The event: Llama Lounge 8
How it went
A guy (who I later found out was Robert Scoble) came to our booth and livestreamed from his Apple vision pro about using our product so that was pretty cool. I'm glad it didn't crash, that would have been pretty embarassing.
A lot of the agents at the showcase were b2b, vertical AI agents to replace/augment a human's job.
We were probably one of a few consumer AI products on display. I wonder why that is. I know in general VC dollars are skewed towards B2B and subsequently the number of b2b starups generally outpaces the number of b2c startups. However, this room made it seem like the gap was even wider for AI specifically.
I looked it up afterward and PitchBook reporting for 2024 said B2B AI as pulling substantially more VC than B2C AI (they give ballpark $16.4B vs $7.8B for 2024). More than double the funding availability would definitely help explain some of the disparity I saw in the room.
I bet b2b vertical AI agents are going to be the next big focus, but I don't really know any workflows/jobs myself that I could teach a model to do better than a human.
However, I also think that as coding agents get better, it will begin to let regular people develop their own apps and software. When regular people who are not inculcated by b2b saas startup culture get access to full stack dev in a box, I would expect to see many more consumer oriented AI startups. We're already beginning to see vibe coded websites and apps, and I think this trend will only accelerate.
Consumer app stores, unlike 2024 investment dollars, skew b2c, not b2b.
Big thank you to Jeremiah Owyang for inviting us. I'll try attend more of these.