Our no-BS 2024 recap
We're closing this year with a build in public post about these last few months.
Thank you for reading The Product Courier!
We’re 2,170 here, which is 173 more than last month! 🚀
If you're new here, welcome! I’m Lucas Nilsson, a Product Marketing freelancer helping early-stage startups refine their positioning, messaging and pricing to go to market effectively.
Together with my partner Toni Dos Santos, we highlight each week 1 AI use cases for PMs and PMMs. Our goal is to show you how AI can enhance your daily job.
In this 37th edition, we’ll talk about:
Our honest reflection on this year. 😏
Google release of Veo2 📹
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News of the week. 📰
Google accelerates on video with Veo2 📹
Google has rolled out Veo 2, its latest AI video generator, and it’s causing waves.
Competing directly with OpenAI’s Sora, Veo 2 raises the bar for video quality and creative control, offering 4K resolution and videos up to 2 minutes long—six times Sora’s current limit.
How Veo2 stands out vs Sora.
This isn’t just about better video quality. Veo offer special features, such as allowing users to define the lens type, camera angles, and even depth of field. Quite cool, hey?
It also addresses common challenges in AI video generation. Models like Sora are often criticized for "hallucinations"—extra limbs or inconsistent details. Veo 2 seems to significantly reduces these errors.
Strategic play by Google.
The technology is still in limited release, available through Google Labs’ VideoFX tool for now, but Google seems to have big ambitions for this tech. According to Google. we could reasonably expect to see Veo 2 integrated into YouTube Shorts and other Google platforms by 2025.
Importantly, all Veo 2 videos include SynthID watermarks, ensuring transparency and mitigating risks of misuse.
Of course, the tech is far from being perfect. Google admits Veo 2 struggles with long, complex prompts and sometimes generates "lifeless" subjects. Still, it sets a high bar, especially when you compare it to OpenAI’s Sora.
Community Polls. 📊
Your weekly article. 🔍
Our no-BS 2024 retrospective. 💥
First of all, Merry Christmas in advance to everyone! 🎄✨
As the year draws to a close, we’re taking a two-week break to recharge after an incredible first year. Toni and I are beyond grateful for what this journey has brought us, and for everyone who has been part of it.
Honestly, writing these words feels surreal. It seems like we’ve been doing this forever, but the reality is, we launched The Product Courier just nine months ago! Time flies when you’re testing ideas, learning lessons, and trying to make something meaningful.
This has been a year of firsts, challenges, and exciting discoveries. We’ve learned a lot about the craft of newsletters, your needs, and even ourselves. The feedback you’ve shared has been invaluable in shaping what The Product Courier is today. We’ve grown, evolved, and adapted, and it’s all thanks to you.
So, a BIG thank you from the bottom of our hearts. ❤️
This week, we want to share a retrospective on our journey so far.
Let’s dive in.
Highlight of this year, a timeline.
Ok – before we talk about numbers and results, let us recap the highlight of this year.
January: We started working on the prototype of a company called Elevaite. The idea was to create a platform where product professionals could find AI resources—courses, tutorials, prompts, and GPT tools.
February: Reality check. Developing those resources turned out to be much more time-consuming than we’d anticipated. 😅 On top of that, the rapid advancements of AI innovation made static content feel obsolete almost as soon as it was published. The platform concept started feeling misaligned with what the market needed.
March: Pivot time! We decided to focus on an AI prompt library instead. Built in Notion, this early prototype was tailored for PMs and PMMs, addressing their specific challenges.
April: Elevaite hit a roadblock when we discovered it was a protected brand. That forced us to rebrand—and rethink. We shifted gears to launch The Product Courier as a newsletter, using the prompt library as our lead magnet. Our launch brought our first 177 subscribers, and we were off!
May: After a few editions, we introduced the Guest Post Program, inviting other product professionals to contribute tutorials, with 7 contributors in the 3 first months.
June: We experimented with broader topics like GTM strategy and sales training, all with our signature “hands-on” approach. This led to deeper discussions about our positioning and what value we want to bring in the market.
August: We launched The Product Freelancer, a niche newsletter for independent professionals navigating the product world.
September: We announced The Product Courier’s premium subscription, focusing on AI tutorials and innovative resources. Rather than broadening our editorial scope, we doubled down on solving AI-related pain points for our readers.
October: Companies started reaching out, interested in sponsoring the newsletter. Klue and Scaleway became our first sponsors, marking a new chapter for monetization.
November: Our subscriber base hit 2,000! A LinkedIn post about our prompt library went viral, racking up 70,000 impressions and 600 comments. That single post drove massive growth.
December: Looking ahead. We’ve been hard at work prepping for 2025, with plans for more AI tutorials and exciting surprises. 🔥🔥🔥
Let’s talk numbers. 😏 📈
As of today, The Product Courier gathers 2181 product professionals in 88 countries.
We’ve been growing steadily since its launch in March 2024. That consistent progress has been a huge motivator for us to keep pushing over time – Consistency always wins.
A big turning point was getting mentioned in Lenny’s Newsletter. That shoutout gave our subscriber count a solid boost in the early stages and proved how valuable external recognition can be.
Our ongoing LinkedIn outreach campaign has been quietly driving growth in the background.
One of the most exciting moment of the last quarter was when our Prompt Library went viral on LinkedIn. That spike in subscribers showed us the impact of creating something that truly resonates and gets shared widely.
Hitting 2200 subscribers by the end of the year feels like a big milestone. It’s taken persistence, creativity, and a bit of luck, but we’re proud of how far we’ve come!
Focus on subscribers acquisition:
Here’s an approximative breakdown of how we’ve built our audience:
LinkedIn Outreach: ~1,100 subscribers (50%).
Substack Recommendations: 621 subscribers (27%).
Viral Posts: ~500 subscribers (23%) from just 4 posts.
Where our audience comes from 🌍
The Product Courier is read in 88 countries, spanning 42 U.S. states (with nearly 50% of our U.S. readers in California and New York).
67% of our readers are in the U.S., India, France, and the UK.
France was initially our largest audience—unsurprising, given that Toni and I are French—but we’ve shifted focus to the U.S., where AI adoption is way ahead of Europe.
Looking Ahead to 2025
2025 is all about doubling down. We’re planning more AI tutorials, richer resources, and innovative ways to help product professionals stay at the cutting edge.
This year has been an incredible ride, and we can’t wait to share more about what’s next.
Thank you for being part of the journey. 🚀
And that’s a wrap for today. I hope you enjoyed reading this edition.
The Product Courier. 🫶🏻
See you next year!