The Rise of Machine-Native Markets

Julia Nimchinski:

Welcome to the Agent to Agent GTM Summit, and today we’ll be exploring a huge paradigm shift from human-first to agent-native GTM. We’ve got some of the industry’s leading CXOs, VCs, and analysts, and not to mention our partners will be showcasing some of the most innovative Gentex GTM technology being built today.

And to kick us off, welcome Brian Solis. Brian is Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, and 9-time best-selling author, futurist. And today, It’s the global release of his newest book. Infinite, which explores some of the most forward-thinking AI companies and how they’re redefining business leadership. and GTM.

Brian, phenomenal having you here, and yeah. How have you been? And take it away.

Brian Solis:

Thank you, Julia. It’s a pleasure to be, back in action with you. I think the last time we rock and rolled together was in December, and I appreciate you assembling this topic, because it couldn’t be more timely. And you’re right, the, today is the day.

And I got my copy last night, and just with enough time to make a video to announce its release, so I’m very excited. But the book’s premise is also very timely to this conversation, which is… not just about GTM, it’s… it’s also about how everything is changing behind the scenes as a result of AI.

I think we oftentimes, as individuals, think about AI from a productivity standpoint. We think about it as a co-pilot. We think about it as a partner in Vibe coding. And all of those things are true, but now as we start to explore and evolve. the… what I’m calling the intelligent web. we’re not the only ones out there surfing.

We’re not the only ones out there transacting. Now we have our agents. searching and transacting and researching, and all of those things mean that an entirely new web infrastructure, a new stack, a new GTM stack needs to be built today. And that’s what I’d like to explore with you, through the wonder of human-created PowerPoint slides.

Julia Nimchinski:

Let’s do it.

Brian Solis:

Alright, let’s do it. So… Jumping in. Julia, can you, can you see this okay?

Julia Nimchinski:

Perfect, yeah.

Brian Solis:

Perfect. Let’s dive in, because we have 28 minutes. So we are moving into this aspect of… what was primarily human-first GTM to what will eventually become an agent-first and ultimately an agent-native GTM function. And so, everything that goes along with that, from infrastructure to discovery.

To essentially defining the new moments of truth online for machines, is both science fiction, and also So cool that we get to design and build and deliver yet another chapter of the web, and of technology in general. And that’s… that’s your role in all of this.

When Julia reached out, I was so excited to be part of kicking this off, because I geek out in moments like this. It is… an opportunity to think about B2B, B2C, plus A to A, and what that means. Like, what does that mean? And that is your role, to fill in that blank, that question mark. What you design and what you build?

Will change how we experience The web, experience, commerce, and more importantly, how agents will do the same. So now we have to… Not just reimagine, but expand the horizon, the universe of what it means to be human online. To still do research, to still be experiential. To still discover and make decisions and transact.

But at the same time, we also have to understand, and also design for this, how agents operate in that ecosystem, and how they’re different in that ecosystem. And this is that intelligence renaissance. I had the opportunity recently to partner with WP Engine and the CEO’s mandate of what an intelligence web would look like.

And everybody had their own take on it, but what was clear was that this idea of A to A, or just an agentic web. Was really not just transformative, but also an opportunity for your imagination and your talents and your skills.

So, if we think about what the infrastructure is that’s necessary for all of this, it is intent, identity, trust, price, availability, it is… permissions, payments, all of these things now need to be readable.

Well, first, I should have added discoverable, then readable, and actionable by agents, and… maybe I’ll make that change before I give the deck to Julia to share with you, because this is, this is a brand new… a brand new deck.

But just to give you an idea, it’s… I don’t think any of this is going to be surprising, just how fast the web is shifting towards AI. So, whether you use, depending on which Frontier model you use, chances are that what you’re using is contributing to the traffic shift in the, online.

Siri’s also talking to me while I’m talking, so that was confusing. But the last one. which was super interesting, was year-over-year growth in agentic AI traffic, meaning, like, the AI… A-to-A revolution is starting to unfold today. It’s pretty… it’s a pretty big number. It’s 7,800% year-over-year growth.

which is clearly because this is brand new. But imagine the 4- and 5-digit percentage growths that are just going to continue to happen. In fact, what is… key to understand is that we’re already starting on the wrong foot in many ways, and I would like us to be part of the solution, and not part of the problem.

So Gartner Data, when you get this deck, there’ll be links to all of this research, but… If people distrust AI-answered search results, which, if you use Google, for example, that is the top, that is page zero right now. you have to ask, why? And if you watched any of these graduation commencement speeches.

where students booed when Eric Schmidt, for example, is delivering a graduation speech to inspire students, and he’s getting booed because he referenced AI. There is a fundamental shift in our culture that has spun the wrong way.

And we need to understand why that’s happening in order to build an infrastructure for agents to do not just agents, just to have a web that matters to people, because ultimately, there are people on the other side of those agents, at least… at least for now.

Until we see NEO, that’s a bad sign, but… the… what’s really important is that this is a fundamental leadership failure at every level. So, CEOs talking about AI replacing jobs, and people using AI to create AI slop just so that they could get frequency and volume out there online. That’s contributing to the problem.

What we have to get back to are the basics. What are we trying to do? What matters to people? What are people going to task their agents with doing? And reverse engineer, because like you would design the best customer experiences, like Steve Jobs famously said, you have to start with the customer and work back to the technology.

And that is exactly what we have to do with agents. So there are already things to study. About what people are doing, with agents online. So, is it to… fulfill a need? Is it to explore different products and services? Is it to research?

Whatever it is, AI agents are going to extend this work, and if they’re already realizing negative responses, we have to find and fix that today.

We have to understand, like with Google, where is that traffic emanating from, where is it going, and what are the experiences, just like the human experiences we study, what are the experiences that agents are going to have? It is very similar to the journey mapping work that you would do in CX and UX. This is now at an agentic level.

We’re doing it for both humans and also machines. So, if people distrust AI-powered search summaries today. If people then say that they’re having to spend more time searching as a result of AI, And we know that humans are trying to offload this synthesis to AI to not have to deal with this stuff.

And we know that agents are starting to already make up this traffic, what are we going to do about improving the experiences that agents have so that the results they bring back to humans, whether that’s information or whether that’s transactional, is Excellent in your favor. Positive in your favor.

And so to deliver the best agentic experiences, I believe we still have to remember that the human in the loop, or a human above the loop, is in need of something. And if we don’t keep that in mind. I promise you that you are imposing an AI tax on people.

This is why Gartner found that people distrust the search results, people feel like they have to do more work as a result of AI-powered search results. And I can promise you, if you’ve ever written an article, if you’ve ever written a LinkedIn post or a LinkedIn comment using AI, you are imposing an AI tax on the people you’re hoping to reach.

And I know you don’t intend to do that, but this is why people are starting to distrust AI, where people have a negative relationship with it. It is because we are creating assets and experiences with AI from the prompt that we design without it being empathetic, without it being human or user-centered.

It is with the out… it is with the output in mind, not the outcome in mind. So if my job is to deliver something that I want you to see. And I prompt it that way. I’m going to impose an AI tax on you, the work that you have to do to make it relevant to you.

If you decide to do it, you’re probably just going to abandon it, like everybody’s starting to do now. But if I prompt, if I design with the outcome For you, understanding from an empathetic standpoint, from an intuitive standpoint.

Because I understand what you’re trying to do, where you’re frustrated, what success looks like to you, and I design that way, I guarantee you I am not imposing an AI tax, and I guarantee you that I am going to be more discoverable and more actionable than everybody else.

And in a world where intelligence is abundant, we sure are using this stuff to create a lot of slop. We’re already starting to see AI-driven output outperform human-written words from the beginning of time, which is ridiculous.

I know it’s fun at first, but… when the web is now mostly populated with AI slop, or if you look at just the number of vibe-coded apps flooding the Apple App Store, they can’t even get to them at speed and scale. And do they even want to get to them? Because chances are, I call it AI slop where, where we vibe code stuff.

in the same way that it imposes an AI tax on people, we have a… we have a lot of work to do to get back to basics, because in a world where everybody can produce more, more stops mattering. And I promise you, what human beings are facing already at the dawn of this agentic shift online.

agents… you’re gonna have to have agents to sort this stuff out for other agents in order for them to do work, and what kind of cycle is that, other than a vicious cycle? So let’s… let’s take a step back.

It is the good old-fashioned… point of diminishing returns, where quantity outperforms quality, and so we have to think about the human and agentic experience together. So, for example, I looked at B2B, To see if there were similar… similarities with B2C. And what’s interesting, that in a digital world. smartphones, social media, etc.

We started to see people, who wanted to be more independent in their work, and this is where AI really started to rise, is that if it could do the research for me, if it could compare and contrast for me. Why did I need to talk to a human being at the beginning? this, I used to call it being a digital introvert.

I just didn’t need to talk to people. I… I’m going to do the same with my agents, and that is what, if you think about agents at scale, we’re gonna have agentic, agentic introverts now. So, understanding, then. why that’s happening. It’s the same… problem with humanity that we’re seeing with an AI tax.

We’re just making it harder for people to make decisions. And I know why. We’re trying to drive greater numbers, greater conversions, and that’s always been the case, and that’s still going to be the case. But it is the how we do it that matters. And so that… in taking that step back and having a Ctrl-Alt-Delete moment.

And look, I’m guilty of it too. This is absolutely AI slop, but I needed a slide to at least visualize the dual reality that we face. This is on my big screen as I’m seeing this, as I’m sure you’re seeing it on your screens. It’s a horrible image. But it does convey a couple things.

One is we have to be better at this stuff, but two, we have to design for dual realities. There’s a human in the loop, there’s a human above the loop. But there’s always a human involved in the outcome. At least for all of the scenarios that I could envision as I was designing this.

And so now we also have to design for that agentic experience as well. As we are shifting from a web that is consumed. And a web that has been human-driven. Commerce. Essentially, we are establishing a semantic-like web, which technically was supposed to be the original Web 3.0. Maybe this will be Web 4.0.

But that idea of a semantic web for a gentic AI to… Conduct human-like activities, from discovery to research to checkout or transaction, or to at least facilitating.

Unknown:

Audio shared by Brian Solis: Testing out the new open air.

Brian Solis:

human… actually, I’m gonna go back to that in a second, testing out, like, human-centered experiences.

There was a slide I was gonna put in here, but… Whitney Wolfherd, the CEO of Bumble, talked about how dating is going to shift to AI agents now, where my agents are going to date your agents, and then agents will come back to me to tell me which 3 human beings I should maybe go out on a real-world date with.

I mean, that is the web we live in, but I also wanted to test it out, and… I used… ChatGPT Atlas, I was going to New York, and… I scroll TikTok every now and then, like, like most people, I’m not gonna deny it, but I seem to have stumbled into an algorithm where it knew I was going to New York, and all I was getting were impossible-to-find reservations at great restaurants, and so I employed some agents to go get me some reservations, and so this is what it looked like.

Nope, that’s not what it looked like.

Unknown:

Audio shared by Brian Solis: Testing out the new OpenAI Atlas browser. I put it to work right away, since it’s not a traditional browser, I can take action on your behalf.

So I was headed to New York, I wanted to find reservations at the hottest restaurants that are impossible to book, so I asked it to Audio shared by Brian Solis: do the research on those restaurants, and attempt to get me a reservation. If we couldn’t get a reservation, to get me on those wait lists.

It came up with a list, it asked me to log into Resi and to OpenTable, and it not only gave me a great list. Audio shared by Brian Solis: Unfortunately, we couldn’t book any reservations, but it did get me on the waitlist, and those waitlists converted into opportunities.

I’ll post those experiences on Instagram, but so far, this was an excellent experience.

Brian Solis:

It wasn’t.

Unknown:

Audio shared by Brian Solis: I’m impressed.

Brian Solis:

Excellent experience. I was able to get a reservation. The scariest part for me was actually putting my credit card in and allowing agents to make purchases, because even on some of those lists, you had to pay to get on them.

But in reality, the thing that was most interesting was how I had to think about the outcome versus… just the transaction, and that forced me to prompt differently, that forced me to think through the end-to-end experience differently, so now if I’m one of those restaurants, or if I’m a business, I now realize that there are different steps to take towards not just the desired outcome, but what those steps look like so that everyone falls in line in a place that delivers not just the outcome, but delivers the experience that made that outcome.

worth having. So, we are designing for people, we are designing for agents, we are designing for all of the same things that still inform, summarize, rank, recommend. But at the same time, we have to understand What do agents need? To… to be able to enable That and more.

So it’s about… Recognizing the old equation, And understanding that… discovery itself is changing from AI-powered search to a gentic search. To an agent only. Search, and that, essentially, what was the funnel that we would design for. Is now essentially a decision graph. It’s the content. that… aligns with human… antigenic intent.

it’s understanding The new moments of truth. For humans, for humans and agents, and also agent to agent. It’s understanding how those outcomes come together. And it’s understanding how to optimize against all of that. So you’re designing best-in-class experiences for when a human is involved? Which doesn’t include AI slopper and AI tax.

And also how to design best-in-class experiences. For an agent, And an agent to agent. And that… That might sound weird. Because technically, it’s transactional. But I promise you, That there will be agents who will report back about the experience About the difficulty, about the flexibility, about the ease of transacting with you.

It’s almost like AUI, which is… like, user interface, user experience, it’s like a gentic interface, a gentic experience design now. And that’s a different philosophy, but still premised in a lot of the values that humans value. So I think now that… The agent endpoint becomes its own storefront. And that’s true in B2C, that’s true for B2B.

So now we have to think about the buyer. So there’s a human, executive, or consumer. But there’s also an agent, and an agent infrastructure, and this… creates a stack, so my agent will meet your agent. And they will interact. My agent will meet your transactional agent. My agent will meet your service agent.

All of this becomes a stack that we have to design experientially based on moments of truth. So every friction point in today’s B2B or B2C journey becomes an opportunity for an agent to do something better. To do something that wasn’t possible before.

this… this… I believe becomes this concept of CX, so customer experience, of course, UX, user experience, but also. Agentic experience. And then this… concept of Human plus agent experience. It’s an entirely new way to reimagine the journey while reimagining the infrastructure to enable that journey.

Because right now, what we’re doing is we’re just using AI to do more stuff. more content, more apps, more infrastructure. And we’re actually doing the opposite of improving discoverability, readability, permissions, visibility, efficiency, and trust.

In fact, there are tools to kind of show you where you are in the discoverability mode in this new AI world. And it’s where people kind of say, like, okay, great, my score is high, but we’re not asking, like, how well do we show up? what happens next? How can we incre… where are there… where’s there friction in this agentic world?

And even AI world? And so they… it now begs us. To ask different questions. How do we become the source that’s not just discovered, but it’s chosen? How do we build trust? How do we build trust so well? How do we build experiences so well for agents? and humans, that agents become our referrers. Agents become our reviewers.

There will be a Yelp for agents. They will help each other Build trust, and your agents must earn trust. AI becomes the interface, But trust is already the bottleneck.

And so you’re not just designing for human trust, which we still need to do a better job at, but now we’re also designing for agentic trusts, for agents to build trust amongst each other, which I know sounds wild, but it is the infrastructure. And so, essentially, what you’re designing Is an agent-ready product.

So I put it into these, these two boxes here. Obviously, yours is going to be a little bit different, but hopefully this gets you started. This is like a checklist. And… that… agent-ready product. Essentially, Allows you to build a stack. that Has the infrastructure in place.

And then, ultimately, the experiential levels in place for agents, and humans. That you now are designing that emotional memory for humans. That is what a brand is, and we can have a whole separate conversation for it. And then, also, a verifiable… Relationship for machines.

And understanding what those boxes that agents need to check, and also those boxes that will ensure an agent keeps your agents at the top of their list. for future transactions. So your brand becomes a signal. Your brand is the solution as interpreted in some cases by humans, and in some cases by machines.

And it’s your job to figure out what that looks like today, and what that needs to look like. AI becomes the user interface. Trust becomes a click, whether that’s done by a human or whether that’s done by an agent. Context, not just context, that gets indexed is because it’s relevant. Outcomes are prioritized, and brands become chosen.

And, ultimately, this might seem counterintuitive, but I see sales as becoming more human in the moments that matter. We saw with the Gartner data that people would rather not talk to a representative. So how do we create moments that matter? Well, people will want to transact with people.

That needs to be designed, just like every aspect… Of what agents will handle in those key moments of truth. But we have to elevate the role that we play, not just in shopping, or researching, or searching, but also in serving.

I think the word serve has become undervalued, treated like a cost center, when in fact, it is a… it is a moment that truly matters. It’s actually an emotional moment. And I believe that as we’re designing for A-to-A infrastructures and A-to-A stacks, that we have to consider this hashtag. What do you stand for?

Like, why did… why are you doing this? Why did you start? Because I can… I can tell you that so many folks that I talk to in San Francisco or Silicon Valley Or the equivalent of Silicon Valley all around the world. There’s a lot of people building stuff. There’s a lot of people vibe coding. There’s a lot of people doing really cool things.

Very few people can answer this in a meaningful way. It’s usually transactional, it’s usually tech-centered. It’s the same way that we think about why we create an AI tax that ultimately creates… created by slop or slopware, because we’re not thinking about this. And if you’re going to put agents to work.

at scaling an AI tax versus scaling what do you stand for, you’re going to create different experiences, and you’re going to create different levels of competitiveness. So, I know that we’re going to run out of time, but this deck was not just designed as something to present, it was… Something to create.

something to use as a guidebook, something to use as maybe even a playbook, but ultimately, it’s going to be a playbook that you design. You just use this as some of the building blocks, because this is brand new stuff, so I’m just kind of thinking through here, what is the A to A GTM stack? And maybe this gets us started.

But ultimately, what it really becomes is a marketing, or a market, I should say, not marketing, market operating system. So… U… Have this opportunity. This is the best I could do in terms of imaging.

But it was meant to visualize that you’re designing a stack, you’re designing an infrastructure, and you’re just… you’re designing a journey, an experiential journey. For agent to agent. human to agent, and human to human, because all of these things are going to coexist. You are the architects of this intelligent web.

So, design with not just functionality, and not just the desirable transactions and conversions, but design with purpose, design with meaning. And honestly, design with some love, because Agents need love, too. In fact, I’m gonna get that as a t-shirt. So, thank you for your time.

I’ll ask Julia to share this deck with you, and enjoy the conference, and I look forward to Working with you.

Julia Nimchinski:

That was a phenomenal way to start the summit. Thank you so much, Brian. We’ll be sending, as mentioned, your book to all of the partners and all of the speakers of the summit, and… Everybody watching, you will receive a dedicated email with Brian’s book. Again, we just shared it on Slack. But Brian, just to, you know.

Last note, last words on the summit. Where should our people go? Would it be Amazon to order the book, or…

Brian Solis:

I appreciate you asking. Yes, please. Amazon or your favorite bookstore, the book website is, it’s Infinite Company… dot AI, so…

Julia Nimchinski:

Insurance.

Brian Solis:

company.ai.

Julia Nimchinski:

Amazing. Thank you so much.

Brian Solis:

Thank you.