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by antonvs 99 days ago
Your points are all valid, but it doesn’t really change the situation that was being discussed: an AI company trying to enter completely new markets just because they can write software for it is hardly some sort of automatic win. They’re much more likely to fail than succeed.

I mentioned sales and marketing but there’s a whole lot more as well. Basically, it involves creating an entire subsidiary. Perhaps the time will come when that can be mostly done by a team of AI agents, but right now that’s a big hurdle in practice.
1 comments
DrScientist 99 days ago
It does raise the question of where in the future will companies compete.

What's the balance going to be between, 'connecting customers to product' and 'making differentiated product'?

In theory, if customers have perfect information ( ignoring a very large part of sales is emotional ), then the former part will disappear. However the rise of the internet, and perhaps AI agents shopping on your behalf, hasn't really made much of a dent there [1] - marketing, in all it's forms, is still huge business - and you could argue still expanding ( cf google ).

[1] Perhaps because of the huge importance of the emotional component. Perhaps also because in many areas of manufacturing you've reached a product plateau already - is there much space to make a better cup and plate?

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majormajor 99 days ago
There's also a world where "all companies have access to the software factory so sales and entrepreneurship in software disappears entirely."

But in that scenario it's hard to see where the unwinding stops. What are these other companies doing and which parts of it actually need humans if the "agents" are that good? Marketing? No. Talking to customers? No. Support? No. Financial planning and admin? No. Manufacturing? Some, for now. Shipping physical goods? For now. What else...

At some point where even are your customers?

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pixl97 99 days ago
>It does raise the question of where in the future will companies compete.

Exactly where current companies compete, rent seeking, IP control, and legal machinations.

Hence you'll see a few giant lumbering dinosaurs control most of the market, and a few more nimble companies make successful releases until they either get crushed by, get snapped up by the larger companies, or become a large company themselves.

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