Dave Morin highlights portfolio company Pulsia as a model for the next wave of AI startups. It provides an agent orchestration system that enables others to build their own agent-based businesses, acting like a "Shopify for the agentic world" by handling everything from market research to ad buying.

Pulsia represents a new paradigm where AI doesn't just assist users but autonomously runs their businesses. It wakes up daily to perform tasks like coding, marketing, and ad management. This "company-in-a-box" model, with a subscription plus revenue share, makes entrepreneurship more accessible.

Tools are emerging that don't just build an app but run the entire company—managing marketing, bookkeeping, and legal. This evolution shows the value is not in the LLM itself but in the 'harness' built around it to orchestrate complex business functions, creating a new category of fully autonomous company builders.

As AI and better tools commoditize software creation, traditional technology moats are shrinking. The new defensible advantages are forms of liquidity: aggregated data, marketplace activity, or social interactions. These network effects are harder for competitors to replicate than code or features.

Counter to fears that foundation models will obsolete all apps, AI startups can build defensible businesses by embedding AI into unique workflows, owning the customer relationship, and creating network effects. This mirrors how top App Store apps succeeded despite Apple's platform dominance.

The true economic revolution from AI won't come from legacy companies using it as an "add-on." Instead, it will emerge over the next 20 years from new startups whose entire organizational structure and business model are built from the ground up around AI.

While AI automates tasks, it also generates new economic activity. Building and deploying these AI systems requires a new layer of infrastructure services (e.g., Vercel, Render, Cloudflare). This means economic value is shifting to the platforms that enable AI automation.

The threat of AI models replicating SaaS features is real. Superhuman's defense isn't a superior core technology but a platform strategy. The bet is that users won't build their own tools if the platform offers a powerful network effect of pre-built, integrated agents that work everywhere, creating a defensible ecosystem.

By automating core startup functions like GTM strategy, social media marketing, and ad creation, platforms like Pulsia are effectively productizing the curriculum of a startup accelerator. This suggests a future where AI could replace or augment traditional incubators by providing autonomous execution instead of just education.