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Editor’s Note: Hi. It’s Chmiel. I was your tour guide, along with Toby Daniels. We wanted to give you a sense of the full ON_Discourse experience by sending you a private message full of the things you all said on our tour. As we always say, the provocation is just the start of the discourse. Here is your private (mini) discourse report straight from the floor at CES.
This is a private link that we will not promote anywhere. This is just between you and us and each other. If there was someone you saw on tour you want to talk with, let us know and we will try to make a connection for you.
At the beginning of the tour, we told you we were recording our conversations. We then reviewed these recordings to understand how the group responded to our provocations on the tour. Everything you read and hear below are real things said by you all (maybe you recognize your own words?). Like everything else we do, we will keep it anonymous and remove any references to companies.
Did you see the report we published with Stagwell? Many of the public takeaways are available there. You might see some of your anonymous quotes there as well.
Speaking of recordings, Toby and I recorded something special for you. It will take you back to the floor and let you hear how we play with Chatham House rules with our friends at Wondercraft, a generative audio platform. Some of our favorite lines have been given alternative voices.
The recap is organized around the primary stops of our tour. We parsed through 12 hours of recordings to select a few of our favorite responses. If anything resonates with you and you feel compelled to draft a public post on this, let me know and we can collaborate on a piece.
Here’s what we “overheard” on the tour…
Head of Discourse
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Claire’s built a metaverse experience in Roblox. So Claire’s is marketing to 13-15-year-olds, and a lot of their traffic was declining from malls, but by establishing Roblox as a place where kids could buy things, they were able to replace a lot of that lost revenue.
The metaverse is definitely not a gimmick.
I work for a steel company, and we move millions of tons of steel every day, and we're really good at making steel, but that's about like, that's where our technology ends, how we quantify, like the fish counting, like the movement of the product, so that then that can be seen by customers like we just haven't found a way to do that. That seems like the aha moment for me.
We spent too much time at the SLM booth.
What is a SLM again?
Latency is the buffering of AI — people want solutions now, not after a trip to the cloud.
This is a game-changer.
Does the bartender ever actually mix a drink?
I like to mow my lawn.
What kind of data can they pull?
We have a ton of data on advertising that is all usable, so you understand a lot more about where advertising is showing up, and then also how it actually works.
We shouldn’t call it synthetic data. Synthetic sounds fake. We should call it proxy data.
Is that really a flying car? Is that just a car that has a manned flight?
Actually, it's a plane that goes in the back of your car.
Every window is a screen? This sounds like a black mirror episode.
I'm sort of terrified about the idea of a screen looking at and interpreting my mood and then adjusting and personalizing accordingly because I have a resting annoyed face, so who knows what kind of experiences that's going to provide.
Is this affectionate intelligence or just marketing jargon?
The real test for AI isn’t intelligence but invisibility.
About four weeks ago, there was a company called Home Assistant, which is like home automation technology, and they released their first product for $50 which is almost an Alexa-like product for your home but is completely offline. I feel that's also part of something where I don't want to constantly have Google and Amazon taking my data, but I love the functionality these folks offer. Is there going to be a big shift away from companies like these to completely disconnected products where you can interact with them without having to have your data?
Are we really getting rid of screens?
The Apple Vision Pro? I thought it was amazing. But, I mean, there has to be an ecosystem of experiences built out for it. Also, it's still too heavy.
[About the Vision Pro] I was standing on a floor that disintegrated and I… really felt like I was falling.
You know what I love? I love skiing. I ski all the time. I don't want to ski on a virtual reality headset.
That was weirder than LG.
I always think it's fascinating when you pass all these robots and you look at the eyes of every one of them. It's like, so much time and craft and attention was put into the eyes because they're all trying to create this emotional connection, and that's the foundation of it. It's like, if you're going to look at this and you look at it in the eyes, what does that feel like?
Is something like this going to enable humans to become more emotionally intelligent?
[In response] I hope so.
[In response] I actually really disagree. I think the more technology, the less emotionally intelligent people become.
I think it’s smarter for Samsung to focus on security like this.
Samsung is focusing in on the connected ecosystem overall, and how it makes your life easier, but also addressing the concerns that people have with AI and with everything connected is, is my data private, is my data secure, and will it be hacked? I think Knox takes really good advantage of that concern by making sure consumers understand that this data is going to be private.
I think that storyline is really important, but also the fact that Samsung is going beyond homes and the everywhere piece with automotive, with ships.
Agentic AI portends the end of the app world.
We are not going to see, at a significant scale, more apps being built, designed, and introduced into the existing ecosystems. We're going to start to see new ecosystems emerge, whether or not it's app-based, but fundamentally AI.
The agentic era is going to be even more significant than the app area era. It is about interoperability. It is about these apps and services starting to talk to each other, but on your behalf. So it's the agent that I think is going to replace the app ultimately, and apps will just become services that are embedded into the operating systems on whatever devices that we're using.
Many years ago, there was a store in New York called The Wiz, and they were the precursors to Best Buy. They went bust. Interesting store. They were a client. And one of the things that they told us, was that Sony, at the time, was the number one manufacturer of televisions and consumer goods like VCRs, et cetera. And they told us that every day, 80% of the people who came into the store came in wanting to buy a Sony. And if you think about it, in those days people bought a new TV every four or five years. Five years, you're sitting there looking like this, and it says Sony on the screen. But only 30 to 40% of the people actually left with a Sony, because the salesperson would sell them a Toshiba, which was another popular brand at the time, and then Samsung came in. The moral of the story is to support the brand. If you don’t constantly innovate, your brand goes away.
Thank you to our partners at Stagwell for organizing the tours and bringing you along. If you want to follow their activations, go to https://www.stagwellglobal.com/.
Thank you to Wondercraft for helping us record our little message. Check them out if you want help generating audio at scale.
And finally, if you want more of the discourse, let us know by reaching out to Toby or me.
Editor’s Note: We provoked our co-founder to get introspective about 2024. Unsurprisingly, he turned it back to the discourse. We think it’s a good reflection of the sentiments we keep hearing in our events.
It’s hard for me to fully take stock of the year we’ve just had. You probably feel the same. For me, 2024 was about being in a constant state of interrogation.
Together with my team and with Matt Chmiel at my side, I’ve hosted summits for Fortune 100 brands, countless group chats, in-person roundtable discussions, podcast conversations and I’ve personally interviewed hundreds of business executives, startup entrepreneurs, technology experts and investors. I’ve listened, transcribed, distilled and synthesized. We’ve published multiple reports and over 100 articles.
During all of this I have attempted to embody the values we established when we first started ON_Discourse: Provoke, Listen, and Change. It’s not always easy. Group think is the antithesis of these values. People are so sure of themselves. They are also mostly wrong. We all are. Especially about the future, and almost certainly when it comes to AI.
What I have learned—and what I am certain of, and what I believe we must carry forward into 2025—is this: the ability to provoke new ways of thinking and adapt to ambiguity is no longer optional. It is the foundation of modern leadership.
Founder, ON_Discourse
When we asked our members earlier in the year if they would implant a neurochip to eliminate mistakes, the responses revealed far more about humanity than technology. One CEO’s words resonated with me so much: “What if our mistakes are what make us human?"
Throughout 2024, AI forced us to question everything—creativity, empathy, work itself. SaaS companies watched traditional models erode as AI introduced per-seat chaos. Meanwhile, leaders marveled at AI tools that seemed to wield emotional intelligence, leaving us both amazed and unsettled.
One member shared a provocation I can’t shake: “AI can make us more emotionally intelligent—if we allow it.” Yet this year made me less certain than ever. Should we let AI shape our humanity, or must we shape it first?
When my cofounder Dan Gardner shared the provocation, “Spatial is not the new smartphone; it’s the next internet,” during a summit we held for a Fortune 100 brand, it sparked such a visceral reaction in people, it was fascinating. During the course of the summit we debated whether spatial computing’s promise was transformative or just pattern-matching old narratives onto new tech. Remember, at the start of the year, we wrote about Vision Pro and by November, Apple had announced it was winding down manufacturing of the device. But Meta also announced Orion, its mixed-reality glasses, which was almost universally well received. In one year we’ve gone from thinking we understood the future, to having serious doubts, to feeling almost certain again. We’re basically wrong, most of the time.
This is the tension we love. The difference between defining and exploring is always palpable. Spatial computing isn’t just a technology; it’s a challenge to how we see and name our future. What if the struggle to define it is the point?
At the start of the year, I made the claim that content had been commoditized by AI. But something deeper emerged: a yearning not for content, but for connection. In our closed group chats, we noticed a trend toward trusting tastemakers over algorithmic discovery. One of our members admitted that they sometimes just want to turn on a fast channel and watch whatever is playing. Algorithmically driven recommendations and decision fatigue are both real.
“If content is endless, what we seek is not more of it but something we can trust—a human touch amidst the firehose.”
This year, technology blurred the line between utility and intimacy. At another one of our enterprise summits that explored AI and the connected home, an attendee shared how empathic AI and digital twins could transform our homes into emotional ecosystems. But these developments also begged harder questions: Should tech meet emotional needs? Or are some things better left untouched?
One leader put it plainly: “Tech has historically failed to serve emotional needs. That is changing.” Whether we are ready for this shift remains uncertain.
As the year ends, I find myself drawn less to the answers and more to the spaces where questions thrive. ON_Discourse has become a community not of solutions but of shared exploration.
One member described it perfectly: “This is where curiosity meets rigor.” Another offered a simpler truth: “This is where we admit what we don’t know.”
I don’t know what 2025 will bring, but I know this: Wrestling with uncertainty is where we grow. Together, we will keep asking, keep listening, and keep discovering. Because the questions themselves are the point.
We run events every week. If you want to participate, inquire about membership here. If you want to keep up with the perspectives that we hear, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Editor’s Note: This essay is a based on a keynote presentation Dan gave at Web Summit in Lisbon.
The internet used to be an idea. That’s how it launched. It manifested the promise of infinite knowledge, connection, and invention. It was going to free up our time, make things easier and faster, and it was going to give us flying cars.
We turned the magic of the internet into the mundanity of office space. Instead of a fantasy zone, the world wide web is the mechanism that facilitates nearly all of our day-to-day activity. It is the DMV of our life. You pay your water bill there while you scroll through boxy reruns of Seinfeld. If you squint hard enough, it even looks like a DMV: beige walls underneath flickering lights with cardboard boxes everywhere, storing everything.
Founder & Exec Chair of Code and Theory & Founder, ON_Discourse
Founder & Exec Chair of Code and Theory & Founder, ON_Discourse
This is the first problem: its omnipresence is draining the web of intimacy, personalization, and emotional connection. The internet that tracks every single click of my mouse is the same internet that thinks that one visit to a website thinks I need to be reminded about it forever. Despite all of this data, the internet is just a gigantic spreadsheet that is stubbornly uninterested in who we are or what we truly need. Ubiquity is killing wonder.
The second problem is that the internet is obsessed with optimization. We keep trying to tweak our way to another dollar. AI has accelerated this trend, emphasizing future-proofing over original thinking. Vast industries have distilled the wave of energy and enthusiasm of the early web into homogeneous experiences. Everything looks and feels and works the same way. Marketing, and more recently entertainment, have reduced down to optimization and automation. It may feel safe but it stifles creativity and risks irrelevance.
If this is the primary focus, we will see a race to the bottom for many businesses, Look no further to the media landscape as an example, which is crumbling in front of our eyes. This is just the first example of a long decline of an industry where we lost creativity with the wrong focus. This wave will continue unless we change our focus.
There is hope. The internet is still young, unfinished, and teeming with potential. In order to reach it, we have to go from future-proofing and efficiency to forward-thinking.
Instead of refining the past, we must design for tomorrow’s opportunities. To do so, we must shift our focus from information technology to emotional technology—tools and experiences that foster meaningful relationships, evoke wonder, and embrace the right kind of friction.
Friction isn’t a flaw; it’s a feature. While efficiency clears the path, friction creates memories. Think about the tactile joy of flipping a vinyl record or the anticipation of opening a handwritten letter. Digital experiences today are so frictionless they’ve become forgettable.
By designing intentional moments of friction, brands can create meaningful engagement. For instance, music streaming services could reintroduce elements of discovery—like liner notes or curated album experiences—to recapture the magic of analog listening.
I was reminded the other day about the ephemeral nature of everything. I remember eagerly anticipating the release of a Vogue magazine in the 90’s. My endless wait for the release would make me obsess over the issue. When it finally arrived, I would read it front to back several times over. Do you remember that?
People don’t have these feelings anymore, but they can come back. This does not require a regression in our music streaming interfaces by forcing gated monthly content. I just want you to focus on the feeling and then think about modern experiences that can bring that feeling back.
Utility fulfills a need, but wonder creates desire. Digital experiences should spark curiosity, evoke emotion, and invite exploration. Travel platforms, for example, should shift from a transactional approach to one that allows users to envision their adventures, inspiring a sense of excitement and possibility. With gen-ai, why can’t I have a sense of memory before I travel that can mimic the memories I have after I travel. (Photo galleries just don’t cut it.)
The internet excels at creating connections, but relationships require depth. Relationships are ongoing, personalized, and rooted in trust. Consider the luxury shopping experience—it's not just about purchasing a product but about feeling a sense of belonging. E-commerce platforms must find ways to replicate the intimacy of in-store interactions. Social networking became social media. We went from the promise of actually being connected to another consumption platform. It seems like there is a gap to be connected when in a post-Covid world it’s obvious we seek these human needs.
The internet doesn’t just need to be used; it needs to be loved. Not the same love we may feel for crack, but more by the way we love a great bottle of wine - enriched, not addicted. By leveraging AI and emerging technologies, we can create customer experiences that are not only functional but emotionally resonant. This shift from transactional to transformational digital experiences can drive engagement, retention, and loyalty.
Leaders who embrace this challenge will attract talent, win clients, and build organizations that thrive in an era of constant disruption. The question isn’t whether the internet can evolve—it’s whether we have the imagination to shape its future.
So, where do you live? In a world of mundane digital tasks—or one full of wonder, connection, and possibility?
We run events every week. If you want to participate, inquire about membership here. If you want to keep up with the perspectives that we hear, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Co-Founder, ON_Discourse
Editor’s Note: This is a dispatch Toby wrote from his recent trip to Web Summit in Lisbon.
“When you deploy AI in your business, you have two fundamental paths: you can either enhance the things people love doing or eliminate the things they hate doing. This distinction might sound basic, but it’s crucial.”
This is what Nicholas Durkin, the CTO of Harness, an AI-delivery platform said during a roundtable discussion that Dell and NVIDIA hosted during Web Summit in Lisbon.
Take AI code generation, for example. Developers generally love writing code—it’s their craft and their passion. But when AI tools like code generators were introduced, there was pushback. In fact, recent DORA metrics showed that developers using AI code generation tools were less efficient than they were before adopting them. Why? Because these tools inadvertently disrupted the part of their job they enjoy most—writing code.
Durkin went on to say “It’s like telling a chef, we’ll handle the cooking for you,” but leaving them with all the prep and cleaning instead. Chefs thrive on the act of cooking; they don’t want to lose that joy. Conversely, if you use AI to handle the worst parts of the job—like prep work or cleanup—you empower the chef to focus on what they love. This approach doesn’t just maintain their passion; it enhances their ability to excel.
It’s like telling a chef, we’ll handle the cooking for you, but leaving them with all the prep and cleaning instead.
I spent time with Nick after the roundtable and went much deeper into this topic with him, he went on to outline a model that he uses with his clients. He considers these three metrics when evaluating AI effectiveness:
But the most critical factor is alignment with people’s passions. If your AI diminishes the best parts of someone’s job, you’ll face resistance. If it tackles the worst parts, people will embrace it. Focus on “love” and “hate.” Build AI for things people love to do but can’t due to limitations, or for things they can do but don’t want to because it’s boring or repetitive. That’s where AI can make the biggest impact.
We run events every week. If you want to participate, inquire about membership here. If you want to keep up with the perspectives that we hear, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Head of Discourse
Editor’s Note: On the last Friday before Thanksgiving, we assembled members and guests for our second annual End of Year provocations call.
Predictions are boring. None of us knows the future and therefore no one cares what you think is going to happen. Your prophecy is as valuable as mine because you're as stupid about the future as me.
Another problem with predictions is that they are designed to benefit the prophet. The end result is either credit or performative humility; either way you win.
Provocations are different. There is no right or wrong, just boring or stimulating. As a result, they can take many more forms: a meaningful question, a firm statement, or ambiguous feeling.
For the second year in a row, ON_Discourse asked members to prepare a provocation - not a prediction - about the year ahead. In 60 minutes, we tackled the following 12 provocations. We hope at least one of these items stirs up a reaction in you, because this call was full of them.
No one reads. Social posts vanish into the algorithmic void. AI has not democratized quality. It has democratized quantity. Too many creators are stuck in the old paradigm of making more, but more isn't better. Better is better, and the real magic I believe, exists in crafting immersive, adaptive experiences that matter.
This provocation did not go unchecked. It was immediately hit with pushback. "Participation in media requires a seismic change in habits, and most people are too passive for that shift."
There are no mainstream brands that talk about recreational drugs in any kind of a interesting or fun way. There are all these kind of legal psychedelic things coming up, but they're all medical, and they're really, really boring.
At best you see tangential associations with recreational drug use - see: Snoop Dog at the Olympics - but no brands seem willing to commit to this direct messaging, yet.
Someone noted: "Will Coca-Cola return to its roots?"
AI won't eliminate jobs. That's what most people are afraid of. Still. It will just redefine them, and it's already starting to redefine them by taking over mundane tasks.
This is an optimistic expression that was not shared by some. This reaction says it all: "AI has already started taking jobs. I am seeing it. The first hits are in marketing functions, especially here in the Bay Area, where these big tech companies need to hire more AI tech talent, which is extremely expensive. They're doing that by cutting back on their marketing teams, quite simply, laying off a whole bunch of marketers and having the rest of the folks that are left in those marketing departments use their own AI tools."
Streaming platforms are doing to Hollywood what Facebook did to publishers. What's happening to the studios is what happened when Facebook did with their famous pivot to video, forcing all these publishers to change their models and bend to the whims of Facebook's massive algorithm. I think the difference here is that there's more than one streaming platform.
Nobody pushed back on this one, so I won't invent an argument. I'll just build on the provocation by emphasizing the cascading effect of this system. The commodification of content is diminishing the operational model in Hollywood.
Right now, AI equals LLMs and Gen AI, but we will not revolutionize the world by generating words and fake videos. AI is much more than that.
As always, I can't tell you who said this, but I can tell you that this person is a founder in AI technology and the emphasis of looking beyond the LLM version of AI got a lot of people excited by this provocation.
The house that Sam Altman built is actually going to create a lot of mini Elizabeth Holmes; we're entering this unregulated environment where there's just going to be more fraud because general AI literacy is still low.
People in the room wanted to edit this take; the underlying theme landed in the room, but the reference was wrong. "I think FTX and SBF in particular are a better parallel because there is a technology at the foundation has real utility but no regulation yet."
It's very easy for them to flip the switch from being a search dominant metaphor to a chat based one with ads, in the way that perplexity is trying to get towards. I think Google is going to keep winning, and it's very hard for anyone to compete with them.
This provocation had some pushback, but the most effective reaction came from another participant who agreed. This particular member run an AI service provider and has decades of experience in ML, saying: "Google has the best training data by a billion miles with every single click that everybody's done for every Google search and how long they spent on a page and where they went and what they saw when they were there. That's why their current version of search, with AI summaries, has less hallucinations. It's very rare to get hallucination in their AI search summaries. I think they will continue to crush search just because the data."
I am sick and tired of hearing about people talking about Gartner's hype cycle, and I think that, like hype cycles aren't real. Things do not happen linearly, and I think we need a better framework to talk about what's happening right now.
Most people in the group saw some value in the hype cycle. Others gave Gartner credit with turning a banal observation about technical adoption into an evergreen marketing funnel.
The spectacle that inflated the value of some of the news platforms in the first term is being met with a total exhaustion of interest in news. And so now they have to come up with a way to sort of engage audiences on things outside of that.
News is entertainment and people are switching the channel. What are newsrooms to do in this environment? The bro podcast network came up; so did Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Nobody knows what happens next.
Are the tired of the content or the outrage? The notion of fatigue kept coming up. Someone summed it up like this: "Outrage fatigue is temporary, but trust, once broken, is permanent."
Every resume looks perfect, looks the same, every candidate feels the same kind of thing.
Everyone is having a hard time finding talent and reporting back from friends who are having a hard time finding work. The outdated notion of CVs feels like they are starting to break conventions.
I think that the LLM bubble bursting. I think people are realizing that LLMs can take you some of the way there or but then they hit a wall. But the AI bubble is not bursting. People are applying different AI techniques to make AI work properly, so you can use it at scale and trust it.
We have heard this notion repeated in several events. AI is bigger than LLMs and maybe 2025 will be the year we move beyond that aspect of it.
I think we're afraid to disagree. I count myself in this by the way. We're afraid to call things out and put ourselves out there.
As one can imagine; people were not ready to embrace this one. A few reactions to it: "I thought that provocation sucked."
We run events every week. If you want to participate, inquire about membership here. If you want to keep up with the perspectives that we hear, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Head of Discourse
Editor’s Note: We invited an AI expert to talk about the future of eCommerce in the agentic era.
Are AI agents coming to eCommerce platforms? Not if you believe the takeaways from this Group Chat. It features a bonafide AI expert with academic credentials and multiple successful ventures (including a new one that we cannot mention now, that is serving eCommerce sites).
This session paired AI optimists with eCommerce realists. It was a good one. Here are some takeaways.
I think the promise of personalization that we have today on our platforms is not there. There's a lot of personalization that's happening on these sites, but it's not real, and it's certainly not a value to most of us. It's why there's so many rails that are run across a PDP or a PLP because they're like shit, maybe they’ll click on this one for no reason.
The conversation was practical; before we let agentics magically interpret our mood and behavior with perfect recommendations, we should maybe focus on search results that properly understand customer intent.
One on hand this feels obvious, on the other hand, as one of our guests admitted, this is not always the case.
So getting customers to feel after getting better search results: ‘Oh yeah, that heard me.’ Like, that's amazing. We have a lot of those insights during gifting moments, whether it's holiday, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, finding. But all we do right now in gift seasons, the lowest common denominator…
The most pervasive issue, and blocking a lot of eCommerce companies from being able to take advantage of this technology is their tech is stuck in 2010. So far what they've done now is build wrappers around this so they've put lipstick on it to make it kind of look pretty but it doesn't function.
We run a Group Chat every week. If you want to participate, inquire about membership here. If you want to keep up with the perspectives that we hear, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Head of Discourse
Editor’s Note: We invited a legal expert on AI and copyright law to talk about the ethical and legal landscape for an AI-powered internet. We can’t tell you who was there but we can tell you what was said.
AI is the ultimate blackbox. Does that mean entrepreneurs are shielded from liability? We hosted a Group Chat that dug into this question. Here are 3 takeaways:
Liability remains murky when it comes to AI-generated content. The legal shield of Section 230, which protects platforms from user-generated content liability, extends ambiguously into the AI realm.
Questions of liability scatter across the tech stack. The platform that hosts the agent; the brand that sponsors it; and the software developer that launched it all play a role in this equation.
If you are creating an agent that goes out and makes false claims about a product, the developer could claim immunity under Section 230… but this is not a certainty.
You have to understand what your AI does and then you have to rigorously test it against every bad-case scenario. And then you have to keep records of what you're doing.
Red teaming—stress testing AI systems to expose vulnerabilities—is emerging as a critical practice for ethical and functional deployment.
One of the interesting takeaways we heard was a distinction between communication and reporting tools.
You have to make the decision on whether you are a communication tool or a reporting tool. Then we had to make a decision about how our AI responds to extreme scenarios like suicide threats or violence.
The federal government is probably not going to set any standards for AI. The real action is happening in the states.
Emerging regulations like the Colorado AI Act reflect a trend toward greater oversight of AI's societal impacts.
If you don't know about it now, you should read up on the Colorado AI Act.
If you don't know what data is training your model by February of 26 and you know you're going to be deploying your tool in Colorado or to consumers or businesses in Colorado, you're going to be out of compliance. So you know you really need to be thinking about that.
We run a Group Chat every week. If you want to participate, inquire about membership here. If you want to keep up with the perspectives that we hear, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Editor’s Note: 18 Industry leaders in NYC joined us for breakfast to talk about the future of content. The word inevitability was uttered many times, generating a lot of pushback.
We hosted our breakfast in the back room at Gemma Italian Trattoria at the Bowery Hotel in New York City.
The discourse centered on this prediction about AI:
This future will come in 3 distinct phases
(we are currently in phase 1)
AI tools for professionals to produce more content more efficiently.
AI tools for non-professionals to produce professional-looking content (similar to blogs and print)
Brands generating consumer content based on targeted user data.
This theory does not predict a total takeover of the content supply chain; cinema will still exist; live sports will still exist; but the majority of content consumption will be generative.
As AI moves from assisting creators to generating personalized content in real time, we’re on the brink of a media transformation that could either revolutionize how we consume or isolate us further into echo chambers.
Head of Discourse
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Some attendees warned this will create tribal bubbles, reinforcing personal biases and isolating communities. One participant pointed to political radicalization, noting AI’s role in amplifying divisive content.
"We’ll end up in a civil war before we reach this inevitability."
Concerns were raised about algorithms controlling our consumption:
“We’re just TikTok zombies at this point.”
The fear is that AI will strip away free will, reducing us to passive consumers.
Others embraced the potential for wildly creative, personalized experiences, like one attendee’s dream of blending Darth Vader with Rocky in a custom AI-generated adventure.
Interactive, participatory content could reshape entertainment into a collaborative experience—where viewers not only watch but star in their own creations.
What happens to shared experiences? If everyone gets a different ending to the same movie, are we losing cultural touchstones? Some worried this could fragment society further, erasing the moments that bring us together.
We run closed-door events every week. If you want to participate, inquire about membership here. If you want to keep up with the perspectives that we hear, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Head of Discourse
Editor’s Note: How much are you paying your SaaS vendor? Do you think AI - whatever that means to you - can change that cost burden and redefine your relationship? This recap is for you.
We invited 2 SaaS founders into a Zoom call with 3 other executives. I can’t tell you who was there, but you can preview some of the discourse.
The takeaways on this list might drive the next conversation you have with your SaaS vendor.
SaaS is not going anywhere, but the way it has traditionally operated is about to change dramatically. One of the founders put it this way, “AI stitches together smaller, bespoke solutions,” allowing businesses to create customized workflows that fit their needs. The days of relying on one-size-fits-all platforms are over. Those on the cutting edge are using AI to personalize and streamline their SaaS stacks. If you’re not exploring how AI can take your tools to the next level, you’re already falling behind.
SaaS companies are under more financial strain than ever before.
The pressure on SaaS margins is mounting. As interest rates rise and customer demands shift, the once-lucrative model of massive upfront spending with guaranteed long-term revenue is fading. One CEO cautioned, “SaaS companies are under more financial strain than ever before.” The key takeaway? Profitability now hinges on constant innovation and real-time value creation. SaaS clients are already eyeing exists from long-term contracts. Why is that?
AI is demolishing the barriers that once made switching SaaS platforms difficult. “Data jail” is becoming a relic, with AI-driven solutions making it easier to move from one system to another. This shift has empowered businesses to pivot quickly and ditch legacy systems without the massive headaches of the past. Is your SaaS provider evolving fast enough? If not, expect to see churn rates rise as switching costs plummet.
The buzz around AI-generated rapid prototyping is real, but don’t be fooled. While AI makes it easier than ever to build flashy demos, turning these prototypes into robust, scalable solutions is still a major challenge. As one respected executive observed, “Prototypes are about 2% of the work.” The real value lies in operational excellence, something that can’t be replaced by a few lines of code. The smartest leaders are focusing on building sustainable, scalable systems with nimble SaaS solutions.
They generated cutting out all SaaS contracts, but our SaaS founders were not convinced this is the right long term move.
“Klarna said we just tore out their CRM, etc. I'm really looking forward to the stories from that. I don't know Klarna at all - and no offense to anybody there - but man, that sounds like a really aggressive move. And I have a feeling that we're going to find some people leaving saying some interesting things about operations.”
The era of flat monthly fees is fading, and usage-based pricing is quickly becoming the new norm, particularly in AI-driven SaaS. One of our guests put it this way, “This is going to create friction for finance teams” SaaS leaders need to prepare for a future where billing is based on usage, which means rethinking everything from budget forecasts to financial planning. If you're not ready, this shift could catch you off guard.
The future of SaaS isn’t just about automation—it’s about intelligent, autonomous agents that can seamlessly integrate into your workflows. "SaaS is moving towards agentic architectures” but for how long?. This trend is reshaping how businesses think about software. These agents, often paired with conversational UIs, can handle complex tasks, but there’s a catch: without structured data, their effectiveness plummets. The next wave of SaaS innovation will hinge on balancing flexibility with the structured environments needed to make these agents work reliably. Those who master this dynamic will lead the pack; those who don’t will struggle to keep up.
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