There’s a flood of SaaS tools and service firms calling themselves “AI-native.”
And on the surface, it makes sense:
-They’re lean
-They’re fast
-They ship features in days
-Their UIs are….fine
But there’s one thing most don’t have:
A moat.
Here’s the real truth:
If your product can be rebuilt with a prompt,
You don’t have a business.
You have a countdown.
In Embracing Irrationality, we warn against over-optimizing for what’s easy or trendy.
It feels smart in the moment, but it usually leads to fragility.
That’s exactly what we’re seeing now:
• Thin value props
• Interchangeable offerings
• No loyalty, just curiosity and convenience
As the cost of building AI interfaces drops to zero, the number of “good enough” competitors grows fast.
So what’s the irrational but smart move?
-Go deeper into a vertical
-Get obsessed with real customer pain
-Add manual layers that drive retention
-Build opinionated workflows that aren’t for everyone
-Use AI as a tool, not the whole pitch
The companies that endure won’t be the ones calling themselves AI-first.
They’ll be the ones that solve real problems and happen to use AI.
Ask yourself:
If someone cloned your product tomorrow, why would a customer still choose you?
If you can’t answer that, you’ve got work to do.
AI might be the engine.
But depth is still the moat.