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 served up on today’s menu? 🧑‍🍳 

📰 Not Boring - The US House has passed a bill that could lead to a total TikTok ban, while TikTok pulls its lite app in the EU amid addiction concerns. Keep an eye on BePresent, the emerging "Duolingo for reducing screen time," incentivizing users to minimize phone usage. Meanwhile, Tinder enhances user safety with a new ‘Share My Date’ feature. In the hardware arena, Meta is making moves to become the Microsoft of headsets, while their Ray-Ban smart glasses upgrade is also launched. Plus news from Microsoft, Adobe, Stripe and more

⌚ Time-Saving Tools & GPTs - Discover tools like Eggnog for creating AI videos, Spinach for automating meeting notes, and Scrap.so for data collection. Osum provides instant competitive research, and Llama 3 emerges as a strong competitor to GPT-4 Turbo.

🍔 Blog Bites - Essential reads this week include insights on stakeholder management from Tim Herbig, a deep dive into the 'Reverse Trials' strategy by Elena Verna, and a roundup of Lenny Rachitsky's favourite tools and templates for product teams.

🎙️ Pod Shots - Finally we’ve got a great piece from the Everything Marketplaces Podcast with Casey Winters, discussing strategic growth, the art of supply-driven demand generation, and overcoming challenges in low-frequency marketplaces.

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

📰 Not boring

• US House passes bill that could lead to total TikTok ban 👀 

  • Whilst TikTok themselves pull their lite app in the EU over addiction concerns. Interesting to see that mental health of app users (especially kids) is on the rise. One to watch if you have similar hooks in your product.

• Somewhat to this last point, BePresent aims to be the “Duolingo for reducing screen time”, rewarding users for staying off their phone

• Tinder gets a ‘Share My Date’ feature for users to send date plans to their curious friends. But also to help with safety.

• Meta wants to be the Microsoft of headsets - started licensing its Horizon OS to Lenovo, Ausus and more

  • Their Ray-Ban smart glasses can now also process photos audio and text

• Microsoft's lightweight Phi-3 Mini model can run on smartphones with performance close to models 10x its size

• Adobe claims its new image-generation model is its best yet. It’s previous “Firefly” modes have a pretty poor rep so far, so hopefully this represents a much needed step up

• Stripe has announced a stack of product updates; some highlights:

  • 2x number of payment methods. Including Amazon Pay, Revolut Pay

  • Focus on embedded payments and Finance (17 new embedded components)

  • Lots of noise around modularity which the Department of Product sums up well, citing how Stripe will “decouple its payment business from other products in its stack which means companies will be able to choose which Stripe products they’d like to use, without necessarily using their core payment API”

• On the topic of APIs, OpenAI launched a series of new features relevant to Product teams e.g. the ability to limit how many tokens are used in each instance

• Want even more news?? View more here → 

📰 Time-Saving Tools & GPTs

Lots to get you more productive this week from better research and project management to data collection and even a better free competitor to Chat GPT:

• Eggnog - Create AI videos wth consistent characters

• Spinach joins your meetings, takes notes and captures actions in your existing tools to help you ship faster. Designed specifically for meetings like daily standups, weekly syncs, user research etc. and links to all the usual tools (slack, notion, asana, jira etc.) it could be an interesting productivity hack for busy PMs

• Scrap.so - browse websites, collect any data and sent it wherever you want

• Osum - Get instant access to detailed competitive research, SWOT analysis, buyer personas, growth opportunities and more for any product or business.

• Llama 3 - Meta.ai’s Chat GPT competitor. The full-fat version is almost as good as GPT-4 Turbo and the free version is more performant and faster than the free version of ChatGPT. (geo-restricted so you may need a VPN to use)

• Dart - “The ultimate AI project management tool”. Bold claim, but could be worth a look

🍔 Blog Bites - Essential Reads for Product Teams

Stakeholder Management: Getting on With Your Researchers

Here’s a short piece from Tim Herbig on how Product Managers can better collaborate and support UX researchers. Here’s a TL;DR 👇️ 

Growth: Reverse Trials Explained

Wrestling with whether you should offer a trial, or adopt a freemium model? Elena Verna argues you should do neither. Instead, opt for a Reverse Trial with examples from Asana, Airtable, Notion, Canva and Dropbox.

Tools & Templates: Lenny’s favourites from 2020

Bit of an old post, but I found the link from the Product Mind community in my inbox this week and had to re-share it.

In this post from Lenny Rachitsky there’s 34 great links on PRDs/1pagers, Strategy, Vision, Go-to-market and more. Well worth a scan at the very least.

🎙️ Pod Shots

Today we cover the recent Everything Marketplaces Podcast with Casey Winters. Casey is a Growth Advisor to marketplaces like Whatnot and Bounce and was most recently the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite. He’s also worked with marketplaces like Faire, Hipcamp, Airbnb, Thumbtack, and many more. He’s an industry go-to when it comes to product and growth for marketplaces and frequently publishes posts about them on his blog. This is a great primer for anyone interested in the essentials and growth tactics for marketplaces.

⚒️ Everything Marketplaces From Grubhub, Eventbrite, Airbnb & Whatnot

🎙️ Listen to the full episode here 

📆 Published: April 20h, 2024

🕒 Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes. Time saved: 45 minutes🔥 

Mastering Growth: The Casey Winters Methodology 📈

Casey blends deep analytical skills with a visionary approach to marketplace dynamics. His career transition from analyst to top advisor illustrates the strategic acumen necessary for today’s marketplace leaders. So what can you to do emulate him?

Key Insights for Founders and Product Managers:

• Strategic Balance: Winters emphasises the critical need to balance supply and demand, highlighting strategies to leverage existing supply for driving demand, a tactic often underestimated in its potential to scale efficiently.

• Common Pitfalls: He points out frequent errors such as the oversimplification of growth metrics and the absence of a detailed scalability playbook, which can impede long-term success.

The Art of Supply-Driven Demand Generation 🔄

Winters articulates a compelling case for using supply as a catalyst for demand. This approach not only enhances efficiency but also serves as a growth multiplier when applied with precision.

Detailed Learning Points:

• Case Study: Eventbrite: Under Winters’ leadership, Eventbrite doubled its demand driven by event creators from 15% to over 30%. This was achieved by encouraging creators to use Eventbrite’s marketing tools, thus organically boosting user acquisition through supplier activities.

• Supply-Driven Strategies: Casey suggests incentivising suppliers to promote their services, effectively turning them into advocates for the marketplace. This can be a cost-effective alternative to traditional advertising.

Addressing Challenges in Low-Frequency Marketplaces 🔍

Winters provides strategies specifically tailored to marketplaces where transactions occur infrequently, highlighting the need for maintaining user engagement over prolonged periods.

Actionable Strategies:

• Enhancing Visibility and Recall: Invest heavily in SEO and maintain a robust presence on major platforms to ensure that your marketplace remains the go-to option when the need arises.

• Building Community Engagement: For marketplaces like Zillow, creating non-transactional yet engaging content such as Zestimate keeps users returning more frequently, maintaining top-of-mind awareness.

B2B Marketplace Essentials: A Strategic Checklist ✔️

Delving into the specifics of B2B marketplaces, Winters underscores the necessity for market-specific knowledge and a clear understanding of industry dynamics.

Checklist for Success:

• Supply Fragmentation and Frequency: Evaluate your marketplace for supply fragmentation and transaction frequency. This will dictate your approach to scaling and customer acquisition.

• Industry-Specific Insights: Drawing from his advisory roles, Winters highlights the importance of profound industry insights before entering a B2B marketplace, noting that foundational knowledge significantly impacts the trajectory of growth and scalability.

Community Engagement: Q&A Insights 💬

During an interactive Q&A session, Casey shared further nuanced strategies, answering questions on scaling, category expansion, and integrating SaaS solutions into marketplace models.

Key Takeaways from the Q&A:

• On Category Expansion: Winters discussed the successful strategies employed by platforms like Whatnot, which scaled by understanding the unique attributes of initial categories before branching out to similar ones, ensuring product-market fit across expansions.

• Integrating SaaS with Marketplaces: He critically evaluates the trend of starting with a SaaS model before transitioning to a marketplace, advising that a marketplace-first approach, focusing on liquidity and user acquisition, tends to yield better long-term results.

We’ve barely scratched the surface on this so if this interests you, take a listen to the full episode here.

📅 Timestamps:

• 0:19 - Introduction of Casey Winners and his extensive marketplace experience.

• 1:29 - Casey shares insights from his early career and key roles in major companies.

• 3:10 - Discussion on growth strategies and advisory roles in various marketplaces.

• 4:30 - Insights into the appeal and business models of marketplaces.

• 6:00 - Importance of detailed metrics in marketplace strategies.

• 7:32 - Leveraging supply to drive demand as a growth strategy.

• 13:49 - Overcoming challenges in low-frequency marketplaces.

• 19:16 - Key requirements for successful B2B marketplaces.

• 24:14 - Start of the group Q&A session, addressing specific community questions.

• 43:34 - Closing remarks and final insights.

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Alastair & the Product Tapas Team 🍽️.