AI makes it easier than ever to build, and easier than ever to get copied. At Step yesterday, I had the pleasure of exploring this alongside Anders Ranum, Anurag Goel, and Mariane Bekker. A few things really compound and build sustainable moats: Customer obsession. Knowing your customer is Company Building 101, but in AI it matters even more. A deep understanding of a specific problem will outlast being first. The team itself. Especially at the pre-product stage where I often invest, I’m always asking: were you put on earth to build this? Deep domain expertise paired with an entrepreneurial spike is hard to find, and even harder to replicate. How you use the model ecosystem. Models are getting better and increasingly moving up the stack, but application companies have a unique advantage: they can pull from a growing breadth of models and infrastructure, then choose what works best for each query, workflow, and customer need. The routing and orchestration layer can matter just as much as the underlying model.
Amazing to hear your insight on this, Alysaa!
Great being on stage with you Alysaa Co, Anurag Goel and Mariane Bekker !
I was at the Step SFO and I listened to this panel. What Alyssa said resonated with me - find a gap in an existing product to create additional value for the customers. This is exactly what our team is doing. Travel should not be about managing your vacation, it should instead be spending quality time with your family and friends in a place of your choice and leave the travel related orchestration, planning, booking, auto-managing delays or disruptions to our AI-powered Voyago.