Riding, Surviving, or Thriving the AI Hype?
Is AI disrupting our perception of reality? + Conspiracy theory inside!
In this edition:
How AI products go to market - my upcoming case study for Product Drive
Does it make sense to pay more than $100k for an “.ai” domain?
A free guide to AI SaaS pricing - with a cheat sheet
An alleged shady background of LinkedIn’s “Top Voice” badges
Dear GTM Strategist!
How is your September?
It is a crazy month in my “HQ” = home office. Look at my dungeon 🤠
We are working on a new version of the GTM Strategist Bootcamp with my team; I’m preparing for the Q4 event tour and hedging my strategic bets for 2025.
One of these bets continues to be GTM for AI-first companies.
And before I enthusiastically write another AI-related Substack, I need to measure the temperature here - are you even interested in this?
Help me out by stating your opinion here:
Thank you!
But before I hear back from you …
🥁🥁🥁
Here is what is HOT right now in my network:
How Do AI Companies Really Go to Market?
0 theory, 0 budget, real experiments, and lessons learned. I developed a case study for Userpilot’s event, Product Drive. There will be many fantastic sessions with Marty Cagan, Wes Bush, Ben Williams, and David Pereira …. The stakes are very high. This is why I have been working on this presentation for over a month now, and here is a special preview for you (work in progress):
Over 2000 people have registered so far, and we anticipate 3500+ 🙀 (not nervous, no, no).
Worth your attention?
Join us on a livestream on Oct 7th and Oct 8th.
🇮🇪 If you are in Dublin, let's meet in person. 🤝 Join us on 8 October.
Register here. It is free. 🤠 I sent 50 books to Dublin - you can get one as a 🎁 if you attend.
Rebranding: Goodbye CommandBar 🔛 Hello Command AI 👋
Does it make sense to pay more than $100k for an “.ai” domain?
James Evans, co-founder of CommandBar—oops, I mean Command AI—made a bold move: they rebranded their user assistance platform (trusted by teams like HubSpot, HashiCorp, Yotpo, Thryvv, and Freshworks), to an AI-first product. I was curious why the team rebranded since many of my VC friends are scared that we are at the peak of the genAI hype curve.
James explained why they decided for a rebranding:
“It came down to the fact that the key problems we're trying to solve are uniquely enabled by AI. Our company exists because we think most software is way too hard to use, and stuff that exists to help users (old school popups and chatbots) are more annoying than helpful. Why annoying? Because they aren't personalized. Chatbots tell users to "go read these 3 FAQ articles". Pop-ups randomly spam users with new features and offers for onboarding tours.
See Command AI in action:
Command AI mimics how a human user assistant would work. They would stand next to the user at their computer and be able to answer questions with the full context of who the user is and what they have asked before. They could take over the mouse and just show the user when needed, or give them a nudge in the right direction when they seem stuck.
Along with the rebranding, Command AI announced two new AI-powered features this week: copilot cursor:
and nudge autopilot:
Great products with sustainable business models will outlive any hype. User assistance is ripe for AI disruption. Everyone has an annoying experience with automated chatbots that didn’t get you the answer.
If you want to take Command AI for a spin - you can book a demo here.
New Report on AI SaaS Pricing
Pricing AI can feel like a moving target. That's what happens when a new technology is evolving at hyperspeed. Thankfully, my friends at PricingSaaS published a Guide to AI Pricing, jam-packed with examples from some of the top players in SaaS. Grab the full report below.
Go-to pricing strategies ATM:
Usage-based
Seat-based
Hybrid (combining seat and usage)
In addition to general stats, this report also provides interesting examples and differentiations between new products, features, and upgraded packages such as:
Notion: Seat-based AI add-on increased ARPU by 80%
Algolia: Usage-based model with $0.50 per 1,000 search requests
Airtable: Hybrid model combining $6/seat add-on with usage credits
Every Trend Has an Anti-Trend: Human Interaction Matters More Than Ever
I totally went outside my comfort zone by doing an interview with Aakash Gupta. I was so honored that he invited me to the show, but you know how it is - he has 200K LinkedIn followers and 120K Substack followers and I was like - “OMG - this is huge.”
But based on the first feedback from our communities, we did a great job. My favorite part of this nearly 2 hour-long interview is when we discuss the future of GTM 🔮. Whereas I firmly believe that GTM Engineering is something we should learn—hello, the subtle art of prompting—I believe that we should double down on human-centric: sales, networking, events, partnerships, etc.
To take it up a notch: Richard van der Blom believes that AI is ruining LinkedIn and the only way to really thrive there is to be a HUMAN.
He saw a 340% increase (!!) of AI-written comments. He shared the numbers here.
👽 Conspiracy Theory or a Real Story: LinkedIn Allegedly Trains Their AI With “Community Top Voices”
My friends Ivana Todorović, co-founder at AuthoredUp, and Jason Knight from One Knight in Product recorded the best podcast I have ever listened to about LinkedIn for regular folks, not full-time LinkedIn Bros.
Ivana shared stats of her epic LinkedIn Algo study. She gave the best explanation ever on why we had the “honor” of sharing our wisdom with Community Answers on LinkedIn last year - allegedly, we were training their AI 😆 by earning and defending the “Top Voice” community badge - LOL. Since I fell for it last year, I thought it was interesting to share. There are many more hands-on nuggets and tangible tips in this interview, so definitely listen to it if you would like to succeed on LinkedIn without sacrificing your moral compass and wasting too much time that you don’t have in GTM.
If that bothers you, check out this post by Paweł Huryn to learn how to opt-out of LinkedIn harvesting your data to train AI.
Now, I’m back to #deepwork 🫡 and finishing the bootcamp.
Thanks for reading and thinking with me!
Till the BIG launch next week!
Maja from the dungeon 🐲
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