AI or A1

‍Product craft in the age of agents

Last week, I went to Gibsons, the iconic Chicago steakhouse, with my wife for my birthday (and yes, we ordered too much). It was a perfect send-off to our Chicago era before moving to NYC in July. I got a huge, marbled filet because…hey, when in Rome, right?

The restaurant was quite loud, but I overheard the man next to me rumble,

“Can I get some A1 sauce, please?”.

Despite the cacophony in the room, that quote pierced the air like my steak knife through butter.

Why? I’m not judging that person’s choice, per se. Heck, my grandfather loves A1 and requests it with basically every piece of meat. But just because you can put it on everything, should you?

AI in software is just like A1 on steaks

As painful as it was for my LinkedIn-corporate-slop-despising self to make that comparison, the reality is this same fundamental belief is a foundation for Isaac and me as we build Silkline.

Craft vs. Cruft

I shared a podcast recently with Isaac because it really caught my ear. The conversation was between A16Z and Rahul Vohra (founder of Superhuman and a top product mind). After listening, Isaac said that he “felt like it saw me”.

I would posit that’s because Rahul and Isaac are 100% dialed in on the 2 things:

1. Why do people love the product?
2. What holds people back from loving the product?

Every. single. day.

After every conversation with customers, our feedback is consistent. They DON’T love Silkline because of AI. They love it, for example, because:

“with Silkline, all of our engineers are empowered to do their own purchasing; no one is waiting” - Miho @ Arbor Energy.

It just so happens that AI, thoughtfully crafted into the product and users’ workflows, is a key way we accomplish that.

What holds people back from loving the product? It’s certainly not because supply chain professionals lie awake at night yearning for an AI Silky chatbot to present them “insights” that are questionably valuable immediately after consuming (categorically “cruft” in our opinion). Manufacturers actually yearn for their supplier to deliver on time and on target, and to use a tool that gives them superpowers, not one that holds them back.

An example where Isaac has lived this? If you have a super large purchase order in Silkline, just click our flow-down button to copy an ETA to every line. That little snippet Isaac built single-handedly closed 5 customers. That, my friends, is craft.

Because AI is like A1 - it shouldn’t be on everything! You should use it for the right dish to create the best meal!

Levels

Ted Mabrey at Palantir is a bit of an enigmatic character. I worked at Palantir out of undergrad as a Forward Deployed Engineer, and it was where I really cut my teeth. The experience was part engineering fever dream, part chaotic evolution. The product was changing rapidly, as was the business, particularly on the commercial side; Ted was at the head of it all.

Fairly soft-spoken but always inquisitive, he had a mission to ensure our distributed, motley crew had a cohesive strategy. Enter the levels framework. The BLUF is this:

Valuable products are ones that help people make better decisions, take faster actions, and learn from their results

Note: this says nothing at all, about AI

The framework has become the bedrock of my personal product philosophy and core to Isaac's and my strategy for building Silkline.

1. Integrate the data - design the ontology of your problem space, the mechanisms of action, and make it all link together‍
2. Build the compelling workflow - what do people actually want to do, and how do you make their experience accomplishing it excellent.‍
3. Help people make better decisions - give them historical context, capture the data and outcomes of your processes as you you create it.‍
4. Expand the decision space - find global, not local maxima. Use the full organization context and earned knowledge to is fullest‍
5. Then and only then can you introduce AI and model driven operations, because your foundation is truly bedrock.

AI or A1 - build up what people want in levels and give them the right thing, at the right time, for the right problem.

And on that note, I leave you with this incredibly short film I created based on a mantra I say all the time to our team. Please enjoy 21 Silkline Street:

Let’s get cookin’,

-Brent

p.s. if that resonated and you’re up to talk a little engineering or supply chain, email me: brent@silkline.ai