Are you sick of getting those automated messages on LinkedIn? So am I. AI Sales Development Reps is one of the 5 hot categories I’ve never invested in.

Each cycle has a hot idea that 100 startups pursue. Most of the time, they all flame out.

Here are the hot categories I’ve never touched…

AI SDR’s

This market is incredibly crowded. There are hundreds of these companies, and they seem to have no differentiation.

Worse yet, the products don’t work.

I was just chatting with a founder yesterday and he showed me his LinkedIn messages. He got a note that said “Hi [blank], I see you’re Founder | CEO of…” It couldn’t find his name and it transcribed his job character-for-character from his LinkedIn bio.

No one’s responding to a message like that. So the AI SDR product doesn’t drive any sales.

Hello, churn! And sure enough, these products churn like you wouldn’t believe.

AI Note Takers

I use an AI note taker, and I love it. But there are 1,000 of these and one isn’t all that different from the next.

Also, an AI note taker is a feature, not a product. The product is the videoconferencing system.

You’re already seeing AI note taking embedded into Zoom. I’m sure Meet and Teams will have it soon.

Bye bye AI note taker.

AI Image Generators

I loved the image of Pope Francis in Balenciaga and ice. But I don’t love AI image generators as an investment.

We will probably do image generation using foundational models. Grok and OpenAI already do it well.

What’s more, there are about 1,000 AI image gen tools. None of them have any real differentiation.

It’s hard to build a $1 billion business that way.

NFT’s

I love art, but I don’t collect it. So why would I buy NFT’s?

I think owning digital art could become a thing. But the prices for Bored Apes and the like made no sense.

When I see incredible froth in a category, I like to take a step to the left and find another place to play.

Creator CRM’s

Like NFT’s, Creator CRM’s were all the rage in 2021. Now, most of those startups are dead or dying.

The problem is, only a full time creator is likely to buy SaaS products to manage their business. And there aren’t that many full time creators.

Even among full timers, most don’t make much money. This means LTV’s will be low and churn will be high.

Wrap-Up

What do all these categories have in common? They’re all obvious.

Sometimes, 100 people have the same idea and go build the same startup. Each product has a slightly different spin on the problem, but fundamentally they’re the same.

I go toward the non obvious ideas.

Take Prandtl Dynamics. They’re building an ultrasound system to stop drones. In the future, every soldier will carry one.

That’s transformative tech. And it’s not something 100 companies can do.

That’s the type of thing that gets me excited!

If you’re a founder, don’t make a me-too product. Make something transformative.

Do it even if everyone tells you it’s stupid. That could be the best sign that you’re on to something.

More on tech:

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