Source: Heart of the Metaverse

In 2024, thousands of startups will emerge based on the power of cutting-edge large language models (LLM). According to statistics, only one in five companies will survive until the end of 2025. To survive the year, these companies need a bit of an edge.

AI-driven startups will reshape our world in ways we can’t yet imagine, if they have what it takes to succeed.

Twilio has selected 12 winning companies from more than 500 entries in its "Searchlight" competition, all of which exemplify several fundamental principles that startups need to keep in mind when building artificial intelligence solutions. .

Keeping these principles in mind will give you a good start for an artificial intelligence company that can develop in the long term.

01. Focus on business fundamentals

You cannot just count on artificial intelligence to bring competitive advantage, it is already everywhere. The challenges of starting and running a start-up before the advent of LLM still exist today.

What companies need to do is attract, convert and retain customers while controlling costs. Although the cost of artificial intelligence continues to decrease, there is still the potential for rising costs if complex workflows are created.

It should be noted that 72% of IT and finance leaders said that the cost of artificial intelligence is becoming "uncontrollable."

The power of artificial intelligence can also become an advantage if currently complex operations can be encapsulated into an easy-to-use API framework. This is what Twilio did for phones a decade ago, and it's what large-scale artificial intelligence models are doing today.

If you want to build a sustainable technology business today, think about how you can do it through application programming interfaces (APIs).

02. Don’t stop at “shelling”

If you just make a “shell” for the existing LLM, it will be difficult to maintain differentiation in the long run.

For example, if you want to create a tool to help create code, do speech transcription, or scan PDF files and extract information, it doesn't matter how beautiful the interface is because LLM is already very good at these tasks.

Entrepreneurs should focus on areas that can provide differentiated services and bring compound advantages to individuals through data flywheels or network effects.

For example, Goodcall, one of the "Searchlight" award-winning companies, provides automated voice calling services to enterprises. The company has been collecting anonymized data from more than 4 million customer calls to build a more robust database and improve analytics.

Another area that startups can focus on is extracting data from unstructured customer conversations.

SpokeAI does just that, pulling data from customers’ voice calls so business users can viewto who’s calling them, what they might want, how they’re feeling, and what they’ve talked about with colleagues before.

03. Understand the development trajectory of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is changing incredibly fast. Since 2010, the number of annual artificial intelligence patents has increased 31 times, and will exceed 62,000 in 2022.

When deciding where to focus your work, you must first understand the development context of large language models and the possible trends in the next 12 months. Otherwise, the solution may become obsolete before it even reaches the market.

For example, large artificial intelligence laboratories are currently working to enhance the reasoning capabilities of these models and improve their capabilities in various complex fields. Unless you have billions of dollars in funding, don't focus on high-level reasoning.

In contrast, one of the "Searchlight" award winners, CuraJOY, is a non-profit grassroots technology company that uses artificial intelligence and entertainment to improve the accessibility and effectiveness of social and mental health support. sex and fairness.

This is definitely not an area that large-scale artificial intelligence models focus on, but it fills a major social need.

04. Seize the heat

New artificial intelligence solutions attract a lot of interest, but this popularity is fleeting. Without a plan to capture these "quick-takers" and convert them into long-term customers, business can quickly fade away along with the hype.

Products need to maintain a high level of attention, and one way to do this is to continuously improve the product based on customer feedback.

For example, artificial intelligence can be used to capture and classify customer feedback and send the highest-value feature requests directly to product teams. This will keep customers buying, promoting sustainable growth.

Another way is to continuously improve your capabilities, gain new recognition, and launch customer-friendly services.

For example, Alpharun, an artificial intelligence phone interview platform, was part of this year’s OpenAI accelerator and won the Audience Award at the 2024 Staffing Industry Analysts conference.

Even though it has achieved good results, the company is not satisfied with the status quo. Now, it has achieved additional key technology certifications and provides customers with the uptime guarantee, international support and best-in-class reliability required by its target enterprise customers.

05. Looking ahead to the AI-driven economy

2024 will be the year of AI experimentation, while 2025 will be defined by AI-driven startups that will bring measurable business impact. , through work at Lightspeed and experience judging Twilio’s “Searchlight” competition, one thing is clear: the most promising companies aren’t just creating clever AI implementations, they’re building able to withstand the impossibleA robust business that avoids technological change.

The winners of the “Searchlight” competition exemplify this approach, building true competitive moats with compounding advantages.

These companies show us that lasting success comes from combining AI capabilities with deep domain expertise and strong business fundamentals.

We are at the dawn of a new tech boom, and there is no doubt that some of today’s builders will become tomorrow’s tech giants.