Phase 1 - Collect Underpants . . . Phase 3 Profits

This is from one of my favorite episodes of South Park

This highlights the absurdity of many of the AI business plans I see today. Start with Phase I, use generative AI to automate a very simple business process - generating emails, building websites, summarizing notes etc. Step 2 is build a co-pilot to automate the entire business.

While each company is taking a slightly different angle, be it who they are selling to, insights they generate, GTM etc., they tend to be competing with incumbents that likely can do the same thing. It’s also hard to see where that simple initial workflow leads to a broader co-pilot for the entire job function.