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As the founder and board chair of the tech nonprofit Products That Count, Ive had a front-row seat to AIs domination of the tech world over the past couple of years. A few years ago, just a sliver of the thousands of submissions our organization evaluates for our awards program were AI-based; this year, more than 90% of our nearly 10,000 submissions were for AI products. This exponential growth has made one thing painfully clear: AI has already become table stakes. In 2023, generative AI was the hot new buzzword; last year, agentic AI was the new kid on the blockand this trend is only going to continue. Just look at the product development cycles today for clues: AI skips pilots and goes straight to deployment. First movers are outpaced; OpenAI, Mistral, and Perplexity can no longer keep up with the pace of innovation organically, so theyve started to buy speed by making acquisitions. With AI no longer a differentiator, what matters is not just that you have AI but how youre using it. What separates the winners from the losers here isnt speed to launchits become clear that this is a futile race. Instead, what really determines whether a product will have sticking power today is how the AI is used in its context. As one committee member commented in reviewing this years awards program nominees: Its not about the data. Its about what you can do with it. The right weapon Just like picking your weapon for battle, the winning AI product is whatever is the most strategically advantaged in that fight. Here are the three major strategic traits that have emerged from evaluating thousands of AI products over the last few years. These traits show what winning AI products today are doing differently from their competitors, giving them the edge in an increasingly crowded field: 1. They have strategically superior moatsbuilt on data, personalization and customer intuition The right data, not MORE data, is the real moat. – Google Cloud Product Lead Varun Krovvidi (2025 awards committee) In the era of open APIs and fast followers, only the most thoughtfully designed products will be able to claim any lasting territory. Todays winners in AI wont just move fast; theyll think strategically and build moats that are based on true value. The name of the game here is personalization, but not the personalization we think we know. Next-gen personalization will go far beyond extracting ad recommendations from search history, or suggesting your next binge watch. The next winning formula in personalization knows users deeply, and knows not just their tastes, but also how they prefer to consume information, how they prioritize, what data theyre comfortable sharing. As Krovvidi said, Were seeing AI products use AI-driven feedback loops across diverse functions. This also means that AI will be used to understand the customer in a way that has never been done before. Just as Apple in the 2010s wrote the rulebook for what a personalized product should look like, we are now facing the next Apple-style revolution in good user design. True personalization is now a verticalized play, not a horizontal one. And successful personalization in this verticalized fashion is based on two core pillars: unique, high-quality data (not quantity, but connected insights on user preferences) and context-aware preferences (not just what users want, but how and where they want it). Combine these, and you get the next-gen disruptors. 2. They leverage ecosystems and interoperability as their competitive advantage Interconnectedness is what sets apart the winners from the rest in todays AI era. Whether its interoperable AI agents that hook into each other and collaborate to add greater value, or a niche tool thats highly specialized to plug into a technical and entrenched ecosystem and complete microlevel changes, the best AI products today are not just keenly aware of their contexttheyre explicitly designed to operate within them.This means designing products with not just an awareness of but an active optimization towards the existing infrastructure around them, acting as connective tissue rather than mass. The mantra here is 1+1=3. Superior AI tools today dont just offer value in a vacuum, they find ways to collaborate with other toolseven other AI agentswhere the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. 3. Theyre serious about privacynot UX ethics lip service & compliance theater Trust, privacy, and human-centric design are now essential building blocks of any great product.– Nicolas Rousseau, Chief Digital Engineering & Manufacturing Officer, Capgemini (2025 awards committee)If we thought privacy and ethics mattered previously, that goes double (or triple) in the era of AI. In the best of the best AI products, privacy is now the default mode. Opt-out is now opt-in. Superior AI products today assume users want control over their data, encryption, and anonymizing. We see an increasing number of product strategies centered on privacy-preserving architectures and decentralized intelligence, added Rousseau. From platforms that drive healthcare equity through remote monitoring to fintech solutions that democratize access to Capital, tech for good is no longer an afterthought but a competitive advantage. The great AI products are the most strategically and thoughtfully built If AI has started to feel like a fast-fashion race, the products that will win the day are those that keep focused on building quality over quantity and filling a genuine vertical end-to-end. The speed of evolution today means that the winning teams are not just cranking out the newest model and shipping it. Theyre taking stock of the ecosystem, building highly personalized and valuable tools that play nice with each other, and putting a premium on ethical design.
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E-Commerce
If you think drones are noisy in flight, try building and testing them. During a visit last month to the drone startup Zipline’s factory in South San Francisco, California, industrial noise welled up in corners of the facilitythe roar of a wind tunnel, the rhythmic clack of a test rig simulating motor casing wear, and other mechanical sounds in a symphony of engineering. Zipline has to subject its delivery drones to that kind of abuse because its been building them in-house since 2016a strategy management sees as wiser than relying on outsourced manufacturing. Zipline has intentionally designed ourselves as a very vertically integrated company, says Eric Watson, head of systems engineering. The companys facility, located just below the flight path of jets departing San Francisco International Airport, combines warehouse, assembly, and testing space. [Photo: Rob Pegoraro] That, Watson says, lets the company iterate rapidly and frequently. We can quickly get the design engineer who built the thing to look at it, he tells Fast Company. And then we can update the test, update the drawing, whatever needs to happen. Founded in 2014, Zipline (one of Fast Companys picks for 2024s Most Innovative Companies) began delivering medical supplies in Rwanda in 2016. Today, it bills itself as the largest commercial drone delivery service. The live display on its site counts more than 1.5 million deliveries to date; over a two-hour period on Saturday, that counter showed another 48 had been completed. (For comparison, Wing, the drone-delivery service owned by Googles parent company Alphabet, says its made more than 450,000 residential deliveries.) In the U.S., Zipline offers Walmart customers the option of drone deliveries in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and Pea Ridge, Arkansas. (404 Media found that Zipline had recently supplied the Pea Ridge mayor with talking points that then ran almost verbatim in a blog post on the companys own site) [Photo: Rob Pegoraro] Zipline makes two battery-electric drone designs. It describes its older Platform 1 aircraft (or P1) as optimized for deliveries of up to 4 pounds to enterprise, business, and government customers over distances up to about 60 miles from a Zipline-operated delivery hub. The newer Platform 2 (P2) is built for home delivery from third-party sites, able to carry twice as much payload but with a service radius of only 10 miles. And where P1 drops its payload via parachute, P2 spools it down under a 300-foot winch in a cargo compartment that has its own fans to guide its descent to a precise spot on the ground. Watson described the adoption of that winch architecture as a lesson learned about the difficulty of trying to keep a drone hovering directly over a delivery point in the wind: We now move the aircraft upwind. That setup also keeps the whir of a Platform 2s five combined rotors 300 feet away from people on the ground, where the company says that noise is nearly inaudible. P2 drones depart from and return to the underside of a landing dock, nestling a connector at the top of their fuselage into the well of that contraption. During my visit, the factorys operations looked focused on P2. Racks of that aircrafts laughably light carbon fiber assemblies of wings and rotor nacelles sat in one corner of the building (I easily picked one up), test stations for components scattered around, and at a series of assembly stands in the middle, workers performed such tasks as attaching a P2 drones two redundant system boards. [Photo: Rob Pegoraro] Amid signs warning of the dangers of testing hardware with spinning propeller bladesone outside a closed door warned of a high-risk test area with extremely loud noise levels and moving equipmentthere were moments of whimsy and warmth. The first Platform 2 models required two to three days of work, but the company can now crank out three a day. We have made a ton of progress with our Platform 2 manufacturing, Watson says. Later this year we should be producing an aircraft every hour. Zipline, however, doesnt fabricate every single component itself. Beyond standardized parts such as fasteners, it has its own network of suppliers building subsystemsfor instance, the carbon fiber airframesto its specifications. The way that we have trended over time is bringing more things in house, Watson sys. [Photo: Rob Pegoraro] Labels on some incoming boxes noting their origins in China or Vietnam provided a reminder that this company remains exposed to President Donald Trumps tariffsif much less than drone services relying on consumer drones built in China. We do have a global supply chain, Watson says, adding that Ziplines vertical integration does allow us quite a bit of flexibility in suppliers. The entire field of drone delivery has exhibited some of the same problems of too-soon hype as other tech frontiers. Amazons highly publicized venture into drone delivery has made legitimate advances but remains vaporware for almost all of the retail giants customers. The business model also remains unclear. Privately-held Zipline doesnt disclose revenue, per-delivery costs, or headcount, although funding that Crunchbase puts at $821 million does give it a long runway to work with. Zipline also has the advantage of having secured Federal Aviation Administration authorization in September of 2023 to operate drones beyond an operators visual line of sight (BVLOS), with automatic broadcasting of their location to other aircraft and altitude limits in place. In a January 2023 report, the consulting firm McKinsey emphasized the importance of BVLOS operation in letting drone-delivery services cut per-trip costs from what it estimated at $13.50 with one operator assigned to a drone to $1.50 to $2 with one operator supervising 20 at a time. In October, a subsequent McKinsey post highlighted a vast potential market$5 billion by 2035, with approximately 1.5 billion annual deliveries expectedbut warned that a customer survey it ordered up had revealed relatively low interest in drone delivery among U.S. customers. That survey found that 53% of U.S. respondents said they were willing to switch to drone delivery, but only 37% were willing to pay a premium. Both shares were the lowest observed in the six countries surveyed: Brazil, China, Germany, India, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. That suggests that while the hardware and software of drone-delivery operations will need further iteration, the sales pitch itself remains in flight and may not land for a while.
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E-Commerce
The latest attempt at space travel by billionaire Elon Musks company SpaceX failed spectacularly once again last week. After the two previous attempts ended in explosions, last Tuesdays liftoffthe Starships ninth in totalended with it spinning uncontrollably about 30 minutes into the flight. The flight also failed to meet other objectives set for the mission, including the deployment of mock satellites into space. To anyone with an interest in space travel or astronomy in general, this is probably pretty disappointing news. Even Musks self-proclaimed fanboys are feeling let down after yet another unsuccessful flight. But its my opinion that this latest technological failure is a blessing in disguise. The SpaceX Starship rocket launches from Starbase, Texas, on May 27. Mission control lost contact with the upper stage of Starship as it leaked fuel, spun out of control, and made an uncontrolled reentry after flying halfway around the world, likely disintegrating over the Indian Ocean. [Photo: Sergio Flores/AFP/Getty Images] Of course, humans have accomplished space travel in the past. But as Musk described in a speech last week, he has a specific ambition: the colonization of Mars. Despite the fact that no human has yet set foot on Mars, let alone figured out how to make its environment habitable for humans, Musk is determined to make life on Mars possible. This is where the Starship, specifically, factors in: The rocket is the largest ever built, and Musk intends to use it to send an uncrewed mission to Mars by the end of 2026; the eventual goal is to transport private citizenshundreds of thousands if not millions of themto Mars. He believes that humanity not only can but should secure its future by going to the asteroid belt, the moons of Jupiter . . . and other star systems . . . making science fiction no longer fiction. And thats where I fundamentally disagree. As a recent New York Times profile underscored, the thing you have to understand about Musks space dreams is that theyre rooted in a kind of ethical philosophy called longtermism, an off-shoot of Effective Altruism. This school of thinking seeks to use evidence and reason to maximize good in the world or even the universe. In certain optimistic interpretations, life is seen as an inherent positive. Thus, more lifeor more livesmeans more good. Making it possible for many, many more humans to exist in the future than do currently is, by this logic, one of the most noble quests society could undertake. But the sad truth is that life is not intrinsically good for all humans. For billions of people, life in todays world means surviving all degrees of poverty, violence, illness, discrimination, oppression, and other sources of suffering. Ensuring that future humans exist doesnt ensure that their lives will be good by any measure. A whole extra planet full of humans could just be a whole extra planet full of pain. If humankind grows exponentially, so will all of those problems. Despite the U.S. having the largest economy in the world, some 47 million Americans live with food insecurity. Its estimated that half of all people in the world will experience a mental disorder in their lifetime. About a billion people globally live on less than $2.15 per day. Numerous wars and genocides are unfolding as you read this sentence. Is this really the version of humankind we want to copy and paste across the universe? And thats to say nothing of humankinds impact on other forms of life. We slaughter some 80 billion land animals and trillions of sea animals worldwide annually, and that number is all but certain to grow as global meat consumption continues to rise, as it has done exponentially over the past several decades. Before being killed, 99% of those animals experience the horrors of factory farming, undergoing standard practices like debeaking and tail docking without anesthetic, extreme confinement in crowdd spaces, and the culling of young males. We destroy entire ecosystems, we build mountains of trash, and we simultaneously poison ourselves and everything around us. If human society manages to take over a new planet before resolving any of this, theres no reason to believe it wouldnt follow us. Martians would almost certainly find ways to harm the environment (and the individuals who live within it) and in turn, themselves. Industrialized mass torture of nonhuman animals (and potentially other beings) would expand as new factory farms opened to support a much greater population of humans. At present, we have a way of causing havoc to whatever we touchexponentially expanding the human population will necessarily mean an exponential expansion in the suffering we cause, too. Just look at what Musk accomplished while at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The entity made massive cuts to social safety nets and programs that supported marginalized communitieseverything from education for low-income children to assistance for teens with disabilities to food for hungry families. It’s clear where Musks values are, and we should categorically reject them; I genuinely cant think of a worse candidate to set the priorities for space colonization. Until the human species stops behaving like a cancer to its environment, we ought to regard its growth as just that: cancerous. To intentionally facilitate a massive population boom while all of these problems continue to plague us seems, to me, unconscionable. Maybe, if it ever worked out, space colonization would indeed allow our species to grow in numbers. But theres no evidence that all of those future humans would be thriving, and theres plenty of reason to believe that trillions more animals would exist, living lives of suffering, as a result. But for any of that to happen, Musk first has to actually get a rocket to Mars. Or, you know, into a stable orbit and back in one piece. Fortunately, we dont have to cross that bridge until we come to itif we ever do.
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E-Commerce
My daughter is 7 years old, and when she wakes up, the first thing shell often do is position herself in the center of an unruly pile of stuff on our basement floor. Construction paper. Tape. Stuffed animals. Pipe cleaners. Markers. Bits of ribbon.To me, its the definition of disarray. To her, it puts the creative process in arms reach. It provides exactly what she needs to, minutes later, emerge with a charming invention or piece of art. I mention this not only as a proud father, but because its the best metaphor Ive been able to find to describe Soot. Soot is a visual catalog thats in many ways reminiscent of Pinterest, Behance, or even Instagram. But with $7.7 million in funding, its team is focused less on building the next social network than challenging the status quo of creative UX. Instead of showing just one image or a few images at a time, Soot displays hundreds to thousands of images on your screen at once, allowing you to mainline loosely sorted visual information.[Image: courtesy Soot]Built upon open-source AI and data viz technologies, Soot sorts and organizes images by visual similarity, or by metadata like an artists name. The spacing is intentionally organic rather than overly rigid, so that what youre looking at becomes a resolved shape instead of a grid. And what youre left with is less a feed or website than it is a digital painters palette, or a vast mood board of visual inspiration for you to wade through with your cursor.[Image: courtesy Soot]In this sense, the premise of Soot is perhaps more philosophical than directly practical. Its 2025, and were still surfing in the vertical linear scroll. [People] look at the feed as the upper limit of what we can do, says Soot cofounder Jake Harper.Harper believes that the file structures of the Macintosh share the same logic with the scroll of TikTok or Instagram. These are linear organizational views optimized to show you one thing buried under another at a time. The folders and subfolders that inhabit our desktop interfaces force us to inefficiently dig for information and can devolve from discovery to compulsion.Instead of having information in a scroll, you could see from structures that [pool] like a well thats not as insidious as the feeds, he says. A lot of the negative impact of computers is inherent to the geometries of the interface.[Image: courtesy Soot]An exploratory interfaceHarper began his career designing as a sound artist with Soundwalk Collective, before making his way to the self-driving car company Zoox (acquired by Amazon) to lead the expression and communication of robotic vehicles. His cofounder, Mary Nally, is the founder of Drop Everything, a creative retreat taking part every two years on the tiny Irish island of Inis Oírr.Soot is organized into invite-only personal spaces, and then everything from the service combines onto a site called Soot World. That includes 4 million pieces of media at the moment, from its 25,000 users in a private beta. Each Soot space can be built from media sourced in all sorts of ways, from direct uploading to copy and pasting URLs from YouTube or a social media account. Monthly subscriptions will be available for individuals, and also companies, as the service scales.But what about the Soot experience itself? A tour through the Guggenheims catalog demonstrates how the interface sings. Drag around, and youll see the groupings of impressionists like Monet abutting geometrically focused futurists like Gino Severini, before arriving at the dynamic explosions of Wassily Kandinsky. In terms of art history, you can tap into each piece to see its name, year, and provenance, revealing that its all a bit of a blender. But zoomed out visually, Soot creates a gradient vibe that just makes sense.[Image: courtesy Soot]I remember the first time I saw all my own artwork in Soot, Harper says. It was like, damn, seeing things from 15 years agoa rejected student project next to something I made a week ago. It was a really weird experience. The interface is fascinating in that it demonstrates just how low a lift our single image feeds are in an era when we all have supercomputers in our pockets. The fact that I can mouse over thousands of images through my browser, without my aging Macbook cursing at me through the fan, is a most certain demonstration that our computers are able to do a lot more than we ask of them these days. Zooming in and out in Soot with my trackwheel is instantaneous. And the entire school of images (they do self-organize almost like fish) moves with a satisfying inertia. [Image: courtesy Soot]That said, in my own observations, I found tht I was really only focusing on one image at a time. Soot didnt open some new capacity in my brain. But seeing these interrelated ideas in my peripheral vision still seemed meaningful. And being able to explore a swatch of images in X, Y, and Z space felt more like true exploration than the whims of the algorithm.[Image: courtesy Soot]I am curious to see where Soot goes next, and can only imagine how we might begin to push the norms of UX as ideas like this leave the web browser and entire spaces like VR. I honestly dont know if the next 20 years of visual interface looks more like this, or more like the conventions in the 20 years weve had before. But I do think that, in the era of AI and seemingly limitless processing, we need more experimentation rather than less. We need to stretch what we think might be possible before we settle for whats worked so far.Were not fully there yet. Right now were in our GPT2 era, says Harper, alluding to the moment before OpenAI went mainstream. The core users love it, but its not ready for mass-market adoption.
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E-Commerce
To be a good leader, you must do more than lead teams. You need to cultivate self-awareness, conversations, and relationships. Its not enough to practice leadership in the office. Today, the skills we need at workhumility, listening, and emotional intelligenceare just as necessary at home, in friendships, and community life. Unfortunately, many leaders feel less confident when tough conversations or messy emotions arise outside formal settings. Without titles, power, and staff to rely on, you strip leadership down to its rawest form: connection with others. Here are six leadership lessons that apply whether youre managing a project, having a hard conversation with your teenager, or navigating a disagreement with a neighbor, a practice that I personally recently failed at. 1. Be aware of stories that influence your reactions Whats shaping your reactions? We might not realize it, but every interaction is influenced by the private stories we tell ourselves. Recently, during a tough conversation with a neighbor, I got triggered. My story made perfect sense to me; their story was a strong no to any compromise. That didnt fit our friendship, and I didnt handle it well. Later, I used a tool I call CADSConcerns, Authority issues, Desires, and Standardsto explore my reaction. My trigger came from an unmet standard: my belief about what good neighbors should do. I wanted a mutually acceptable solution, but they did not want to discuss options. Accepting that I couldnt control their position helped me move forward with less judgment. I could wake up from my patterned reaction, accept their choice, and ground myself in what I could (and couldnt) control. To watch your stories, ask yourself: What is my desire? What are my concerns? Are there power dynamics at play? What standards are driving my judgments? This enables you to deconstruct your opinions and examine the underlying feelings that are shaping your reactions. 2. Adopt a more humble attitude Are you willing to be wrong? Many of us probably received the message to be the strongest voice in the room. Real leadership, however, begins with humility. Leaders must be willing to be wrong, to listen, and to learn. One senior executive (lets call him Josh) was passionate and intelligent, but when he met with his team, there was little interaction. Hed kick off meetings with strategy ideas and challenges, then ask for input. He heard crickets. With coaching, Josh realized his passion and unintentionally sent the following message: I have the answers. He committed to changing his style. Instead of presenting solutions, he reframed his meetings: Were here to explore tough issues and possible solutions. My perspective is one of many. I might be wrong about this. Who sees it differently? That shift transformed the meetings. More ideas surfaced, and better ideas emerged 3. Truly collaborate Are you balancing advocacy and inquiry? Collaboration and psychological safety arent just about agreement and niceties. True collaboration requires balancing productive advocacy with sincere inquiry. I once worked with finance and legal teams who found themselves trapped in politics and blame. During an off-site retreat, they played together, ate together, and explored the stories that the other group carried. Slowly, they began questioning assumptions and listening to each other. As camaraderie grew, they began to trust each other and created agreements for how to move forward together. Whether youre leading a project, planning a family trip, or navigating a community issue, collaboration demands humility, self-awareness, and openness to other perspectives. To truly collaborate, its important to present your view as one possibility among many. Share the thinking behind your position. Inquire sincerely into others perspectives. What are their desires, concerns, or standards? Examine your assumptions and dispel mistaken beliefs. 4. Think beyond the script Many leaders subconsciously self-censor. We stick to safe scripts, relying on old conversational patterns. But creativity often begins when we allow ourselves to explore whats unfamiliar. Recently, a client felt stuck in a job she didnt enjoy. She didnt respect her boss and felt dismissed. When I asked her to shift focus to what might be possible, she began to move away from fixating on what was wrong with her job and allowed herself to imagine alternatives. Once she opened that door, she made thoughtful choices about her future. To think beyond the script, give yourself permission to explore possibilities. Its a freeing practice. Imagination can spark breakthroughs and deepen relationships at home and at work. 5. Explore alternatives Are you skipping over discussions? In high-stress situations, its easy to rush to decisions. I call this the conversational bypass. We present our position, skip dialogue, and move straight to action. But rushing to action stifles creativity. In architecture school, one of my first assignments was to design a toy. I poured myself into a single idea. When I presented it, my professor raised an eyebrow and said: One idea? Come back tomorrow with five more. I was stunned. But the lesson stuck: Dont fall in love with your first idea. Dont move to action without exploring options. That mindset changed how I approached design and leadership. To ensure that you explore alternatives, dont settle for your first idea. Ask yourself and others, What else might be possible? 6. Only make promises you can keep Are you slowing down enough to commit wisely? In a fast world, its easy to say yes. But its also risky. I once promised my son that Id help him with a project later. But then I forgot. That small broken promise hurt more than I expected. It reminded me that sloppy promises, at work or at home, erode trust faster than mistakes. When someone makes a request, a rushed yes might feel efficient in the moment. But when we say yes just to please someone, we bypass a crucial step: understanding. Before responding with Sure, no problem, take the time to really understand the request. Ask a few clarifying questionsnot to challenge the person making the request, but to understand their needs and expectations: Whats the intent or goal? What concerns are you addressing? Who is this really for? What does success look like? Asked with sincerity, these quick, thoughtful questions can prevent misunderstandings and build trust. Slowing down creates clarity and confidence. A fulfilled promise is the foundation of trust. To make sure you keep your promises, before saying yes, pause and ask: Do I truly have the capacit to deliver on this? Ask clarifying questions to set the right expectations. And whatever you do, make sure that you can keep the promises you make. Lead where you are Leadership isnt a role you turn on at work and off at home. Its a daily practicea way of showing up with humility, curiosity, and care, wherever you are. You dont need a title or permission. What you need is the willingness to pause, reflect, and lead, moment by moment.
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E-Commerce
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