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 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: From WhatsApp’s new AI features to OpenAI and Mattel’s wild toymaking collab, the lines between tech, toys, and everyday life are blurring fast. Stablecoins are finally getting their moment, YouTube is borrowing from TikTok’s playbook, and Gen Z is quietly rewriting the rules of digital life. There’s even a coding dream team you didn’t know you needed.

⌚️ Productivity Tapas: Inspired by a killer post from Greg Isenberg, I’ve rounded up just how wild today’s time-saving workflow tools have become. From instant automations to voice cloning and AI agents that negotiate your bills, I’ve listed my favourite finds from the past year—plus a stack of others you probably haven’t seen yet. (Pro tip: Product Tapas Pro subscribers get access to the full, ever-growing database of over 400 tools. 🔥)

🍔 Blog Bites: What can WeWork’s wild ride teach us about comebacks? How did Shopify’s app ecosystem quietly outmanoeuvre Amazon? And why does every PM suddenly need an AI strategy? The answers might surprise you.

🎙️ Pod Shots: Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe Herd gets real about burnout, broken dating apps, and what it’ll take to make tech more human. If you build products for people, this is a good one.

Plenty to get stuck into - off we go! 🚀

📰 Not boring

AI Everywhere (The Invasion Continues)

• WhatsApp gets AI-powered chat summaries. Also gets ads. The duality of free platforms

• Meta AI's public feed is PUBLIC - ICYMMI indeed. Your AI chats aren't as private as you think

• OpenAI and Mattel team up for AI toymaking. Nowhere is safe from AI, not even Barbie's Dream House

• Reddit launches AI tools for advertisers to spot trending subreddit topics. Because human trend-spotting wasn't fast enough for the attention economy

• OpenAI brings reusable prompts to the API

• Google tests Audio Overviews for search queries

• Some absolute BOSS hooked up Claude to pair program with o3 and Gemini 2.5 via MCP. The all-star coding lineup we didn't know we needed

Money Moves

• Stablecoins are going to be massive (yes, I know I am a stuck record here). Walmart and Amazon exploring their own should finally convince the skeptics

• Plus the US Senate passes GENIUS stablecoin bill - crypto's first major legislative win that isn't just "please don't ban us."

  Multiplier (ex-Stripe exec) raises$27.5M for AI-powered accounting roll-ups. Even accounting is getting the AI treatment.

Acquisitions

• Six-month-old, solo-owned Base44 sells to Wix for$80M cash

• Multiplier, founded by ex-Stripe exec, nabs $27.5M to fuel AI-powered accounting roll-ups

The Rest

• YouTube launches Shopping stickers for Shorts. TikTok's commerce playbook, I think, but going to be massive for them for sure

• New code in Spotify’s app references the long-awaited ‘lossless’ tier (FOUR years after they announced it…)

• Want to build internal apps quickly at enterprise scale? Maybe Superblocks is for you

• Some interesting thoughts from Reid Hoffman about how to find a job in. the AI wave

• Deloitte's UK Digital Consumer Trends 2025 drops some interesting data points: Almost half of UK consumers use GenAI tools (passive use even higher), Gen Z leads adoption by miles, device ownership has plateaued, streaming subscriptions are flat but "subscription cycling" is the new normal, and more Gen Z are ditching home broadband for mobile data as their primary internet

Business news as it should be.

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⌚️ Productivity Tapas: Time-Saving Tools & GPTs

• ICYMI this was a great tweet from Greg Isenberg. I’ve added examples to each for you 🙂 and you can check out the full list of over 400 tools I have tested in the link below.

  “Okay, let me get this straight...

  1. You have 1-click n8n, Zapier, and Lindy AI agent templates to automate your content, outreach, research, reporting, anything.

  2. You can clone your voice with 5 seconds of audio. Synthesia, HeyGen

  3. You can run billion-parameter AI models on your laptop for free. Chorus.sh 

  4. You have agents that write, debug, and ship code while you sleep. Codegen

  5. You can turn scripts into talking head videos with your face and voice. Synthesia, HeyGen

  6. You can spin up AI agents to negotiate bills and cancel subscriptions. Taskade.com or MultiOn.ai or Luminai.com or 19pine.ai or truebill.ai, ChatThing 

  7. You can summarise 300-page PDFs in seconds. mapify.so, pdfbff.ai, claude.com, chatgpt.com, chatpdf.com etc.

  8. You can turn rough Looms into polished blog posts instantly. Chatgpt.com, Claude.com, ChatLLM 

  9. You can generate personalised landing pages for every visitor. Landing.so, Unbounce

  10. You can talk to your data like it's ChatGPT. dataGpt , perfectwiki

  11. You can train a custom GPT on your company docs and have it answer support tickets 24/7. Vectorshift

  12. You can A/B test 100 ad creatives before you spend a dollar... all AI-generated. BoardAd, Bestever, chatGpt 

  13. You can scrape the internet, analyse competitors, and generate go-to-market strategies overnight. Otterly, Flowriver, Klue

  14. You can deepfake yourself into any language and accent to localise content globally. Synthesia, HeyGen

  15. You can run AI to audit your finances and suggest tax optimisations (for a pretty much free second opinion) taxgpt,

  16. You can generate an entire week of social content with tone, brand, and format baked in. JasperAI

  17. You can create full e-commerce stores from just a CSV and a brand vibe. Shopify

  18. You can deploy voice agents that call leads, qualify them, and update your CRM... in your voice. Justcall, Synthflow

      TLDR; you can do a lot, my friend”

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

Leadership: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Adam Neumann

Recently the “How they grow” newsletter merged into Bill Kerr’s “Open source CEO” and because I sub to HTG, I'm getting a stack of onboarding emails (It's a great way to onboard new readers by the way). The, latest one is a banger. I might have even covered it back in January 2025 but I'm putting it out again if I did because it's just a brilliant story that you've got to read.

I am of course talking about The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Adam Neumann.

Kerr provides a comprehensive analysis of Adam Neumann's controversial journey from WeWork's meteoric rise to its spectacular implosion and his subsequent comeback with Flow. Read the full article here.

💡 "Neumann's story is a Rorschach test for how we view entrepreneurship. To some, he's the ultimate hustler who built something from nothing. To others, he's the embodiment of startup excess and poor governance. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between."

E-commerce: The Strategic Power of Shopify's App Ecosystem

In this article from a couple of years back (time flies…) Tom Alder explores how Shopify transformed from a snowboarding equipment store into a platform that rivals Amazon by creating a thriving ecosystem of third-party apps that empower independent sellers. Read the full article here.

💡 "Amazon won e-commerce by being the department store. Shopify claimed its wedge by being how sellers build their own store."

Strategy: How to Build an Effective AI Strategy

AI, AI, AI , AI it’s all AI these days. Well, yes I guess. But if you can’t beat them….

It’s clear, every PM and team should team should be questioning their AI strategy (even if - oddly - it’s do nothing). Raymond Peng and Amy Liu from Google Cloud outline a comprehensive framework for developing an AI strategy that drives business value, based on research with 2,500 C-suite leaders and Google's experience implementing AI solutions. Read the full article here.

💡 "A comprehensive AI strategy is vital for driving business value faster — or, at the very least, ahead of the competition. While only 35% of companies currently say they have an AI strategy in place, those that do see a dramatic impact faster, with the large majority (78%) already seeing ROI from gen AI."

🎙️ 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

💔 Dating Apps Are Broken: Bumble's CEO on What Went Wrong and What's Next

Whitney Wolfe Herd built two of the world's biggest dating apps before she was 30. She co-founded Tinder, left after a messy sexual harassment lawsuit, then created Bumble—the "feminist Tinder" that required women to make the first move. She became the youngest woman to take a company public, a poster child for the "girl boss" era, and joined the ranks of self-made female billionaires.

But in her candid conversation with NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Wolfe Herd admits something most tech CEOs won't: dating apps, including her own, are fundamentally broken. After stepping away from Bumble for over a year due to exhaustion, she's back as CEO with a radical vision to fix what she helped create.

Here's what she learned during her time away, why Gen Z has abandoned dating apps, and her plan to rebuild online dating from the ground up.

 🎥Watch the full episode here

📆 Published: May 10th, 2025

🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 3 mins. Time saved: 45 mins🔥

🔄 The Comeback: Why She Left and Why She Returned

Wolfe Herd's departure from Bumble in 2023 wasn't the typical founder exit story. She was exhausted, burned out from a decade of building consumer brands while living in the public eye. "I was 22 years old when we were starting Tinder and then I became the Tinder girl and then I became the Tinder lawsuit girl and then I became the Bumble girl," she reflects.

The narrative around her departure hurt. With Bumble's stock down 80% from its peak, media speculation suggested she'd been pushed out. But the reality was simpler: she needed a break to rediscover who she was beyond her companies.

Her return came through an unexpected phone call. CEO Lydiani Jones, who had taken over from Wolfe Herd, called to say she was stepping down—burned out from the same pressures that had driven Wolfe Herd away. "I felt like I was looking in a mirror," Wolfe Herd says. "I felt like I was looking at myself a year prior."

Key Takeaways:

• Founder burnout is real, even for successful entrepreneurs who seem to have it all

• Taking time away can provide crucial perspective on what actually matters

• Sometimes the best leaders are the ones who've learned from their mistakes and returned with wisdom

👑 The Girl Boss Era: Rise and Fall

Wolfe Herd's trajectory perfectly captures the arc of the "girl boss" era. When she started Bumble in 2014, this was "before Target started selling all the girl power t-shirts". Her innovation wasn't calculated; it came from genuine frustration with dating dynamics where "women had to wait for men to choose them."

But by 2016-2018, the cultural tide turned. The same media that had celebrated young female founders began tearing them down. A Bloomberg article about Bumble's legislative work to combat cyber-flashing was headlined something like "Bumble's not feminist, it's just feminist marketing."

"It sent me into a very dark place because I felt like I could do nothing right," Wolfe Herd admits. "I felt like anything I did would just auto get labeled back to this woman CEO. She must be a faker."

Key Takeaways:

• The "girl boss" era created unrealistic expectations for female founders to be perfect

• Media narratives can be particularly harsh on young women in leadership positions

• Authentic mission-driven work can get dismissed as performative marketing

• The cultural backlash against female leaders contributed to her burnout

📱 The Growth Trap: How Bumble Lost Its Way

After going public in 2021, Bumble fell into the same trap that ensnares many tech companies: prioritising growth metrics over core mission. Wolfe Herd describes turning down early partnership opportunities that would have flooded the app with users because she understood a fundamental truth about dating apps: they're not social networks.

"This is not a content platform where you can just scroll and scroll and scroll and scale drives results," she explains. "This is a double-sided marketplace. One person gets on and they have to see someone that is relevant to them, that they want to see."

But during the pandemic growth surge, the company shifted focus from "inputs" (are members getting what they came for?) to "outputs" (revenue, user count, engagement). The result? Users started having worse experiences, leading to the current crisis of dating app fatigue.

Key Takeaways:

• Quality over quantity matters more in dating apps than other platforms

• Public company pressure to show growth can undermine product fundamentals

• Success metrics should align with user outcomes, not just business metrics

• The pandemic growth surge masked underlying product problems

😤 Gen Z's Dating App Fatigue: The Real Problem

While many blame generational differences for Gen Z's abandonment of dating apps, Wolfe Herd sees a deeper issue: the apps make people feel terrible. The swipe mechanism forces users to constantly judge and reject others while knowing they're being judged in return.

"Our brains were not engineered to behave like this," she says. "You're saying no. You're looking at someone and determining if they're a yes or a no. So you are judging someone. That means you're being judged on the back end. None of those things feel good."

The math is brutal: users might swipe through 100 people to get one or two quality matches. That's not a productive experience—it's a recipe for rejection and frustration. Gen Z, which prioritises mental health more than previous generations, simply won't tolerate feeling bad to find love.

Key Takeaways:

• The swipe mechanism creates inherently negative psychological experiences

• Paradox of choice overwhelms users and reduces satisfaction

• Gen Z's focus on mental health makes them less tolerant of apps that feel bad to use

• Volume-based matching doesn't work when it requires constant rejection

🤖 The AI Solution: Smarter Matching, Not More Swiping

Wolfe Herd's vision for Bumble's future centres on AI-powered matchmaking that eliminates the need for endless swiping. Instead of showing users hundreds of profiles to sort through, AI analyses what makes great profiles and great matches, then presents the most relevant options.

"The goal for Bumble over the next few years is to become the world's smartest matchmaker," she explains. AI could identify patterns in successful connections and use that data to make better introductions from the start.

But she's not betting everything on AI. Bumble is also rolling out human dating coaches because "I don't want an AI to be my therapist. I want to talk to a real person who has EQ and heart and understands."

Key Takeaways:

• AI should reduce friction and improve matching quality, not replace human connection

• The goal is fewer, better matches rather than more options to swipe through

• Human coaches complement AI by providing emotional intelligence and empathy

• Technology should make love "more human," not less

💝 Beyond Dating: The Relationship Business

Perhaps most significantly, Wolfe Herd is expanding her definition of what Bumble does. It's not just a dating app—it's a "relationship business" focused on helping people connect in all aspects of life. Bumble for Friends has become surprisingly successful, with many users finding roommates, activity partners, and genuine friendships.

The company is also exploring deeper psychological tools, working with therapists to create quizzes that help users understand their attachment styles, communication patterns, and relationship values. "I find it very hard to believe that people can have healthy love with others if they cannot find a way to have a healthy relationship with themselves," she says.

Future features will integrate real-world events and activities, helping users find local running clubs, board game nights, and other in-person gatherings. The goal isn't to keep people on the app—it's to get them offline and into meaningful real-world connections.

Key Takeaways:

• Success means getting users off the app and into real relationships

• Self-knowledge and emotional intelligence are prerequisites for healthy relationships

• Friendship and community connections are as important as romantic matches

• Technology should facilitate real-world gatherings, not replace them

🏢 The Broader Tech Reckoning

Wolfe Herd's story reflects broader challenges facing the tech industry, particularly around female leadership and the unintended consequences of digital platforms. She notes that venture capital funding for female entrepreneurs has actually decreased over the past decade, and many of her female founder contemporaries have left or been pushed out.

The conversation also touches on the "tech-broification" of Silicon Valley and the shift away from the social justice focus that characterised the late 2010s. While some see this as a positive return to "just focusing on work," Wolfe Herd maintains that inclusivity and equity remain central to building healthy relationship platforms.

Key Takeaways:

• Female founders face ongoing challenges in securing funding and maintaining leadership roles

• The pendulum has swung away from social justice focus in tech

• Building inclusive products requires inclusive teams and values

• The industry is showing more caution about AI's potential negative impacts than in previous tech waves

🔮 The Future of Connection

Wolfe Herd's vision extends beyond fixing dating apps to addressing broader issues of loneliness and social isolation. She sees technology's role as connecting people to real-world communities and activities, not keeping them glued to screens.

"I fail my job if I trap you on the phone," she says. "I'd do a great job in my mind if I help get you to board game night, if I help get you to bowling as a group, if I help get you to Bible study as a group."

This philosophy represents a fundamental shift in how we think about social technology—from engagement and retention to facilitation and real-world outcomes. It's a recognition that the attention economy model that drove the first generation of social apps may not be sustainable or healthy.

Key Takeaways:

• The goal should be getting people offline and into real-world connections

• Technology works best as a facilitator, not a destination

• Addressing loneliness requires community building, not just individual matching

• The next generation of social apps should prioritize user wellbeing over engagement metrics

I thought Whitney Wolfe Herd's journey from Tinder co-founder to Bumble CEO to exhausted founder to returning leader was a pretty interesting view into both the promise and perils of building social technology.

It was also pretty refreshing to hear her admit that dating apps (her product!) are broken and her commitment to rebuilding them around human wellbeing rather than engagement metrics, suggests a more mature approach to social technology.

Whether she can execute this vision remains to be seen, but her story offers hope that the next generation of social platforms might prioritise human flourishing over pure growth….

 🎥Watch the full episode here

📅Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Introduction

• 02:00 - Time away from Bumble

• 05:02 - The decision to return to Bumble

• 08:15 - Bumble as “Feminist Tinder”

• 10:27 - On the “girl boss” narrative

• 15:50 - How the lawsuit against Tinder impacted Herd, professionally

• 21:20 - Tech optimism

• 23:15 - Bumble’s dip in user growth

• 27:33 - Gen Z and dating apps

• 30:32 - AI and dating apps

• 38:20 - The state of female leadership in tech

• 41:36 - The tech industry’s shift away from politics

• 43:12 - Dating apps vs. meeting in person

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 🍽️.