Humans Serving Humans
The businesses I want to build and be involved in are businesses where humans serve other humans while being assisted by AI to help better serve those humans. That framing matters. AI is in the middle of that sentence, not at either end. People are still the starting point and the ending point. The AI is the mechanism that lets the people in the middle do their job more fully.
There is a specific thing that only humans can provide to other humans in a business relationship: accountability. AI is not accountable. An AI does not feel bad when it gives you wrong guidance. It does not have a reputation it is protecting. It does not have a family it is providing for. It cannot be thanked in a way that matters, and it cannot be yelled at in a way that lands. Those things sound trivial until you are in a moment where something went wrong and you need to know there is a human being on the other side who cares about the outcome as much as you do.
People want to be able to thank someone. They want to be able to yell at someone when things go sideways. They want a face, a name, a person who made a judgment call and is willing to stand behind it. That is not nostalgia for the pre-AI era. That is a core feature of what makes a business relationship feel real. Businesses that humanize their operations, that make sure the human relationship stays visible and central even as AI handles more of the underlying work, will hold client relationships that pure AI solutions cannot.
There is a practical dimension to this that I have been refining over my last three SXSW talks. I call it the “vulnerability tool.” Instead of presenting as the expert with all the answers, I create safe space for courage, boldness, and imagination by being openly honest about uncertainty. No bullshit, let’s share notes. Russ Ballard observed after my most recent talk that vulnerability builds trust quickly and gives people permission to learn without feeling behind. In a world where AI can generate polished, confident content endlessly, the human who is willing to be honest about what they do not know creates a connection that no amount of polish can replicate. Humans serving humans means being real with them, not performing expertise. That is the thing AI cannot do: look someone in the eye and say “I do not have this figured out yet, but I am working on it, and I will be honest with you along the way.”
My most important advice for anyone thinking about what to build right now: build businesses that actually serve people, that serve an essential function in their lives, and that make you associated with existential value to someone during an existential time. Everyone is asking who they are, how they make money, what they can trust. If your business genuinely answers one of those questions, you are building something that matters.
Key Takeaway
The humans-serving-humans model keeps AI as the amplifier and people as the accountable presence on both sides of the relationship, which is what clients actually need.