Today I want to put my business/marketing hat on and try to take a look at a person engineers often overlook: The customer.

The rise of the AI “Agentic” rush draws some interesting lines in the sand that I want to examine here.

This actually introduces an interesting scale of people. Some people will want to host their own, others will just use whatever Google or Apple sets as the default on their device.

On another axis there will be people that just don’t want to interact with AI or agents in any way. They likely enjoy talking to someone on the phone or in person to interacting with an Agent.

On the other side of that there is the mega nerd geeking out over what they can get their AI Agent to do for them. Giving their Agentic software direct access to their email and bank accounts in hopes to reach the cyber ubiquity we were all promised in Johnny Neumonic (A movie I personally enjoy but completely understand why it has a 20% on rotten tomatoes).

We might all be tempted to adapt our product for the latest tech but if all of your competitors are trying to jump on the latest tech trend there might be an opportunity to lean the other way and please the customers that liked things the way they were.

I’m not saying one way or the other is better, just be mindful of the market and where the “Blue Ocean” is.

If you are a giant company, sure, go ahead and try to make your product accessible for everyone mentioned above.

But if you are a small, scrappy startup I would consider planting a flag on one side or the other and build products aimed specifically at one subscription of that matrix that will love your product in return.

Question for you:

Where does your ideal customer land on this matrix?