The Problem with Building AI Tools

By 20VC

Categories: VC, Startup

Summary

Founders should avoid building proprietary AI tools for universal problems—instead focus on domain-specific solutions where you own organizational context and memory. This speaker runs weekly 'AIO' meetings to align AI strategy across teams, preventing scattered tool-building and ensuring AI investments solve unique, defensible problems rather than competing with established platforms.

Key Takeaways

  1. Don't build AI marketing stacks, HR stacks, or ERP replacements—let next-gen Salesforce, SAP, and Workday handle horizontal solutions. Focus your AI efforts on problems unique to your organization where you have exclusive data and context advantages.
  2. Implement a bi-weekly 'AIO' (All-In-On-AI) meeting as a convergence and brainstorming function across teams. This prevents scattered AI initiatives and forces accountability by requiring teams to justify why they're building each AI feature.
  3. Distinguish between proprietary AI tools (build these) and general-purpose software (let others build). Avoid investing engineering resources in solutions that should be commoditized across your industry.
  4. Use organizational context and memory as your competitive moat for AI. The real defensibility comes from data and institutional knowledge you possess, not from building generic AI layers.

Related topics

Transcript Excerpt

I don't want to build an AI marketing stack. I don't want to build an AIHR stack. I don't want to build an AI ERP stack. I'm hoping that somebody goes and does that much more effectively and efficiently for the world at large. Perhaps it's the next iteration of Salesforce, next iteration of SAP or the next iteration of Workday that is going to help me do that because I do believe it needs to become more intelligent. We talked about it needs to be more AI enabled. I do want to build things that are particular to me where I have all the information, all the intelligence, the context and the memory from an organizational perspective. I think the right way to get there is to hold people accountable. And I run a meeting twice a week now called AIO. It's kind of funny. It's like the old McDonald…

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