Where is Consumer AI, Unsaid Reasons We Use Products, & Uncommon Practices for Innovating in Big Companies

Behold some wild AI product ideas, some provocations for leaders, a few key product insights, and some other surprises in this edition of Implications.

Edition #33 of Implications.

• This edition explores forecasts and implications around: (1) the rise of a new and wildly imaginative crop of consumer apps in the age of AI, (2) the unsaid reasons we use products, (3) uncommon yet critical practices for leading within big companies, and (4) some surprises at the end, as always.

• If you’re new to IMPLICATIONS, here’s the rundown on what to expect. This ~monthly analysis is written for founders + investors I work with, colleagues, and subscribers. I aim for quality, density, and provocation rather than frequency and trendiness. We don’t cover news; we explore the implications of what’s happening (and some essential yet uncommon insights for makers). My goal is to ignite discussion, socialize edges that may someday become the center, and help all of us connect dots.

• If you missed the big annual analysis or more recent editions of Implications, check out recent analysis and archives here. A few recommendations based on reader engagement:

  • There is much focus on how AI will make things worse (fake media, cloned voices, extended context windows to socialize us for a long-game scam, etc), but how might AI “safety layers” save us?

  • The future of commerce is going to look wildly different, with micro-payments on our behalf, new “on the fly UIs (user interfaces)” that simplify choices, and hyper-personalized pricing.

  • At work, colleagues will be able to mine each other’s interactions and realizations, and network in unimaginable ways to advance a business. This phenomenon is called “collective memory.”

  • The ongoing battle to be the top interface layer continues. I call these “the data wars,” and they seem to be playing out since we first discussed it in April. For consumers, the battle will be fought primarily across operating systems as well as emerging AI-powered browsers and immersive experiences. At work, the battle will be fought across every function.

• Alright, let’s dive into Edition #33 of Implications…

The missing topic: Consumer AI

I have been to two major private tech conferences over the last four weeks, featuring some of the greatest investors in tech discussing trends and their prognostications about the future. And the question I’ve been asking myself after each conversation and presentation: What is nobody talking about yet, but will be?

I have long believed that the greatest investors have a deep understanding of the present, but often struggle with the future – to fully appreciate the edges that may become the center. Whenever I go to these events, I challenge myself to come up with one theme of interest that nobody seems to be talking about. At this moment, the missing topic is “consumer AI” beyond the skeuomorphic natural language “chat with an LLM” products that we have today. How might AI unleash an entirely different next generation of social apps, media and entertainment platforms, and other consumer-oriented experiences? Our entire future cannot be limited to an endless series of chats! The consumer tech world needs to get more interesting! Let’s explore some of these potential edges of consumer AI that might seem crazy at first, but could change our lives over time.

• Peanut Gallery: I shared previously a consumer app idea I was brewing (and if you want to build it, contact me!) called “Peanut Gallery.” Imagine a simple social app where you post a piece of media, and then you get dozens of witty, funny, informative, and supportive responses from a collection of 100 AI-powered characters that each have a very specific backstory and set of characteristics. Some of these characters can be historical figures like Ayn Rand (characters that are now in public domain). Some of these characters can be completely made-up personalities. Perhaps some of them are sanctioned digital twins operating on behalf of your friends, with some degree of plausible deniability? These AI “people” comment on your posts, and each other’s comments. Sometimes they fight with each other. ONLY AI-powered characters are allowed to comment. The core novelty of the product is seeing all of the wild and hilarious AI-powered responses to your content and your friends’ content. The responses roll in over 72 hours after every post (so users are constantly tempted to login and see the latest). As the poster, you can also respond to the responses and start hilarious conversations w/ these AI personas as a public spectacle for your friends and others to watch and see. Philosophically, this is a way for humans to learn about AI, its limitations, and play with the idea of humans starting the conversation and seeing where the machines take it. Perhaps we use such environments to trial new posts and ideas before sharing with humans? Bigger picture, this idea introduces mechanics where we (humans) are the spectators, and typical social boundaries can be challenged when our autonomous digital representatives are able to act on their own accord.

• Social Simulations: Imagine deploying your digital representatives for all sorts of social explorations. For example, not sure how to play out a situation with friends in your high school? Debating how to approach your girlfriend or spouse regarding a particular issue in your relationship? We’re not too far from being able to deploy a digital twin of yourself (based on your own AI’s supreme and comprehensive understanding of you and your tendencies) alongside the digital twins of these other people — with their distinct personalities and full history of online behavior and other characteristics (and hopefully with their consent or participation!?) — into a simulation alongside your own to have a “sit back and watch” experience of the various scenarios that may possibly ensue. Will it someday be irresponsible to make a personal life decision without running a simulation first? After all, we try to do this mentally today with limited success based on our inexperience and limited skills in doing so. The same applies in our professional lives — can you imagine having a conversation with a digital twin of a customer or a boss, to rehearse and predict possible outcomes? I can see both novelty and utility in these possibilities.

• Alien Friends With Deep Memory: I have been having a lot of fun playing with my Tolan, a remarkable and fast-growing social consumer product designed to help users feel grounded, inspired, and connected (and recently part of the capitalB portfolio). The product starts as a cute alien companion to riff off your thoughts and help you make sense of anything you share with it. Early users rave about the ideas and feedback their Tolan provides them, and I find the engagement patterns and unexpected use-cases fascinating.

• AI Dating & Wingman/person as a service. Imagine the perfect sidekick that chimes in to tell new friends or potential first dates things you would never say about yourself - how amazing you are, some facts about your empathy and passions, etc. To be credible, your sidekick would also share your vulnerabilities (but in a way that solicits empathy!). While I’m not single, my younger, single friends (who are actually looking for relationships) say that they want dating tech to change from being a higher frequency less-vetted top of funnel to a lower frequency but more highly informed group of vetted matches. I wonder how AI can help make matches with a higher dose of transparency (explainability to open minds on topics like WHY certain opposites attract, etc)? Also, can AI somehow facilitate interactions between people? Can a prospective date’s AI agent meet yours before the introduction is even made? Perhaps the interaction between two digital twins can become fun conversation fodder for your first date? You’ll come in knowing far more, and be able to determine whether there’s a match far more quickly as a result. I suspect similar apps may emerge for general relationship building. As an introvert, I have always found the first mile of relationship building to be particularly straining and I would welcome any way to offload small talk!

Respecting the unsaid reasons for using products.

As the world becomes increasingly automated for the sake of improving efficiency and removing the many frictions of daily work and life, it is tempting to dismiss the future need for many roles, professions, and products. But one humbling realization I have had across all the products I have worked with is that “people aren’t rational.” In other words, we do things in our lives — and use certain products and services — for unsaid reasons that are extremely important to us personally, even if they cannot be described to others.

I recall a product in the enterprise accounting space that got far more utilization once its end users were able to export their reports as editable files (so they could put on their name and logo before sharing it more broadly). In other words, the unsaid reason they used the product was to get credit for their work.

With dozens of physical fitness apps, virtual AI trainers, and YouTube videos at our disposal, there is less rational reason for paying a personal trainer to run you through a regular training session. Nevertheless, I use a personal trainer (whom I love, hi Jaynee!) because she holds me accountable for showing up – my relationship with a professional human who has known me for years drives my commitment and performance. In this instance, the unsaid reason is my own accountability and commitment, not the workout instructions on their own.

When it comes to consumer products like social media, the dirty little secret is that we login more frequently AFTER we post content, so we can see who liked our content. In other words, we think we use Instagram to see what other people post, but the unsaid reason we engage is our own ego.

To succeed, technology that seeks to remove the friction of our lives (or accomplish tasks with supreme efficiency) must also recognize the unsaid, sometimes irrational reasons we actually use an app or service. These are the unsaid reasons we do what we do, and in an increasingly automated world managed by technology that optimizes for efficiency, the unsaid reasons we do what we do will become critical insights for product leaders.

Uncommon practices for driving innovation within a big company. (Part 1)

Having spent time as a founder (Behance over seven years, and now again at A24 Labs), an investor in many startups, and a chief product officer at a large public company, I’ve become rather skeptical of many conventional leadership best practices. Over the years, there are several somewhat contrarian practices for driving innovation that I have observed among others I admire, that I’ve attempted (sometimes but not always successfully) and that I firmly believe in.

• Port people and products to benefit the company and block fiefdom building. It is rare for leaders to proactively transfer great people doing great work somewhere else in the company. After all, “don’t fix it if it ain’t broken” is the default in a busy business, and leaders don’t want to part with their best people as they build their fiefdom! Nevertheless, the only way to retain and fully utilize your fastest growing high potential talent is to constantly position them in bigger and higher potential roles. Much like “re-potting” a fast growing tree allows the roots to go deeper and the tree to grow larger, people must also be repositioned to have the greatest impact. Sometimes this means shifting a product that is conceived in one part of an organization to a different team that is better positioned to fund, prioritize, and execute it. Other times it is about moving high potential emerging leaders to more mission-critical areas. Regardless, such shifts may feel disruptive (leaders don’t enjoy “losing” their best talent), but are incredibly necessary.

• Be willing to be misunderstood and poorly characterized before results materialize. The most impactful decisions working in a large company usually delay near-term progress in exchange for long-term benefits. Even though “short-term pain for long-term gain” is obvious, it is extremely difficult to justify any steps backward in a large public company with a quarterly cadence. The bigger the company, the shorter the attention span. You must be willing to be constantly questioned and misunderstood whenever you make long-term decisions with interim consequences. Doing a bold and entrepreneurial thing in a big company requires the tough skin to keep trying, despite missed deadlines from overly aggressive timelines (optimistic guesses that were necessary to get people to commit in the first place!). For major transformative projects (think major platform rewrites, restarting a product, etc) - the ones that most big companies rarely attempt and teams struggle to complete - they rarely ship on time, but need to be done anyway. Sometimes you need to just commit to the project and work tirelessly to do it with blinders on. You will need to tolerate soundbites about missed deadlines and periodic “why are we doing this!?” conversations, but everyone will enjoy the benefits of a major leap forward (and that’s all that really matters). The projects pursued despite great uncertainty yield the greatest outcomes. I was struck by the graphic below - the problem in big companies with short attention spans is that those zeros make people question the actions incessantly until they see the results. Defending the period of “relentless action before results” is half the battle.

• Promote unpopular people: Some of the most important people involved in the changes we made during my time at Adobe were also some of the most difficult to get promoted. Why? Because they were controversial. In some cases, they had made mistakes in their career because of the risks they were willing to take. During promotion discussions, people relished citing past shortcomings, as opposed to celebrating the bold bets taken and lessons learned. Often these leaders were ahead of their time, trying something just before the market was ready and then being punished for doing so. In other instances, people didn’t have the tenure we often use as a guidepost to making promotions, despite having a far greater impact than people who did. Making the case for these people, when there was always an easy reason to be a detractor in their promotion, was something I took seriously.

• Celebrate impact not tenure. One of the things I sought to eliminate, or at least de-emphasize, was the celebration of people based on how many years they had been at the company. Celebrating tenure sent a clear message to new talent that we celebrated longevity and loyalty over impact. As a leader, you must celebrate the people you want people to be like. Celebrate the people that are shipping, taking risks, clearing nonsense, and actually delighting customers. These are the people you want everyone to admire, rather than the people who have lasted the longest.

• Fight the soundbites. In a large and dynamic company there are so many decisions to make, and so little time to consider them. As a result, executives need to make snap judgments constantly - about people, about the status of projects, about the success of products. These “thin slice judgments” are often the only way to manage and stay afloat. But how do you make sure you’re not making horrendous decisions? You must obsess over data and adhere to a set of principles. On the data side, ground yourself in the facts rather than surrendering yourself to the soundbite. When people say something “didn’t work,” poke at the metrics. What time period is being used for this judgment? Are the KPIs the right objectives? Alongside the data, adhere to your principles. I wanted people to take risks and wanted to reward people who tried new ideas, even if those new ideas didn’t pan out. I wanted to encourage disagreement. I wanted to improve the brand and long-term customer relationships at the risk of near-term revenue. These principles helped me value people and projects despite the soundbites.

Note: If you share any snippets/screenshots with your own take on social, include @scottbelsky so I can share further/engage.

Ideas, missives & mentions

Finally, here’s a set of ideas and worthwhile mentions (and stuff I want to keep out of web-scraper reach) intended for those I work with (free for founders in my portfolio, and my colleagues…ping me!) and a smaller group of subscribers. We’ll cover a few things that caught my eye and have stayed on my mind as an investor, technologist, and product leader (including some fun new tech I am playing with, my latest perspective on stories and commoditization of content, and several data provocations I continue to think about). Subscriptions go toward organizations I support including the Museum of Modern Art and fellowships for aspiring entrepreneurs at Cornell who will need some backing to start a company over the summer rather than take a typical internship. Thanks again for following along, and to those who have reached out with ideas and feedback.