How AI Is Impacting Marketplaces

You know, how do you think AI is gonna impact marketplaces? So I've been spending a lot of time with AI. Outpace was early on to AI. We started working with generative AI prior to ChatGPT and finding some really interesting things around it. We built some interesting things there. I've also done some side projects on AI to make sense of qualitative user feedback data. So qualitative survey data, other types of qualitative data. I've been using it to kind of get back to some of my engineering skills. I'm incredibly excited about it. I haven't been this excited about technology in a long time. I think it's going to have pretty profound impacts on marketplaces. I think that it's going to have impacts that are hard to predict. And so for me right now, I think the understanding the impact of AI on marketplaces is really a matter of framing the right questions rather than having all the answers, because I don't think people have the answers yet. I think there's 3 questions for marketplace founders that are really critical with respect to AI. The first one is where can AI better connect demand with supply? So AI can serve a really important role in making sure that someone in your marketplace can find the product or the service that they need. We've already seen AI play a really important role. Personalization algorithms, the TikTok algorithm, the Facebook algorithm, Amazon's personalization algorithms, all are examples of AI working at a really important and fundamental level to enable products to be better. You know, people talk about, there's a lot of talk right now about TikTok and whether or not, you know, it makes sense to divest TikTok to the US market with or without the algorithm. And a lot of people have said like, this company's worthless without the algorithm. That's how important that particular AI personalization and discovery algorithm is to that business. And the same is true across other marketplaces. And so the first question to ask, which is already something that we're deep into, is where can you use AI, generative and otherwise, to better connect demand with supply? I think the second question, which becomes more pertinent with generative AI, is How can AI change how supply is fulfilled? So when person— when someone makes a purchase on your platform and starts to use a product or service, there might be things that AI can do in order to make that fulfillment experience better. So one example from the company I'm working with right now, Sesame, is we have a marketplace where patients can connect directly with doctors. Potentially, a generative AI agent can provide a first line of service, such as the intake experience. For doctors or for law firms or for other things where AI can have a conversation with a customer before they actually meet with the person that's going to provide the service. And as a result of that conversation, provide really important information to the service provider and then also improve the customer's experience as a result, make it more efficient, more personalized, more effective. And then the third question is, you know, where can AI replace supply entirely? There will be increasingly large areas areas where an AI agent, a chatbot, can take the place of a supplier. You know, in certain cases, that might be providing diagnosis for someone in a medical setting. There's going to be AIs focused on delivering certain forms of therapy, certain forms of coaching, certain forms of education and tutoring. Khan Academy is doing some really interesting work around using AI in concert with their content, which I think threatens other tutoring and educational marketplaces. So 3 key questions, I think, for marketplace founders to think through. Where can AI help you better connect supply with demand? Where can AI provide a better fulfillment experience when someone's interacting with a service provider or a product on your platform? And then 3, you know, where is AI going to replace your supply entirely?