incumbent copilot business model
everywhere you look, ai is becoming the "copilot" for everything. code faster in your ide. write better emails in gmail. set up e-comm stores without breaking a sweat. the whole pitch is basically: do the same stuff you've always done, just... quicker.
and honestly? it works. companies are making bank on this model. slap "ai features" on your existing product, charge an extra $20/month per user, watch the revenue climb. who's gonna say no to saving time?
plus, the copilot model isn't really disrupting anything. it's just making the hamster wheel spin faster. we're still running the same race, just with better shoes.
real disruption usually looks different though. it either,
- creates entirely new markets for people who were completely left out before, or;
- comes in so cheap and simple that it starts eating the existing market from the bottom up.
copilots do neither. they make existing workflows more efficient, sure. but they also make software more expensive. we've watched pricing climb from those early $20/month tiers to something entirely different now. chatgpt pro hit $200/month. perplexity max, claude max, cursor max... they're all pushing into that premium territory where only businesses and power users can justify the cost.
it's just premium pricing on incremental improvements. clayton christensen would probably call this sustaining innovation. we're making the existing market more expensive, not creating new ones or democratizing access from the bottom up.
the companies building copilots are playing it safe. incremental improvement, predictable revenue, happy customers who get to do familiar things faster will pay $200/mo. it's a solid business model.
and now in the age of agents, i mean the "go handle this entire workflow while i sleep" kind. the ones that don't just make you faster at doing your job but do parts of your job.
like, imagine an agent that doesn't just help you write code, but actually maintains your entire ci/cd pipeline. or one that doesn't just improve your marketing copy, but runs your entire content strategy, a/b tests everything, optimizes based on performance data, and adapts without you touching it.
that's not copilot energy. the shift feels like this:
copilots: same work, faster π
agents: different work entirely β©
guess somewhere out there, someone's probably building the thing that makes our entire approach to "work" look outdated. the netflix to our blockbuster CDs. the iphone to our blackberry. the copilot era will be profitable now. but i have this feeling it's just the warm-up act
we're just still thinking inside the box of "how do i do this thing better?" instead of "do i need to do this thing at all?" Β―\_(γ)_/Β―