Builders Weekly | 2/10/23

A few things that occupied my brainspace this week.

👋 Hey, I’m Ben! I write weekly about how to grow products and companies. I go deep on growth strategies, how to build products users love, and what actionable lessons can be learned from what best-in-class companies are doing and industry experts are saying.

---

Happy Friday everyone!

As Ben There Building That grows, I’ve found that my current article format isn’t enough to share all of the cool things I’ve been thinking about with you guys. I'll be adding a second article to the mix, called Builders Weekly, where each week I highlight a handful of quick hits that I think you’ll find interesting. The number of snippets will generally vary between 2-5 per week and the format of what I’ll share will range anywhere from tweets, to podcast episodes, to news articles, to questions I’ve been thinking about. I hope you enjoy!

As always, if you have any feedback just shoot me an email or hit me up on twitter @benlkatz!

---

What I’ve got for you this week…

1. Google’s launching of a ChatGPT competitor

2. Microsoft’s strategy masterclass

3. A framework I’ve been thinking about for building with AI

Let’s dive in!

Google is launching a chatGPT competitor

Google announced on Monday 2/6 that it will be releasing an experimental chatbot called Bard and highlighted that we can expect AI features rolling out on Google Search soon. They also included a screenshot in their announcement, which you may have seen on Twitter.

It will be fun to watch the Google vs. Bing battle unfold as they both race to incorporate AI into their search engines. That said, one thing is for certain; SEO will look a little different in a few years…

Microsoft’s Strategy Masterclass

I wrote about this briefly in my article on how to build a winning AI business, but I’ve been very impressed with how Microsoft has positioned itself in the AI race. Microsoft wrote a blog post on the partnership announcing the extended partnership, but I’ll summarize the key strategic points:

1. They get equity exposure to OpenAI, which is a major player in the AI space.

2. It ensures OpenAI will exclusively use Microsoft’s Azure Infrastructure.

3. It allows Microsoft to deploy OpenAI’s models across all their consumer and enterprise products.

4. It allows Microsoft to be early to market while still distancing themselves from any potential reputation damage from AI’s flaws (biases, misinformation, etc.).

Early Builders Build For Themselves

I spent some time this past week talking strategy with a friend who is in the process of building an AI-based tool. We discussed something that has stood out to me over the past month as people race to build with AI; most of the tools I’m seeing built are being built to target the problems of a particular user cohort - builders!

When a new technology comes out the people that immediately start building with it are eager to leverage the new tech to solve their own problems. These people generally fit a similar profile and so many of the early products fall into a similar space. That said, the larger market remains underserved in the beginning, leaving an opportunity for people that break this trend. I visualized the opportunity below:

That’s all I’ve got for you this week, stay tuned for the next one!

Ben

---

If you enjoyed this article consider giving it a like, share, and if you haven’t, subscribe for free to get more insights on how to build strong businesses around products that users love.