Memorial Day Musings

Something is shifting in how CEOs are thinking about AI and commerce.

Not the AI productivity conversation. Not the chatbot conversation.

Something quieter and more consequential.

In the last few weeks I have heard the same instinct from founders and executives across different categories and geographies.

The sense that the interface through which consumers discover and buy products is about to change in a way that makes the last decade of ecommerce optimisation look like preparation for the wrong exam.

They're not wrong.

When a consumer delegates a purchase decision to an AI agent, the entire stack that brands have invested in - SEO, SEM, marketplace listings, PDP optimisation, review velocity - doesn't disappear. It just stops being the deciding factor.

What decides is whether the agent has learned to trust your brand at the moment it constructs a recommendation.

That's a different problem. It requires a different instrument to measure. And the window to act before category signals calcify is shorter than most people think.

CEOs who scent this are right to move. The ones waiting for the channel to become obvious will find that someone else already set the signal.