Is your AI Competitive Moat Strong Enough?

THE BIG IDEA

SaaS, the new way

For the past two decades, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) has been the dominant force in technology. These platforms added immense capabilities to enterprises, but they also required significant human oversight and input to function effectively. Now, we're witnessing a paradigm shift that's flipping this script: the era of Service-as-Software, powered by AI.

Traditionally, businesses have operated like complex machines with humans pulling all the levers. From routine data entry to high-stakes decision making, people have been the backbone of getting work done. While we've known for some time that AI could assist with many of these tasks, we've finally reached a tipping point where it's no longer just hype — AI is fundamentally changing how businesses operate. Service-as-Software is at the forefront of this revolution. Instead of just providing tools, this new model uses AI to actually perform services that were once exclusively human domain.

Take, for instance, how Team Formation AI — a generative AI platform that allows tech leaders to instantly assemble curated teams of top-tier talent from the 11,000+ vetted Silicon Valley product builders in the A.Team network — is transforming hiring technology.

In most every company, HR onboards a SaaS platform of some kind to manage job applications. While the system keeps everything organized, it’s essentially just digitizing a process that hasn’t changed much since the 20th century. Human recruiters and hiring managers still needed to sift through resumes, conduct endless interviews, and piece together who might work well together based on limited information. It’s time-consuming and burning out both hiring managers and candidates.

With Team Formation AI, executes what a human reruiter traditionally does as a service: it understands and recommends the types of candidates you need, sources top candidates, and even facilitates screening interviews with an AI version of each candidate. Except instead of this process taking months, it takes minutes. It also takes a more scientific and thorough approach than most human recruiters could. It predicts team chemistry, considers past project successes, and even factors in time zones for remote teams. As the AI learns and improves, so does the quality of every team it forms. It's not just filling roles; it's strategically crafting teams designed for success from day one.

Other examples of this Service-as-Software model are emerging across industries. We're seeing AI accountants that don't just organize financial data, but actually perform bookkeeping and tax services. AI Salesforce administrators are automating complex CRM tasks that once required dedicated (and expensive) human expertise.

This shift represents possibly the biggest paradigm change in tech in recent memory. It's transforming disconnected tasks into seamless, intelligent processes and enabling businesses to move from product-based to performance-based models with the software they build or buy, as the focus is shifting from features to results.

In this new world, success isn't just about having the best product or the most efficient process. It's about creating an intelligent, adaptive organization that can pivot on a dime and see opportunities before they even fully materialize.

In some cases, that will mean to moving towards “service-as-a-software” based technologies, like Team Formation AI. In other cases, it’ll mean leveraging proprietary data and insight to build proprietary internal capabilities, or to reimagine your product with AI. One heuristic we recommend that our A.Team clients consider is this: "If I were rebuilding my entire business model from the ground up with AI as a core component, what would that look like?"

CHART OF THE WEEK

Are we in an AI bubble?

Over the past year, AI has become the silver bullet for Fortune 500 companies, driving unprecedented valuation growth. The S&P 500's impressive performance has been largely fueled by a small handful of companies making big strides in AI. As a result, we're witnessing a ripple effect across various sectors as enterprise companies scramble to follow suit as their boards ask, “What’s your AI strategy?”

However, Sequoia’s analysis raises some sobering points about the sustainability of this AI frenzy — noting a significant gap in AI costs vs revenue from Nvidia, who rode the AI wave to become the world’s most valuable company. Everyone is latching on to Cahn’s description of an “AI bubble” in the subhead and sounding the alarm, but if you read more deeply, he’s actually just making a more nuanced argument that the big payoff from AI will come — it’ll just come on a longer time horizon than the market seems to think.

WATERCOOLER

Planet: A live, searchable database of everything on Earth

Here's a space story that's more down to earth than you'd expect: a team of ex-NASA scientists decided to bring the smartphone revolution to satellites to keep an eye on our planet.

Using AI, satellite mapping revolutionizer, Planet, can automatically identify and categorize what their satellites see, creating something like a true global database of “what’s on the world.” The main idea is to make Earth observation data available to everyone, not just big organizations. These satellites can spot things like deforestation, illegal fishing, and changes in farmland. With so many pictures, they can show how these things change over time.

The team has also made all this information easy to search, kind of like using Google for images of Earth. This means that anyone — from government officials to regular citizens — can access and use this information.

This technology is important because it allows us to keep track of what's happening to our planet in near real-time. It can help with things like responding to natural disasters, monitoring environmental changes, and even keeping governments and companies accountable for their actions that affect the environment.

The goal is to provide clear, up-to-date information about Earth that can help people make better decisions about how we use and protect our planet's resources. By making this data widely available, the team hopes to create more awareness and encourage action on global environmental issues.

EVENTS

Leaders from NVIDIA, ShipPlug, and Seek AI reveal the future of AI x Consumer Tech

Our recent Gen AI Salon in NYC, hosted with JP Morgan, was a deep dive into AI's transformative power in consumer tech.

• Industry leaders from NVIDIA, ShipPlug, and Seek AI revealed how AI is reimagining entire business models, not just enhancing them.
• Our hackathon showcased five A.Teams building AI prototypes in just 48 hours, demonstrating the rapid pace of innovation.
• We also unveiled Team Formation AI, our new platform that's revolutionizing how companies build dream teams.

From Sarah Nagy's journey from frustrated data scientist to founder of Seek AI, to Nicholas DiNatalie's customer-centric innovations at ShipPlug, and NVIDIA’s approach of fostering authentic relationships with startups without a sales agenda — the event highlighted AI's real-world impact and the importance of human-centric AI development.

Curious about the cutting-edge of AI in consumer tech? Watch the full event recording here.

DISCOVERY ZONE

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MEME