Just as a world without video calls is unthinkable today, Gen AI will be omnipresent in 10 years from now. But AI adoption in B2B takes time.
“Does your product live in the cloud?” That was the defining question of the late 2000s.
“Does your product use blockchain?” Welcome to the 2010s.
“How do you integrate AI into your product?” Thanks for bringing me back into the roaring 2020s.
As a B2B SaaS entrepreneur, I’ve seen a few tech hypes coming, going, and staying. History is generally a good teacher — what is true for warfare is also true for tech. So let’s dive into some recent tech history.
1. The Cloud
One of the first cloud-native apps was Dropbox. You could store your files in the cloud long before fiber-glass internet and 5G were commodities. Besides the free storage quota in the early adopter era, inviting others to join Dropbox increased your free storage quota. The network effects started playing their game, and Dropbox became a dominant cloud storage player long before Google Drive, iCloud, and OneDrive were around.
So why is Dropbox not dominant anymore? Because it lacked many of the non-functional features that are required for businesses when Microsoft and Google launched their cloud storage services that were fully integrated into their office suites.
But cloud storage as such has survived, and I guess there are only a handful of people out there who don’t use any form of cloud storage at all. At Yonder, there isn’t a single paper folder left, we have all our documents in the cloud.
The other dominant cloud service that has redefined the way we do business is voice-over-IP and video calling. I remember the early days of Skype when I could call my relatives in France for free. I also remember the early days of GoToMeeting, which was the only reliable way to host a transatlantic video call at the time. And surely everyone remembers the surge and fall of Zoom during the pandemic — it declined for the same reason as Dropbox: Non-functional requirements around data protection in large organizations. Microsoft took the whole cake with its Teams product, even defeating IT security officers in banks, public sector organizations, and defense companies.
2. The iPad
Let’s change from software to hardware.
After the initial outrage about the name of that new device reminding some people of feminine hygiene articles, the device quickly became a must-have for all tech hipsters.
A few years later, I was responsible for the operational IT department at Swiss International Air Lines. Pilots (who already had an iPad for their private usage) demanded the device to be introduced to replace the heavy Panasonic ToughBook Electronic Flight Bags.
That was in 2015. The time wasn’t right yet. IT vetoed the iPad, and so did the corporate functions of the Lufthansa Group. It took another 5 years before the iPad became the standard device for Electronic Flight Bags, and almost all pilots worldwide use an iPad in flight operations.
3. The Lessons
Radical tech innovations often have their roots in the B2C sector. With an attractive freemium model, growth can go viral because private persons don’t need to ask their privacy officer if they can use the new product or service. They don’t need to go through an RFP process but can decide to buy whilst sipping a beer on the couch.
For both the cloud and the iPad, B2C was first. B2B was second, and enterprise B2B was last. And after the enterprise sector, the public sector laggardly followed.
4. The Outlook
What can we learn from those historic innovations for the future of AI? When looking at today’s Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) products, it’s safe to say that Gen AI will shape our lives for good. Just as we can’t imagine a world without video calls anymore, we won’t be able to imagine a world without Gen AI ten years from now.
However, never forget that B2C is first, B2B is second, and enterprise B2B is last. I’m convinced that wasn’t just true for the cloud and the iPad, but will also be true for Gen AI.
Why am I so sure?
At Yonder, my customers regularly ask me about our plans to introduce Gen AI into our product. The first two use cases we are implementing are AI-assisted translations and an AI-assisted regulation importer. Here is what our roadmap says about those two use cases:
Real-time translation of documents into multiple languages will be much faster with AI support and help to prevent content in different languages from diverting.
Finding, importing, and updating any standard or regulation from any authority is an excellent application of Gen AI capabilities. Once implemented, linking our customers’ documentation to the imported regulations and standards using AI is the logical next step. Of course, that’s only when our customers allow their documentation to be passed on to the cloud AI models used by Yonder.
That’s the iPad 2015 moment at Swiss International Air Lines for Gen AI.
Even if you have the best AI use case, certain enterprise customers will disallow the use of cloud AI models with their data. And because it’s beyond the reach of most software companies to build their own AI models, we will have to wait until our enterprise customers have changed their minds. Just as they did with Microsoft Teams some 2–3 years ago, or with the iPad some 5–8 years ago.
But in the meantime, our non-enterprise B2B customers without IT departments are more than welcome to start using our first AI use cases.
History repeats.
