AI Transformation for Salesforce Partners | ex-CIO — Gojek Singapore, ex-MD – Gojek India
Most startup advice tells you to focus on the customer's acute pain points — the things that are really hurting their business. Solve those critical problems, and you've got yourself a viable business. Anything else is just a "nice to have". But I see AI flipping this on its head. With AI, even if you're solving a less critical problem — a vitamin rather than a painkiller — the user experience can be so transformative that customers won't want to go back to their old ways of doing things. If an AI-powered solution can automate a task that used to take hours and make it effortless and instantaneous, that's a huge value-add for the customer. Even if the task wasn't their top priority, the convenience and efficiency gains are so significant that they'll stick with the AI solution. It's a Delta-4 UX shift. For many consumer use cases, the big tech players will likely absorb these AI-powered vitamins into the operating system layer. If you're Apple or Google, you have the scale and platform to democratize these features for the mass market. But for more niche, industry-specific use cases, I think there's a huge opportunity for startups. If you can get your foot in the door by solving a real pain point for these customers, you can then expand your offering to include value-adding vitamins as well. Land and expand. Start with the painkiller to establish credibility and value, then layer on the vitamins to deepen the relationship and make yourself indispensable. The conventional startup playbook may advise against going after vitamins. But I think AI is so capable today of improving UX that if the AI experience is sufficiently transformative, vitamins can be just as powerful and lucrative as painkillers.
Great point Sidu Ponnappa. I would just say Vitamin for one could be Pain killer for others and overtime pain killer for many. Also, as Ford said if I were to ask people what they want they woudl have said faster horses and not cars; same analogy works here too. Even ChatGPT wouldn't have been possible without efforts to push the boundaries. So for everyone its essential to have vision for current, tomorrow and future.
Supratim Biswas
1mo
It’s an interesting take !! At what point does superior UX become the selling value prop ?
Andrea Johnson
1mo
Interesting (and valid!) perspective.
Entrepreneur / Enabler / Web Systems Architect
1moNoticed this with ERP systems - catalog loading is one of the most tedious tasks that affect the decision of switching an ERP - even though it had nothing to do with reason for switching - since many days will be spent on sizing images uploading content mrp etc - a simple agent for this cut short the TAT for a catalog of 2500+ SKUs from 1 month to 3 days - automated sizing , pull content from web for product and update the columns appropriately - allow for manual edit and oversight