AI First.... WINS!

We've seen this all before and we're going to see it again.

What's happening right now is going to revolutionise the way we do digital technology.

The starting gun has been fired.

Now,  over the next 12, 18 months AI first companies are going to eat the world. Displacing legacy organisations and creating new product spaces in the same way that mobile first companies did back in 2010 - 2015.

• Remember Flickr? Incredible Web2 product replaced overnight by the mobile first Instagram.

• Remember Skype?  Microsoft finally just closed it down. Incredible product, revolutionised things. Replaced overnight by products like WhatsApp.

The Web2.0 darlings were replaced by mobile first competitors.

New spaces were created. Uber, Airbnb, Spotify. Did not make sense before mobile.

Even the biggest of big tech at the time were not immune.

Who remembers Blackberry? Windows Phone? RIM & Microsoft were replaced in the hardware space by their mobile first rivals

• Google: Android

• Apple: iOS

Both started again. Both went mobile first. Replaced those that should have had a huge advantage.

There's a new crop of AI first companies that are going to do exactly the same things to the organisations that are simple adding AI features to existing products.

Adding AI to your current software, to old software, is exactly the same as adding a mobile view to a web product in 2010. And it will get the same results.

Companies that were built for mobile, from the ground up won that era.

Companies that are going to be built for AI first from the ground up are going to win this era.

OpenAI: AI first. Moving fast. Breaking things. Changing the rules. Winning.

Amazon: Nearly two years to update Alexa with something that is a shadow of what OpenAI have achieved to date.

Apple: Failed at the first hurdle. Apple Intelligence.. flat. New Siri? Delayed… leaders fired… who knows?

This is a really important moment; a really exciting opportunity. Not only for startups but for the forward thinking larger organisations; older organisations that see this shift to AI for what it is…. Era defining change.

Big tech can't simply bolt AI onto their existing products;

• their architecture is wrong,

• their teams are wrong,

• their incentives are wrong.

THEY ARE BUILT FOR A DIFFERENT ERA!

Now, don't misunderstand me. Some big tech will obviously win. They'll find a way. They will be able to re-architect. They will be able to change the way their systems and their products work. They will buy in; acquire their innovation…

These will be the exceptions.

In general, there is too much legacy code. There are too many existing customers. There's too much revenue to protect. Most will look at that as too risky and move too slowly.

New organisations with new products and new services that can design everything from the ground up. Everything with AI first from day one.

They are going to change the world.

The playing field has not been this level for maybe a decade. Really exciting times