When trying to find product-market fit, there is one person that we believe companies building in AI need to win over: the developer. As more companies enter the space, and existing companies mature, developers are emerging as the “kingmakers” in the AI industry, says Jennifer Li.
They are often the first adopters of new technologies, and responsible for putting them into product experiences.
So how should AI-focused companies adjust to keep these “kingmakers” in mind?
Integrate your product into their existing workflows, said Keerti Melkote, CEO of Anyscale. Take care of governance, security and other important aspects of using your product, and allow the developers to think about the tasks they are actually trying to accomplish, he said.
Keerti, along with Jennifer Li, Marjorie Janiewicz of Mistral AI, Lauren Nemeth of Pinecone and Monique Shivanandan of HSBC discussed how AI companies can find product-market fit in a competitive landscape, at TECH WEEK by a16z in San Francisco.
“Developers don’t want to be sold to,” Lauren said. “They want to be able to say, ‘Here’s my use case. Here’s the problem I’m trying to solve.’”
And using a new tool to solve those problems must be “frictionless,” Monique said.
“Focus on the thing that you're going to be best, and be best at it, but integrate with the ecosystem that exists,” she said.
This is also where the power of open source comes into play, Marjorie said.
When your product is out there, there is so much you can learn, she said.
Hearing from developers live about what their wishes are is important.
“We do find that the requirements coming bottom up can be quite different from the requirements at the top,” she said. “And in the end, it's about connecting the two.”
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