The End of Dumb Automations

95% of 'AI startups' aren't actually AI companies. They're automation companies wearing AI makeup. And they're about to get eaten alive by the second wave.

I know because we almost became one of them.

When we started Swan AI, we were building the same thing as 99% of GTM startups right now - another AI SDR.

The workflow blueprint was embarrassingly simple:

1. Find prospects in a b2b database

2. Filter with AI for relevance

3. Personalize emails with AI

4. Send sequences

Extremely simple to build, but every step was locked in stone.

Then a customer asked us something that broke everything: 'Can you make it work for webinar attendees instead of net new leads'?

Prisoners of Our Own Code

Our beautiful workflow? Useless. We'd have to rebuild from scratch.

That's when we realized: we weren't building intelligence. We were building expensive automations.

Real AI doesn't follow your flowchart. It writes its own.

Instead of AI being a smart step in your workflow, AI should be the brain running the entire operation - thinking, deciding, and adapting without asking permission.

This isn't just a technical upgrade. It's a complete power flip.

• Wave 1: Code is king. AI executes predetermined steps.

• Wave 2: AI is king. Code becomes the execution layer.

Welcome to the “there’s an app for me” era

When AI controls the logic, that webinar customer's request becomes trivial.

The same agent that qualifies website visitors can instantly adapt - analyzing webinar registration data, researching attendees' companies, crafting different outreach strategies for no-shows vs engaged participants, and choosing the optimal follow-up timing.

No new workflows. No rebuilding. Just intelligence adapting to the task.

One agent. Infinite adaptations. Zero engineering overhead. That's the difference between automation that breaks and intelligence that bends.

SaaS built features for use cases.

AI agents build solutions for YOU.

We're moving from 'there's an app for that' to 'there's an app for me.' This isn't just better software. It's personal software - technology that understands your business, your customers, your quirks, and shapes itself accordingly.

For decades, we adapted to our tools. Now our tools adapt to us.

The software bends, not the business.

The future isn't AI-powered software. It’s AI-powered businesses.

Curious about scaling with zero marketing budget?

Just recorded how we do founder-led growth with Fin from P33 - building audiences around big ideas, turning content into qualified pipeline, and why challenging conventional wisdom creates customers.

I’m giving a behind the curtain view into how I grew from 2K to 25K LI followers in 3 months, how we turn LinkedIn into $1.5M pipeline/month, and why movements beat marketing every time.

Here’s the link!