Good morning 👋 I'm kicking off the new Sunday format today, so I really appreciate any feedback you have!

As a reminder, I now send a twice weekly email:

1. Friday: Curated list of new features and products from the week

2. Sunday: Breakdown of a new product launch + other good finds

One Big Ship

Mercedes announced that it'll paywall faster acceleration on new EVs 😱

Backstory: The auto industry's eyeing recurring revenue. BMW recently started selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 / month, and also sells subscriptions for dash cam and remote engine start functionality.

Details: Not to be outdone by their fellow German outfit, Mercedes is bringing paywalls to the vehicle's performance itself. Just savage.

The Acceleration Increase add-on lets users activate hardware that's already factory equipped in their vehicle. Highlights include:

• Applies to Mercedes-EQ models (the new electric car lineup)

• $1,200 annual subscription fee

• 20-25% increase in max motor output

• 0 to 60 MPH time reduced by 1 second

My brief outrage: As a growth PM I'm all for assertive-yet-thoughtful paywalls. This however, is some next level shit. There's no hardware upgrades, meaning Mercedes deliberately limited performance to upsell customers later on.

But, the opportunity: As software begins to play a more prominent role in vehicles, a significant greenfield opportunity is arsing for automakers to leverage B2C tech-company strategies to unlock revenue and higher margins.

Being able to paywall car features opens up substantial pricing flexibility. Initial purchase prices can be discounted to boost volumes, with users given the option to pay for upgrades via subscription (rather than an upfront one-off fee).

Paywalling also unlocks countless product & lifecycle opportunities. If you experience the best of your car in a 90-day free trial, can you really go back? Similarly, a heated steering wheel promo on a cold winter morning may be hard to turn down ❄️

Will consumers accept this future? While today it seems almost criminal to pay monthly fees to unlock existing car features, it's not so dissimilar to software companies transitioning from perpetual licenses to recurring revenue models in the early 2000's.

Good finds

Sunil Kantaria: Startup to exit lessons from a first time founder

On building in public v stealth as an early-stage startup:

• Stealthiness inhibits frequent market signal and greatly increases time to PMF

• Any perceived gains of building an advantage over competitors by being stealthy are lost when you inevitably take longer to achieve PMF

Shreyas Doshi: The best networking strategy

If your company has 100s of employees or more, your best networking opportunity lies within your company. Steps to follow:

• 1) Ask trusted colleagues to name 5 people who are *really* great

• 2) Reach out to them - not all will respond, but most will

• 3) Share your work, learn about them, build rapport, get to know them

• 4) To get started, allocate 1-2 hours a month to this strategy

Yukhi Yamashita: Figma's template for product reviews

Some interesting approaches Figma takes:

• Separate types of sessions for aligning on the problem v aligning on solutions

• Discussion of user behaviors that exist in absence of the proposed feature

• Alignment widget for people to share sentiments towards a decision

Ali Abouelatta: Duolingo's 'healthy friction' retention experiment

Duolingo ran an experiment on its 'streak goal' screen, removing the preselected option and forcing all users to select a goal. This resulted in:

• Users selecting more ambitious goals

• No added drop-off despite incremental friction

• Higher retention for users in the variation cohort

Twitter shennanigans

And that’s a wrap for today. Stay tuned for more!

- Amol