Chapter 1: The AI-First Imperative -- Resources

Curated resources for deeper exploration of topics covered in this chapter.

Frameworks from This Chapter

• AI-First vs AI-Enabled -- The Kill Test and five observable characteristics that distinguish companies built on AI from companies built with AI.

Tools & Platforms

• Cursor -- AI-native code editor that reached $100M ARR in roughly one year, built by a small team.
• GitHub Copilot -- AI pair programmer; GitHub's study found developers complete tasks 55% faster with Copilot.
• Replit Agent -- AI development platform capable of producing three production apps in under 200 minutes for less than $25.
• Vercel v0 -- AI-powered UI generation tool that creates functional MVPs in 15 minutes from simple prompts.
• DeepSeek -- Open-weight model provider offering comparable capability to GPT-4 at $0.28 per million tokens.
• Fireworks AI -- Model serving and fine-tuning platform; helped Notion reduce AI latency from 2 seconds to 350 milliseconds.

Further Reading

• Lessons We Learned from Launching Notion AI -- Notion's CMO Rachel Hepworth on their rapid AI launch strategy and pricing evolution.
• A More Unified Harvey Experience -- Harvey's engineering approach to collapsing complexity into a unified legal AI interface.
• Figma AI Controversy -- Analysis of Figma's Make Designs feature controversy and the lessons for AI-first product development.
• 2025: The State of Generative AI in the Enterprise -- Menlo Ventures report on the shift from building to buying AI solutions (76% purchase vs. 47% in 2024).
• HubSpot: Context Is Key -- How HubSpot Scaled AI Adoption -- HubSpot's journey to 90% AI adoption and the organizational transformation required.

Research & Data

• Quantifying GitHub Copilot's Impact on Developer Productivity and Happiness -- GitHub's study measuring 55% faster task completion with Copilot.
• Unleashing Developer Productivity with Generative AI -- McKinsey study measuring 40-50% time savings on code documentation and 25-30% improvement on complex tasks.
• METR AI Coding Tool Productivity Study -- The study revealing a 19% slowdown on mature codebases despite developers predicting a 24% speedup.
• MIT Sloan: The GenAI Divide -- State of AI in Business 2025 -- Finding that 95% of generative AI pilots fail to reach production.
• BCG: AI Adoption in 2024 -- 74% of Companies Struggle -- Only 5% of companies achieve AI value at scale by BCG's most stringent measure.
• S&P Global: AI Experiences Rapid Adoption but Mixed Outcomes -- 42% of companies abandoned most AI initiatives in 2025, up from 17% the prior year.
• LLM API Pricing Comparison 2025 -- Tracking the 107x cost reduction in AI processing from 2023 to 2025.
• Harvey Year in Review 2024 -- Harvey's growth to $100M ARR serving 42% of the AmLaw 100.

Community & Learning

• Y Combinator -- Startups now ship MVPs in 6 weeks instead of 6 months using AI tools.
• Contrary Research -- In-depth company profiles and analysis of AI-first companies including Glean, Midjourney, and Harvey.

Companies Referenced in This Chapter

Company	AI Approach	Key Data Point
Harvey	AI-First	$100M ARR in 3 years; 42% of AmLaw 100
Glean	AI-First	Knowledge Graph takes 12-18 months to mature; natural switching costs
Perplexity	AI-First	AI-native search experience built from ground up
Midjourney	AI-First	11 employees, $200M annual revenue by 2023
Cursor	AI-First	$100M ARR in roughly one year
Jasper	AI-First (warning)	$80M ARR collapsed after ChatGPT commoditized AI writing
Mistral	AI-First	$6B valuation within 18 months of founding
Scale AI	AI-First	9-year head start in data labeling; $20B valuation
Notion	AI-Enabled	AI as $10/month add-on to existing workspace
Salesforce	AI-Enabled	Einstein GPT: 18 months to GA, $50K-$500K implementation
Figma	AI-Enabled	9-month delay behind competitors; Make Designs controversy
TELUS	Enterprise	500,000+ staff hours saved; 47 enterprise-grade apps; $90M+ business benefit
Condor	Enterprise	Built internal AI assistant in weeks instead of months of vendor evaluation