First principles – Value lies in outcomes, not in methods.
When user are buying a product, they are buying the results – not the technology. Users don’t buy AI, they buy saved time, reduced friction, higher revenue, lower costs, fewer headaches, etc.
Methods matters only to us, builders. Outcomes, matters to the real users.
If I go a restaurant to eat sushi, I don’t care if a machine prepared it and saved the restaurant owner five bucks on each plate. I just care about the good taste of the sushi.
Initially, it might be possible that I get attracted towards a restaurant which is the first to use a machine to make it, but over time, as it becomes more and more common, the initial hype dies.
Thus once a method becomes ubiquitous, it stops being a differentiator.
That’s where AI sits today.
The Shift Happened Quietly
A year ago, adding ‘AI-powered’ to your landing page felt like a moat. It signalled novelty. Intelligence. Future.
Today, every product is AI-powered. The good ones, the bad ones, the exceptional ones that VCs back, all of them.
Analytics tools, supply chain systems, healthcare autonomy, customer support, CRM, design – anything you can imagine, is AI-powered.
The same can be seen in the trend of YC-backed startups as well –
But the real problem is when everything claims AI, nothing differentiates.
Users have stopped really caring.
Some are even skeptical now. For many users, ‘AI’ just means unreliable, unfinished, hallucination-prone MVPs or another thin wrapper over ChatGPT. Instead of trust, it sometimes, creates doubts.
The novelty phase is over. AI has become infrastructure.
What Made This Click for Me
When building SuperDocs, I shipped the product in two days. No heavy landing page. No elaborate positioning.
- You land on the site.
- You paste your GitHub repo
- Docs get generated.
That’s it.
Nowhere did we say: ‘AI-powered documentation generator.’
Instead, the message was simple: ‘Generate documentation in minutes.’
And users didn’t ask:
‘Does it use AI?’
They cared about one thing:
‘Does this save me time?’
And it did.
That was the realisation. AI wasn’t the product. The outcome was.
Builders Are Marketing the Wrong Thing
Most of the AI products in today’s market position themselves like –
‘Old solution + AI’
Ex.-
- Documentation tool with AI
- Customer support with AI
- Analytics with AI
- Marketing tools with AI
But if ten competitors say the same thing, no one stands out.
Saying ‘we use AI’ is equivalent to saying:
‘We use databases.’
‘We run on cloud.’
‘We use APIs.’
These are implementation details that users don’t care about.
The real question is:
Why you? Why now? Why better?
Differentiator Must be Visible in Outcomes
Real differentiation sounds like:
- Generate docs in one click
- Reduce support tickets by 60%
- Cut onboarding time in half
- Automate reports in seconds
- Save teams 10 hours per week
Now the user understands value immediately.
The conversation shifts from:
‘What tech do you use?’
to
‘What problem do you eliminate?’
And that’s the only thing users ever cared about.
When Should AI be Marketed?
Okay, it’s not that should completely ditch AI from your marketing plan. There are cases where AI is still worth highlighting.
But only when it creates a defensible advantage, not when it’s a wrapper.
For example:
- Custom models trained on proprietary industry data
- Ultra-low latency inference giving real-time advantage
- Domain-specific intelligence competitors cannot replicate
- Unique performance benchmarks
- Workflow intelligence unavailable elsewhere
Example positioning:
‘Hotel management platform powered by models trained on millions of hotel data points.’
Now, AI is the moat, not just the tool.
But if you’re calling an API or building a thin layer over general models, AI is not your differentiation.
Your product experience is.
AI has Become Electricity
Nobody markets products as”
‘Powered by electricity.’
Electricity is assumed. Invisible. Expected.
AI is heading in the same direction.
Soon every tool will use AI in some capacity. The winners won’t be those shouting about it. They’ll be the ones who make it invisible.
The best technology disappears into experience.
What Builders Should Do Now
Stop asking:
‘How do we show we use AI?’
Start asking:
‘What outcome improves because of AI?’
our messaging should translate technology into impact:
Not:
- AI powered workflows
But:
- Finish workflows in 30 seconds
Not:
- AI-driven automation
But:
- Eliminate manual work entirely
Not:
- Intelligent recommendations
But:
- Increase conversions by 20%
Users don’t want intelligence.
They want results.
Final Though
AI itself is not magical to users.
The magic is when life becomes easier.
If your product saves time, reduce efforts, or removes complexity, users will care. Whether AI is involved or not becomes irrelevant.
So, the next time you write your landing page or pitch or product, try removing the words ‘AI-powered’.
If the value still stands, you’re building the right thing.
If it doesn’t, you’re probably selling the method, not the outcome.
And outcomes are what endure.