The new layers

The bottom layer of any business is the expensive problem(s). But you layer so much on top of that – people, business model, strategy, requirements & plans, tech stack, product design, messaging, pricing, and more. The art of layering is choosing the right layers at the right time and skilfully binding them together. There’s a layering process in nature too – here’s a tiny sliver of it: “By producing sugars and proteins to entice animals to disperse their seed, the angiosperms multiplied the world’s supply of food energy, making possible the rise of large warm-blooded mammals. Without flowers, the reptiles, which had gotten along fine in a leafy, fruitless world, would probably still rule. Without flowers*, we would not be.” ― Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World *by “flowers” he means fruiting/flowering plants, grasses, shrubs, trees, etc – angiosperms From here you can choose your metaphors for the technology and business world – if “cloud” are the angiosperms, what comes next? Dropbox. If LLMs are the angiosperms (and OpenAI is the current keystone species) here’s an inconclusive list of what comes next: Products that sell LLM default behavior, text generation, like Jasper.ai Products that sell something else, like analysis, summarization, categorization, and intelligent integration, like MyAskAI New services models, such as the emerging “AI automation agencies” (more than any tech startup, this phenomenon reminds me of the dotcom boom) Legacy software, like Notion or Brightr, that integrate AI Ecosystem add-ons, like aptly-named PromptLayer.com New LLM providers who research, design, build, deploy, host LLM services That’s a lot of new stuff – new layers. But that’s not surprising if you do the math on the Pollan quote – there are 1.5 trillion kilograms of humans, cows, pigs, and sheep on planet earth, all thanks to angiosperms.