Where Small Boats Still Outrun Giants

When everyone is fast, the best navigator wins

Speed alone won’t save your AI startup anymore – not when the giants have learned to sprint. Five years ago, shipping faster than a BigCo was a winning play; today, OpenAI and Anthropic deploy new features with a startup’s agility at a $300B scale. The high tide of AI innovation has lifted every boat’s velocity. So if you’re a fast little boat in these waters, you need more than raw speed in your sail.

The good news: startups still have opportunities, just in different lanes. Your advantage now is focusing where big ships can’t maneuver. That means solving a real, painful problem for users – so well that your product becomes the first thing they grab under pressure. If you can be the tool people rely on in a midnight crisis or a 5-minute sales sprint, you’ve earned a loyalty that no flashy demo can steal. In an age when every app has an AI gimmick, genuine product-love from solving meaningful problems is a durable moat.

Build what they won’t

Another way to outrun the giants is to build what they won’t. Big platforms often keep data locked in their walled gardens; a small startup can do the opposite, exposing open pipes that let users pull their data in and out freely. That was Granola’s play: by piping meeting transcripts into whatever workflow the customer wants, it created a data gravity the Googles and Microsofts of the world wouldn’t dare match. By embracing integrations and offering a public API, you make your service part of everyone else’s product. When your startup becomes the connective tissue – the part of the workflow no one wants to rip out – even deep-pocketed competitors will think twice about dislodging you.

Don’t ignore trust and transparency either. In a field moving as fast as AI, trust is gold. Users are growing wary of black-box models snacking on their data or surprise bills from usage-based pricing. Be the clear alternative. Tell customers exactly how you handle their data and how your pricing works. Offer audit logs, strong security signals, and upfront pricing that doesn’t require an enterprise negotiation guide. Earned trust becomes its own momentum: it’s one thing a trillion-parameter model can’t copy overnight.

The shape-shifting future

Finally, be ready for a new kind of user experience. The old playbook of static SaaS dashboards is starting to leak. Thanks to AI, humans expect software to meet them where they are – on-demand, customized, even ephemeral. Interfaces are turning into conversations, spinning up on request and dissolving when done. Startups can lead here: don’t just build a fixed app, build a shape-shifter. Let users ask for what they need and generate it on the fly, whether it’s a report, a workflow, or an entirely new feature. This just-in-time approach to software might feel foreign, but it’s exactly where expectations are headed. Being small means you can adapt to these shifts faster than an incumbent tied to yesterday’s UX paradigms.

The rules have changed, but the race isn’t over. We’re in a wildly unbundled moment – a thousand tiny AI tools launching every week – which means plenty of chances for small players to shine. Yes, many will get snapped up by bigger suites or outrun by the original bundlers. But some will mature into the next generation of platforms themselves. The winners won’t be the ones who simply moved fastest; they’ll be the ones who paired speed with strategy. So chart a course that the lumbering giants can’t easily follow: anchor yourself in the user’s real needs, weave yourself into their daily fabric, embrace openness, and cultivate trust. Do this, and your startup can navigate beyond the giants’ reach. In a high-tide world where everyone is fast, the best navigator still wins the race.

If you’re slow… well I’m sorry.