​In The AI Era, Execution Is The New Moat

Omer Kaplan is CEO and co-founder of ZyG, an Operating System for eCommerce scale.

In the age of AI, tech companies need to do two things exceptionally well.

First, they need to solve problems. Customers increasingly want outcomes, not tools or features. An article published by Sequoia argues that the most valuable technology companies of the next decade are likely to look less like traditional software businesses and more like services firms powered by software.

Second, they need to move incredibly quickly. AI is advancing at an extraordinary speed, making competitive advantages increasingly short-lived. It’s becoming more important to be able to quickly and continuously turn new technology into customer outcomes.

The last 20 years of software were about helping people do work, but I believe the next 20 will be about doing the work for them. In this new landscape, the key to success is execution. To achieve this, here are four principles every founder should keep in mind.

1. Own the outcome and own the complexity.

The moment you decide to own an outcome, you inherit every problem standing between the customer and their success. You’re no longer responsible for one product or feature, but for everything required to deliver the result.

For AI-native companies taking responsibility for e-commerce startups’ growth, for example, that means taking on all the complexity from customer acquisition to advertising, forecasting, customer support, fulfillment and more. None of those functions create growth on their own—the outcome depends on how well these complex parts work together.

In my experience working with brands seeking e-commerce scale, it is this very complexity that stymies growth. A company that is great at building products rarely has the expertise or capacity to address everything needed. As a result, they end up with a patchwork of dashboards, AI tools and agencies. This bifurcated system does nothing to remove complexity and certainly doesn’t deliver an outcome. ​