). Meanwhile, Meta's chief AI scientist calls Silicon Valley's scaling bet 'bullshit' (What does he know? He's only a Turing winner), and ChatGPT beat Temu by making cat gifs more addictive than impulse buying.
📰 Not Boring → Bidding wars, exodus crises, paradigm shifts
⌚️ Productivity Tapas → Backend testing, local AI builders, workspace
agents🔧 Claude Code Series → Real-world PM workflow automation (Part 3 dropped this week!)
🍔 Blog Bites → Self-awareness, UX tactics, team effectiveness
🎙️ Pod Shots → Full stack builder revolution
Let's go 🚀
📰 Not boring
💰 Money Talks
Netflix acquiring Warner Bros for $72bn equity value ($82.7bn enterprise)
Paramount Skydance launched hostile $108bn counter-bid for Warner on 8 December
SpaceX planning 2026 IPO at $1.5 trillion valuation, would be largest ever
Meta cutting Reality Labs 30% ($4-6bn), layoffs in January
Reality Labs lost $70-77bn since 2021, Meta stock jumped 3.4% on cuts news
Netflix announced a $72bn deal for Warner Bros' streaming assets on December 5th. Three days later, Paramount went hostile with a $108bn bid for the entire company - bypassing the board that had already rejected them. WBD shareholders now face a choice: take Netflix's $27.75/share for just the good bits, or Paramount's $30/share for everything including the cable networks nobody wants. Higher price, weaker buyer. SpaceX is targeting a $1.5 trillion IPO - the largest in history - without disclosing a single revenue or profit figure. Meta announced $6bn in Reality Labs cuts after losing $77bn over four years. The stock jumped $69bn in one day. Markets don't punish bad bets - they punish holding them too long.
🍎 Apple's Exodus
Liquid Glass was so poorly received that Apple added a preference toggle in 26.1 letting users undo the entire redesign. Meanwhile, the AI team is haemorrhaging talent to Meta (who offered one researcher nearly $200 million) and OpenAI, frustrated by bureaucracy and strategic uncertainty that prevents them shipping anything meaningful. When your own employees are "borderline giddy" about your VP leaving for a competitor, you don't just have a personnel problem - you have a culture where talented people feel they can't do their best work.
🏗️ Infrastructure & Bets
ByteDance is dropping $38 billion on a Brazil data centre - powered entirely by renewables - whilst facing ongoing US ban threats. Call it regulatory arbitrage: building sovereign infrastructure in friendly jurisdictions with clean energy cost advantages. Meta acquired Limitless AI (the conversation-recording pendant), absorbed the team into Reality Labs, then immediately discontinued all products. Classic 2025 move: buy the talent, kill the competitor, save two years on internal R&D.
⚖️ Legal & Culture
OpenAI must hand over 20m chat logs in NYT copyright case
Yann LeCun launching Paris startup, says "Silicon Valley hypnotised by generative models"
Meta signed commercial deals with publishers for real-time news
A judge ordered OpenAI to hand over 20 million user conversations to the New York Times - proving whether ChatGPT systematically regurgitates copyrighted content to real users, not arguing about training data. The smoking gun everyone's been waiting for. Meanwhile, Meta's chief AI scientist and Turing Award winner Yann LeCun is launching a Paris startup because he thinks Silicon Valley is "completely hypnotised" by generative models, calling claims that scaling will reach AGI "bullshit." That's definitely a signal. Meta's now paying publishers for real-time news access - two years after killing Facebook News - because generative AI has an information currency problem it can't solve by scraping.
🌍 Everything Else
Google's launching AI glasses in two versions - audio-only first, then monocular display. Sounds like they learned from Glass except the lesson was just "wait for the hype cycle and launch simpler first." ChatGPT beat Temu to become 2025's most-downloaded app on organic adoption, not growth hacking. Turns out creating cute cat gifs and witty dating app content is more addictive than impulse buying. An existential threat to Google's mobile search monopoly is now playing out in Apple's App Store.
⌚ Productivity Tapas: Time-Saving Tools & Workflow Automation
Kerno: Never manually write, or and maintain backend tests again! Kerno automates integration testing end-to-end inside your IDE. It understands your codebase, generates meaningful tests, spins up test environments, executes tests, and delivers instant audit reports to catch issues early, validate changes before committing your code.
Dyad: Powerful free alternative to Lovable etc. Free, local, open-source AI app builder like Lovable, Bolt, or Replit — but runs on your computer, works with any AI model, and has no lock-in.
Google Workspace Studio: build AI agents inside Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and more! No coding needed. Powered by Gemini 3, it turns natural language prompts into workflows that can triage emails, generate reports, or coordinate projects.
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.
🤖 Claude Code series
ICMI - I issued part three of the Claude Code series this week. Parts 1-2 showed why Claude Code matters and how to set up the three-layer stack. This week’s instalment digs deep on what you can actually build with it.
🍔 Blog Bites - Essential Reads for Product Teams
Leadership: The Power of Self-Awareness in Leadership Success
Bill Kerr interviews Jerry Colonna, Co-Founder and CEO of Reboot, delving into the crucial role of self-awareness in effective leadership. Colonna emphasises that self-acknowledgment is essential for leaders to face challenges and promote authentic connections within their teams. Read the full article here.
💡 "The best founders can separate their sense of self-worth from their company while still remaining deeply driven to succeed." This quote underscores the need for leaders to cultivate a healthy perspective on personal and professional value.
Key Takeaways
• Self-Awareness: Colonna argues that acknowledging struggles, such as imposter syndrome, is the first step towards effective leadership. Understanding one’s limitations fosters a culture of honesty and openness.
• Feedback Culture: Successful leaders create an environment where team members feel safe sharing feedback, enabling an open dialogue about what works and what doesn’t.
• Emotional Detachment: Colonna points out that founders should detach their self-worth from their business to prevent stress from leading to burnout, enabling clearer decision-making.
• Daily Practices: Cultivating mental and physical wellness is crucial. Colonna suggests integrating daily rituals like meditation and journaling rather than relying on occasional practices for better well-being.
UX Inspiration: Elevate Your User Experience with These Innovative Tactics
It’s not news that I ❤ Built for Mars. This week’s is a double whammy as he includes my favourite voice-to-text tool: Wispr Flow. This issue it was all about creative onboarding strategies utilised by various apps to enhance user engagement. Read the full article here.
💡 "Showcasing the uses, To showcase all the apps you can use Wispr Flow in, their onboarding includes app icons you can cycle through and click on to test out."
Key Takeaways:
• Showcasing Features: Wispr Flow creatively uses app icons during onboarding, allowing users to click through and actively engage with the app’s functionalities. This interactive approach helps users understand the app’s offerings more intuitively.
• Easter Eggs in Onboarding: Blip introduces a playful element by offering an easter egg during sign-up that explains the value of notifications. This adds a layer of discovery that can enhance user satisfaction and retention.
• Holiday Theming: Cal AI’s “Holiday Magic” feature adds a festive twist to their service, personalising the user experience and encouraging engagement through seasonal themes that resonate emotionally with users.
• Nudging for Engagement: Duolingo encourages users to nudge friends back into the app, integrating social interaction as a strategy to boost app usage. This simple feature effectively leverages peer influence to enhance user engagement.
Insights: Cooking Up Change in Product Teams
John Cutler explores the parallels between restaurant operations and product team dynamics, highlighting the frequent disconnect between activity and true customer satisfaction. He asserts that while product teams appear busy, they often fail to deliver value effectively. Read the full article here.
💡 "But restaurants are not judged by how busy the kitchen is. They are judged by how consistently they deliver great food, on time, to the people who ordered it."
Key Takeaways:
• Customer Feedback Loops: Real-time feedback in restaurants allows staff to correct errors instantaneously. In contrast, product teams often overlook the importance of continuous feedback from customer-facing roles, which can lead to misaligned priorities and unmet needs.
• Leadership Dysfunction: Leadership often prioritises superficial metrics over genuine operational health, creating a culture that rewards busyness instead of effectiveness. This misalignment can result in a disconnect between staff capabilities and strategic goals.
• Motion vs. Impact: The observation that activity levels do not guarantee successful outcomes resonates deeply within product teams. Without concrete results, busy teams risk falling into a cycle of performative productivity, leading to stagnation.
• Lack of Strategy: Without a clear product vision or menu, teams may overextend themselves chasing whims and trends. This lack of strategic focus leads to complex backlogs and operational chaos, which ultimately degrades quality and customer satisfaction.
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🎙 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 Full Stack Builder Revolution
Whatever your thoughts on LinkedIn, this recent pod from Lenny is interesting.
LinkedIn scrapped their legendary APM programme for something radical: full stack builders who take products from idea to launch, regardless of function. Custom AI agents remove technical barriers. This is product development redesigned for the AI era.
Tomer Cohen | Lenny’s Podcast
The TL;DR
🔧 The full stack builder revolution — LinkedIn scrapped their APM programme and created "full stack builders"—people from any function who can take products from idea to launch using AI tools. A user researcher became a growth PM using these capabilities.
🧠 Human judgment trumps automation — Vision, empathy, communication, creativity, and judgment remain human superpowers. AI automates everything else, but high-quality decision-making in complex, ambiguous situations belongs to builders.
🤖 AI agents as teammates — LinkedIn built internal agents (research agent, growth agent, analyst agent, design agent) that critique ideas, analyse data, and accelerate decisions. These aren't off-the-shelf tools—they're trained on LinkedIn's specific data.
🔄 Orchestration beats point solutions — Multiple AI agents working together (research agent collaborating with growth agent) creates exponential value. The orchestration layer is where LinkedIn invested heavily.
⚡ Pods: Small, nimble, mission-focused — Teams modelled on Navy Seals—cross-trained builders assembled into small pods for quarters, then reassembled. Speed, adaptability, and resilience replace bloated traditional teams.
⚖️ Performance reviews rewired — Cross-functional capability now matters more than functional depth. Your designer colleagues rate your design thinking. Your engineers rate your technical understanding. Full stack fluency is now a promotion criterion.
🎯 Change management trumps tools — Rolling out AI tools without incentives, examples, and cultural shifts doesn't work. LinkedIn's leaders model the behaviour—executives build products themselves to show it's possible.
📱 Mobile shift 2.0 — This transformation mirrors the mobile revolution when companies required all work to ship on mobile. Same forcing function, but for AI-powered development instead of platforms.
💰 Strategic investment required — Off-the-shelf tools (Co-pilot, ChatGPT Enterprise) are starting points, but customisation and integration into your specific context drives the biggest gains. This isn't a quick win.
🌱 Progress over destination — The mindset shift matters most: fall in love with continuous growth, not reaching a fixed state. Measure your year-over-year delta, not your arrival point.
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 🍽️.