A lot of people ask me, are you not concerned about Salesforce launching AI across their ecosystem ❓ and will this affect your startup ❓

The answer is of course “we’re paying close attention, but”... there are some fundamental reasons we’re not so concerned.

Salesforce is deploying AI with different objectives in mind (& a lot of inertia) to 42 Problems, Inc..

--> SFDC aims to future-proof their existing ecosystem by integrating AI, because it's their existing solutions that must drive the P&L (for now at least)

--> And to increase productivity / ROI across the suite because this is what supports the P&L of their clients

‍42 Problems, Inc. on the other hand (one of many aspiring enterprise AI startups) is betting on an entirely new way of delivering software, data and value to customers. One that could be superior to (and slowly replace aspects of) traditional saas.

The key word here is ‘superior’. We can talk about usage based pricing for example. But that's just a means to an end. The end goal, is a superior product. Period.

In the near-term some categories of AI Startup have a very legitimate reason to maniacally and single-mindedly focus on how they deliver value and bill purely on that basis, a usage basis. And so do we. It forces the tight alignment needed to build a superior product in a way incumbents cannot replicate as easily.

For Salesforce, incentive and inertia tell us that it’s going to be hard (but not impossible) for incumbents to build a superior GPT product to every single other company out there, for every single use-case. For many reasons, but above all, because it risks cannibalisation.

A window of opportunity has presented itself for 42 and others… The race will be long, but is far more equal than people initially thought.