You can’t predict which future shows up. You can build something that survives more than one of them.
“Dan, is AI going to kill my business?”
I get some version of this every single week now.
Here’s my honest answer:
I don’t know.
Nobody does.
Some of the smartest people I know think we’re six months out from everything changing. Others think half this stuff is hype and we’re watching a bubble inflate in real time.
Both camps are certain. Both are full of people smarter than me. Only one of them can be right.
That’s not a question I can answer. So I spend my time on one I can:
How do you build for a future you can’t predict?
Here’s where I start…
Almost every business I look at is built for one specific future. Nobody decided that on purpose. But trace it back and there’s always one thing that has to keep being true or the whole thing stops working.
One channel bringing in most of the leads… One person who knows how it actually runs… One product carrying the rest… etc
That business is already a prediction. It’s a bet that one particular tomorrow shows up on schedule.
And when people see it, they almost always reach for one of two moves:
- Go defensive and you survive the bad years and miss the good ones.
- Go all in and you win big if you’re right, and you’re gone if you’re not.
Either way you’re still guessing. You’ve just raised the stakes on the guess.
I don’t want a bigger bet. I want a business that doesn’t need the bet to land.
So what do you do?
I build the version that’s good across a lot of futures instead of perfect in one.
In practice that’s boring work…
A second channel that’s working before you need it… Someone else who knows how the operations run… A second product that could carry a bad quarter for the first one…
None of that is exciting. But all of it means no single tomorrow can put you out.
Yes, it costs me some upside. I’ll never have the maximum outcome in any single scenario.
But it keeps me in the game. And that’s the biggest upside there is.
The question to ask instead
So, is AI going to kill your business? Maybe. Maybe not.
What I do know is that the old rules still hold. One point of failure will get you eventually.
That was true before any of this started. It’ll be true after.
AI didn’t put that there. It just got enough people worried to finally go looking.
So you don’t need to ask what AI is going to do to you.
Ask instead: what’s the one thing in your business that has to stay true? The thing you’d be in trouble without.
Then go make it not the only one.
That’s how you build for a future you can’t predict.
-DM
Since we’re on the subject…
I’m building and backing a portfolio of AI companies.
If you’ve had your exit and you’re working out what’s next, that’s exactly who we partner with. Co-founder partners at Martell Ventures.