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Back to The New Startup Playbook | Box CEO Aaron Levie, with Aaron Levie.

Does AI Change Startup Distribution?

Aaron Levie says the take might look wrong in five years, and distribution does not change that much with AI. New channels will show up, including a place in the OpenAI app store, but AI is not a fundamental transformation or disruption of the tech distribution model, and it is not a go-to-market disruption.

A consumer company still has to figure out how to go viral. An enterprise company still has to build a go-to-market machine. When the buyer is technically savvy and can self-serve, the path is PLG plus a go-to-market engine. There will be no new invention of go-to-market because of AI.

An amazing agent does not bring customers on its own. The startup gets drowned out by 10,000 other startups and the priorities companies deal with all day. A viral video and a pile of likes is a one-time marketing stunt, not distribution. Distribution means owning an audience of people passionate about the product and keeping access to the relationship on LinkedIn, X, and Reddit.

Grokipedia·Aaron Levie·OpenAI

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The New Startup Playbook | Box CEO Aaron Levie ·

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More from this episode

  1. When Did Aaron Levie Drop Out of College?Aaron Levie dropped out of college in the middle of junior year in 2005, when being 20 and doing a startup was still fairly rare.
  2. Can a 10-person Startup Beat a Company With Hundreds of Employees?Aaron Levie says a three-, five-, or ten-person team can now produce the output of a 50-, 100-, or 200-person team, and that changes how a startup is run.
  3. Why Do Strategy and Taste Matter More Than Coding Speed?Aaron Levie says the premium in a startup has moved off coding speed. Hacking something together used to be the scarce skill.
  4. How Much AI Coding Market Cap Stays With Startups?Aaron Levie is comfortable underwriting a couple hundred billion dollars of market cap in the AI coding space that do not go to incumbents.
  5. What Happens When AI Labor Gets Much Cheaper?Aaron Levie says cheaper AI labor can unlock demand that the old price kept off the market.
  6. Why Will Better AI Models Help Companies More Than Consumers?Aaron Levie says the next gains from better models land in companies, not in most people's personal lives.

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