Great coverage. Fabrice's commentary was especially interesting with respect to SMB enablement (s/o Slice) and B2B recommerce -- 2 opportunities that intersect with what we're building. Look forward to future Memos.
"I hypothesize we will see a resurgence in marketplaces in the era of AI, but it will look different than we might expect. The playbooks of Airbnb and Uber are no longer fit for the new era, and the technology window driving those marketplaces has closed. We are entering a new era, and the only constant is change…"
What Airbnb and Uber have done was a huge leap in innovation mixed with perfect timing. They also created new behaviors and trust systems in previously unorganized markets. All happened during massive transformations in other areas of technology. One of the biggest shifts was moving offline transactions to online and increasing the use of mobile phones.
Now AI will enable more efficient operation, but it won't bring as big paradigm shifts. It's hard to believe that only AI shift will be enough for that. Sure, AI can enable complex service bundling that wasn't possible before. But still, it's more about the optimization part. Sure, we are still in the early stages of AI implementation, and beyond personalization use cases will be more to come.
Key question: what fundamental human behaviors or needs remain unaddressed by current marketplaces that AI could uniquely enable? Predictions are always hard until we see something successful in the wild.
Looking forward to your next memo, I'm curious what's on your mind as you have much more experience than I do on this topic.
Great coverage. Fabrice's commentary was especially interesting with respect to SMB enablement (s/o Slice) and B2B recommerce -- 2 opportunities that intersect with what we're building. Look forward to future Memos.
So much opportunity everywhere!
I find this intriguing:
"I hypothesize we will see a resurgence in marketplaces in the era of AI, but it will look different than we might expect. The playbooks of Airbnb and Uber are no longer fit for the new era, and the technology window driving those marketplaces has closed. We are entering a new era, and the only constant is change…"
What Airbnb and Uber have done was a huge leap in innovation mixed with perfect timing. They also created new behaviors and trust systems in previously unorganized markets. All happened during massive transformations in other areas of technology. One of the biggest shifts was moving offline transactions to online and increasing the use of mobile phones.
Now AI will enable more efficient operation, but it won't bring as big paradigm shifts. It's hard to believe that only AI shift will be enough for that. Sure, AI can enable complex service bundling that wasn't possible before. But still, it's more about the optimization part. Sure, we are still in the early stages of AI implementation, and beyond personalization use cases will be more to come.
Key question: what fundamental human behaviors or needs remain unaddressed by current marketplaces that AI could uniquely enable? Predictions are always hard until we see something successful in the wild.
Looking forward to your next memo, I'm curious what's on your mind as you have much more experience than I do on this topic.
Working on the piece now! I agree today AI is about optimization but I think there is a more exciting big picture shift coming.