AI Moats, Money, and Month to Month Trust
Welcome back to Founder Mode!
I have been spending a lot of time thinking about what actually creates a durable business in AI. Not a cool demo. Not a weekend GPT wrapper. A real business. One that customers trust, rely on, and pay for because the outcomes are too valuable to replace.
Inside Pretty Good AI, we feel this shift every day. The market is crowded at the surface level. Everyone can build something neat. Everyone can stitch together prompts and APIs. But very few teams are building products that can survive for years. That is the difference between a tool and a company.
This week, I want to share a few insights from recent conversations with other AI founders and operators. These lessons have shaped my thoughts on PGA. They clarify our priorities and show that trust and outcomes are more important than features or hype.
The AI Monetization Paradox
There is a simple truth in AI right now. If your product is only a thin layer on top of an LLM, it will get copied. It will get rebuilt. It will get replaced.
Technical buyers are smart. They will reverse engineer your prompts, build the same thing in a weekend, and brag about how they saved money.
At PGA, we learned early that the real money is in results, not raw software access. Customers do not want to pay for usage or tokens. They want business outcomes. If you help them get more appointments, increase conversions, or manage lots of calls with fewer staff, they’ll be happy to pay for it.
This is why our focus has shifted toward outcome-based value rather than feature-based value. We want to charge for the win, not the button.
Choosing Defensible Problems
Anyone can build a text bot. Anyone can summarize docs. Anyone can create a tool that turns voice into text.
In regulated industries, real-time natural voice creates a whole new set of challenges. That is where complexity lives. That is also where moats form.
Voice is messy. Timing matters. Latency matters. Tone matters. Mistakes matter. When you add healthcare or finance, or legal workflows on top, the stakes rise even higher.
That difficulty creates defensibility. At PGA, we saw this firsthand. The harder the problem, the more valuable the solution. The deeper the integration, the stronger the moat.
The lesson is simple. When a problem feels almost impossible, and the industry pushes back, that’s often where long-term value lies.
Align Incentives With Customers
I keep coming back to one idea. The best model is simple. We win when the customer wins.
If you charge for results, not access, everything changes. You stop being a cost line, and you become a revenue driver.
When we plug PGA into a business, we want to show numbers. More bookings. More conversions. More answered calls. More revenue.
Customers love it when you are on their bonus plan. They feel like you are inside the boat rowing with them, not invoicing them from the dock.
This mindset has shaped the way we build and price PGA. Trust grows when incentives align.
Bootstrap vs Venture Funding
I think about this almost every day. PGA is built lean. We do not have a giant team. We do not have millions of dollars in the bank. And honestly, that is a strength.
Companies that raise huge rounds early often end up chasing logos just to justify their valuation. They build for investors, not customers. They hire too fast. They pretend to have product-market fit because the money demands it.
When you build with your own time, your own capital, and your own conviction, you get to make better choices. You only take on customers who fit. You build things people truly want. You stay close to the truth.
Small teams with focus and urgency can outplay large teams with pressure and noise. PGA is proof of that.
Month-to-Month as a Competitive Advantage
I love this one. Most companies try to lock customers into long-term contracts. It looks good for revenue predictions, but it destroys trust.
We flipped the script. PGA works on a month-to-month model. Customers can leave anytime. No penalty. No fine print.
It forces us to earn the business every day. It keeps us honest. It keeps us focused on outcomes. And it lowers the barrier for new customers to try us.
This model is scary at first, but it becomes your advantage. When you know customers stay because you deliver value, not because of a contract, your whole culture shifts.
Month-to-month is accountability in its purest form.
5 Key Takeaways
- Sell outcomes, not software. Value comes from results, not features.
- Pick hard problems. Difficulty creates defensibility and long-term value.
- Align incentives. Customers trust you when you win together.
- Stay lean. Bootstrapped focus beats bloated teams chasing investors.
- Earn trust monthly. Month by month, we create better products and build stronger relationships.
Final Thoughts
AI is moving fast, but not every AI company will survive the next wave. Winners will choose tough problems. They will listen closely to customers. They will link their success to important outcomes.
At PGA, we are trying to hold ourselves to that standard. Not hype. Not fancy demos. Real outcomes for real businesses, offered with trust and reliability.
That is the moat. That is the model. That is what lasts.
See you on Friday,
-kevin
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