2023: A look back at an incredible year
Learnings emerging from the dichotomy of an uncertain economy and the fastest-growing technological revolution of our lifetime
As we wind down yet another year and head into the mid-2020s. Yes, let that sink in. The COVID-19 pandemic started in the late 2010s. Remote work wasn’t a thing before then. Yet, the entire world, especially tech and knowledge workers, figured out not just how to make it work, but also thrive in it, to a point where a significant number of us do not ever want to be in a 9-5 office environment.
In 2023, we experienced yet another exogenous jolt that made us reimagine how we work - Artificial Intelligence. OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT made AI accessible to almost anyone. It has made our imagination of how we’d use the technology go through the roof, leading to tons of startups leveraging LLMs from OpenAI and other pioneers in the space to build products and solutions that attempt to solve some of the simplest and hardest problems alike.
That’s two distinct and unexpected events within 4 years that have made us question the status quo and embrace massive change, overnight. The human race seems to be on a rollercoaster of massive changes.
2023 was also a year of economic uncertainty. While the stock markets made a massive comeback after a disastrous 2022, layoffs continued to be in the news alongside AI advancements, and related news.
Years such as these have a lot to teach. When the metrics and parameters we are used to swing well beyond the norms, we get to stress-test our assumptions, skills, and ability to think on the fly, to adapt, and to stay ahead. During the first part of 2023, I was the CMO of a hyper-growth startup where we grew 4X despite the tech industry slowdown. In the second part of 2023, I became an entrepreneur (again) and launched TheWordsmith.ai - a product that brings together two of my passions - Marketing and Technology.
Here are some learnings from the year on AI, startups, and general business.
1. Don’t do more with less. Do fewer things better
One phrase we all got used to seeing and hearing was “Do more with less”. Seeing every B2B company running ads on how they helped teams do “more with less” was excruciating. Of all the corporate jargon and management lingo out there, this is one of the worst. If you have a sincere, high-performing team, asking them to do more with less is a sure-shot recipe for burnout and unforced errors. If you do not have a team that delivers at capacity, “do more with less” simply means “get off your a**es and start working more efficiently”. In neither scenario is it productive guidance.
On the contrary, I’ve learned to prioritize things ruthlessly and do fewer of them, but better.
2. Don’t restrict yourself when reaching out for help
When asking for help previously, I used to only reach out to folks I knew well or had interactions with on at least a semi-regular basis. However, jumping head-first into founding a startup in the middle of economic uncertainty, and recollecting Steve Job’s story about reaching out to the founder of HP out of the blue, made me reach out to every person I could think of who could potentially help me by giving TheWordsmith.ai a try, and providing early feedback.
I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer number of folks who volunteered to help and went above and beyond my expectations in providing feedback that significantly shaped the product. On the flip side, some folks who I considered close friends/colleagues either never responded, or simply paid lip service to my outreach and disappeared.
3. It is never too early to launch a product
As intuitive as this is, it is extremely hard to know when a product is ready for launch. What is a viable MVP? Products never stop evolving, but you need to tie a bow on the MVP at the right time and launch. One of the fears we as founders have is a bad first impression. But in a crowded world, most new product launches won’t reach even a tiny sliver of its target audience at MVP launch. The risk of a bad first impression is typically minimal, depending on how big the launch is. Start small, gather feedback, and improve. Rinse and repeat as many times as you can. You will be surprised at two things,
How embarrassing the MVP looked in comparison to the product a few weeks after launch. Yet, how glad you are that you launched.
How different the product looks compared to the roadmap you had in mind before the launch, because you built it based on user feedback, and not in a vacuum.
4. The opportunity for AI startups is massive
We saw AI hit the tech community and the workplace like a massive tsunami. People started using ChatGPT to make their work more productive. The growth of ChatGPT has been unbelievable. My dad, a doctor who rarely interacts with new tech, knows about ChatGPT and had a conversation with me about it this week.
However, while some folks have incorporated ChatGPT and other tools built on top of OpenAI and other LLMs, into their workflows, the penetration is still minimal, leaving a vast market still up for grabs across industries and verticals with innovative AI solutions. Differentiation and a moat will be the keys to success.
While there have been plenty of memes floating around that poke fun at AI startups making them infamous for being “GPT wrappers”, the use of popular models using APIs and building wrappers will continue. The key is to find a solution for the right problem, define it well, and build a compelling product. If you can master the user experience, build some sort of a moat, and play in a problem space that’s not so generic that the likes of ChatGPT will address it natively (such as summarizing documents), you are still in play.
5. Every industry, vertical, business function, and individual will need to figure out the right approach to incorporating AI into their workflows
While ChatGPT has become so accessible and easy to use, the risk it poses with its generic outputs is hidden and quite dangerous. For example, it generates great-sounding marketing content, but when created without deep context on brand and company knowledge, the generated content is way too undifferentiated.
Consumers of content are also becoming more AI-aware by the day and the opportunity for arbitrage with AI-generated content in marketing will diminish quickly unless it is done smartly. Leveraging the right tools and workflows to incorporate AI into marketing will be crucial to be able to stand out in the crowd and grab user attention.
If you are a marketer and haven’t found an AI solution that works for you, consider signing up for TheWordsmith. It is free to sign up and risk-free to take a test drive.
Wishing you all a great 2024 filled with happiness, excitement, aspirations, and success!
See you in the new year!