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What I'm seeing in AI Go-To-Market

October 2024

Since I started working in AI Go-To-Market earlier this year, a number of you have asked what I’m observing, how the market is moving, and what I think is to come. Here is the current state of AI GTM, Fall 2024 edition:

Overall Market Conditions

To say that AI GTM is moving quickly is an understatement. On one hand, I’ve never seen a market move so abruptly as I’ve seen in AI, as an announcement from a particular vendor can upend the behavior of a significant part of the ecosystem. Playbooks go out of date, messaging was so three weeks ago, and AI practitioner attention has leaped to the next shiny method.

Current Conversations

Having said that, much of the industry zeitgeist right now swirls between researchers, vendors, early adopters, and some of the in-the-know influencers. Which is a damning recipe for sudden Starling-like ecosystem murmurations. It is also the context of most conversations within the Cerebral Valley community at this time.

AI Adoption

Ironically, most of the smartest and most experienced AI/ML professionals I have encountered this past year are busy building AI-focused startups. (I’d posit this almost feels like a talent-sink of sorts but that is another discussion.) There is, however, an ever-growing wave of non-tech professionals who are researching and kicking the tires on AI initiatives for their organizations. Here are the implications for AI GTM:

◦ This means the AI technologies initially being tested by casual business users and builders — from discrete parts of the AI tech stack to agents — are the most market accessible. (e.g. For example, Postgres and MongoDB as initial databases and ChatGPT and Claude as initial LLMs/AI agents.)

◦ This means prospects may not even have a clear idea about the problems they /should/ and /can/ solve with AI. (I believe AI vendor success should be attributed to how well they educate their audience about business capability.)

◦ This means early-stage AI vendor proof-of-concepts will stall more often than not.

◦ This also means general audience AI events are attracting inexperienced attendees as compared to other types of tech or AI ecosystem events.

The AI adoption lifecycle is still incredibly early, and I believe we will witness a series of waves of workplace integration in the years to come, very similar to how workplaces adopted Internet technologies in the 90s and early 2000s. Based on the conversations I’ve had, I also believe the fastest-growing AI-related opportunity in the immediate future will be consulting and guiding organizational adoption of AI.

What are your thoughts? I'd love to know.

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