The Leaderboard
Monday through Friday
Musical.ly acquired for $1 Billion (!!!) š¤
This newsletter was brought to you byGetViktorMusical.ly acquired for $1 Billion (!!!) š¤
Three years ago, Musical.ly didnāt exist. According to the Wall Street Journal the company was justĀ acquired for $1 Billion.Ā The official Musical.ly Twitter account retweeted Gary Vaynerchuk's tweet linking to the WSJ article, essentially confirming the acquisition. š°š
The acquirer isĀ Bytedance, maker of the popular Chinese news app Toutiao, whichĀ recently raised money at a valuation of $20 billion. This is the same company that acquired Flipagram earlier this year.
Musical.ly hasĀ taken off with the teens and tweens, who use the app toĀ make lip-syncing videos, and use Musical.ly's live streaming app,Ā Live.ly, to hang out with friends virtually.
The Winners:Ā The company's co-CEOs, employees, investors like Greylock and GGV, and @GaryVee ā who has been loudly singing the company's praises for over a year.
The Losers: Facebook's M&A team will have a stern talking to for missing out on this.
Social is hard, and staying power is even harder to achieve. A billion dollar exit in three years is a wonderful achievement.Ā Congrats to the founders of Musical.ly and the team. š
P.S.Ā Musical.ly cofounder and co-CEO Alex Zhu may have the best Product Hunt username there is. š¬
The acquirer isĀ Bytedance, maker of the popular Chinese news app Toutiao, whichĀ recently raised money at a valuation of $20 billion. This is the same company that acquired Flipagram earlier this year.
Musical.ly hasĀ taken off with the teens and tweens, who use the app toĀ make lip-syncing videos, and use Musical.ly's live streaming app,Ā Live.ly, to hang out with friends virtually.
The Winners:Ā The company's co-CEOs, employees, investors like Greylock and GGV, and @GaryVee ā who has been loudly singing the company's praises for over a year.
The Losers: Facebook's M&A team will have a stern talking to for missing out on this.
Social is hard, and staying power is even harder to achieve. A billion dollar exit in three years is a wonderful achievement.Ā Congrats to the founders of Musical.ly and the team. š
P.S.Ā Musical.ly cofounder and co-CEO Alex Zhu may have the best Product Hunt username there is. š¬
Highlight
Watch out Yelp and Foursquare. Today Facebook launched a direct competitor to discover events, restaurants, and fun things in your city. It's called Facebook Local. šŗ
Ad
We asked 34 customers what Viktor does for them. Not one said chatbot.
They kept using words like colleague, coworker, team member. One CEO called it the glue holding their e-commerce business together, which is a lot, but alsoā¦ you see why. It lives in Slack and plugs into 3,000+ tools, so instead of jumping between tabs, you just ask for the thing. Pull Stripe against HubSpot, check Sentry alerts, spin up a campaign brief, build a landing page, send a report upstairs. It all happens there.
It has already hit top 5 on Product Hunt with 130 comments, is SOC 2 certified, and your data does not train models.One user said it was the first time AI felt like a real coworker, which is either exciting or slightly concerning depending on your week.
The Leaderboard
Monday through Friday
Our ultra-fast Daily: Three takes on new products. Yesterdayās top ten launches. Thatās it.