• Charbel X
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  • Apple's Palm-sized Mac Mini, Additions to GitHub's AI coder, Customer Lifetime Value and more

Apple's Palm-sized Mac Mini, Additions to GitHub's AI coder, Customer Lifetime Value and more

Good morning from a somewhat sunny Sydney,

As with every other day, lots happening in the world of design, tech, startups and creativity. Shrinking chips, peak creative state, AI everything and more—all here to inspire your product development journey.

So grab yourself a coffee, tea, energy booster or take a deep breath. Let’s get started!

(Remember, Good Things Come To Those Who Make.)

Yours in innovation,
Charbel
Founder of Velvet Onion, Faster Zebra and more to come …

Today’s news

You can hide Apple’s latest device under your palm, GitHub and OpenAI face off in code and Teddy Roosevelt has something to say.

Have a look at what’s happening around →

Highlights

  • AI: GitHub’s Copilot: Entering competition against OpenAI in AI code writing

  • Design: UI Update for Microsoft Teams

  • Science & Tech: Apple’s new pocket-sized Mac Mini: All about M4 chip

  • Founding: Customer Lifetime Value matters (Especially in SaaS)

  • Product: Acing Product Marketing by mastering Go-To-Market skills

  • Creativity: Zero-thinking state of mind = Peak creative energy

  • Today’s AI image: AI in HR

  • Quote for the day: Wisdom from Theodore Roosevelt

AI

GitHub’s Copilot: Partnering with OpenAI’s competitions for AI code writing

With GitHub’s new addition to its AI code writer, developers can converse with Google Gemini and Claude 3.5 Sonnet; the two giants competing against OpenAI in every aspect of AI development. These two models will soon be available for chat in GitHub Copilot.

However, OpenAI will still remain as a default model for code writing.

Also in GitHub

  • GitHub Spark: Allows users to create and share little apps or as GitHub likes to call them- “sparks”. Best thing: They don’t have to write a single line of code.

  • A stack of features to boost coders’ productivity: multi-file editing, Copilot code reviews, new agentic updates.

Design

UI Update for Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams, one of the oldest players in digital management and productivity, is refurnishing its User Interface that would be open for public preview by November.

What’s new?

  • Combined “chat” and “channels”

  • Conversations in channels, currently found in the team section, will be relocated to chat. This tweak is to simplify the user experience by letting users view all messages in one place without switching sections.

  • New filters would help users segregate chats, channels, or unread messages. 

  • The @mention feature: Helps introduce new ideas or messages across multiple chats or channels.

  • Organised conversations: Users will be able to collectively access all conversations regarding same project, whether in chats, channels or Teams bot.

Science & Tech

Apple’s new pocket-sized Mac Mini: All about M4 chip

Apple has revealed to the world its new 5 x 5 inches Mac mini with its latest tech, the M4 chip included.

What’s new?

  • The Mac mini is less than half the size of previous models of its family.

  • It includes innovative thermal architecture for efficient air circulation.

  • The M4 chip is 1.8 times faster than M1 in CPU performance and about 2.2 faster in GPU performance.

  • Apple’s made impressive advancements with a 10-core CPU, a 10-core GPU and 16GB unified memory (standard) all embedded into a diminutive, compact and yet highly efficient chip.

  • Even better, it can be upgraded to Apple’s very latest M4 Pro. 14-core CPU and 20-core GPU. Faster AI operations, even the most complex ones.

What does this imply?

With advancements like these made by Apple and other tech giants, we are speedier than ever in the journey to normalisation of smooth AI logistics all over the globe.

Founding

Customer Lifetime Value matters (Especially in SaaS)

It is quite evident from the statistics that the overall financial situation of the SaaS industry, particularly publicly traded companies, is degrading. 

One of the key indicators is ever-increasing payback periods. 

Worsening paybacks

The average payback period of public software firms has surged from 35 months to 44 months. It implies that it now takes over 3.5 years of staying in deal with a customer to recover the costs of his acquisition. Until then, there will be no profitable outcome from the customer. 

Why does Lifetime Value matter?

Since the profitability of acquiring a customer can be realised only after the payback period is over, what matters the most is for how long he retains as a customer. Here’s when Customer Lifetime Value comes into the picture. 

A company is doing good as long as its average LTV exceeds well over its average payback period. 

But if the payback of a SaaS company is 3 years and the average LTV is 3 years and a quarter or worse, 2.5 years, the company’s performance is quite questionable. 

Product

Acing Product Marketing by mastering Go-To-Market skills

Many don’t believe it but the GTM process of any organisation begins with product development itself. These are 2 ways product teams can boost the efficiency of sales and marketing teams by participating in GTM:

  1. Defining what category of leads to qualify

Since the product teams possess relatively more experience with the product, they also know exactly what category of target customers the product fits in. 

Hence, product developers can solidify the Ideal Customer Profile for sales and marketing teams so that only prospects with high-conversion-stake are approached and efforts are better streamlined. 

  1. Self-service model for low-value customers (less burden on sales teams)

Sales teams spending efforts to convert customers with lower contract value is not economical for the organisation whatsoever. 

Therefore, product teams can take this up and help acquire these leads as well through comparatively minimal effort on a self-service path. 

Creativity

Zero-thinking state of mind = Peak creative energy

“I have to focus on not thinking.” – Simone Biles, a champion gymnast who made a comeback by challenging gravity.

Your subconscious mind is always way stronger than your conscious thinking. That means the beliefs, attitudes, mindset and patterns deeply established within you affect your progress in life far more compared to what you’re spontaneously thinking in consciousness. 

This system forms the basis of performance of both creatives and gymnasts. 

State of constant thinking: When you interrupt your creative process with persistent thinking, you hinder your deep ingrained skill patterns to be triggered and executed. You create chaos. Creative blocks. Hence, it stops your mind and body from entering a flow state. 

State of zero-thinking: Here, you surrender your conscious self to your subconscious self. You let your pre-trained inner system work and direct your body and mind. And eventually, you enter a flow state where you create masterpieces effortlessly.

The idea is best defined by a phrase from the book “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” by Joseph Nguyen: “Thoughts create, Thinking destroys.”

Today’s AI Image

AI in HR

Source: Ideogram

Quote of the Day

Wisdom from Theodore Roosevelt

“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."

Theodore Roosevelt

What we’re working on

Velvet Onion & Friends

We’ve been building a complex, enterprise wide, data-rich, AI-enabled product for our friends at IAG.

As their product development partners, our process with their great team has been faster, leaner and more cost-effective for the company.

We’re redefining the way students learn skills in Strategy, Business, Product Development, Design, RevOps, Marketing and Pitching.

We’re soon launching our flagship program where students learn everything from strategy to pre-launch. The winners get their idea built by Velvet Onion.

🧞Your wish is my command

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