The 3 types of business in the AI era

Reading soundtrack:
The Beatles — "Come Together"

Say you wake up tomorrow and OpenAI, Anthropic, Google or Meta is giving away what you sell today, for free…

…how many of your customers are still paying you 90 days later?

I stole that question from Pedro Superti — a Brazilian positioning strategist and startup advisor who's trained 30,000+ companies with his Fator X (X Factor) method.

Two weeks ago, at Master Heroes (the mastermind we run here in Florianópolis, Brazil), he dropped that bomb on the whole room… with zero warning.

And the silence that followed said more than any answer could.

The 3 levels of business (which one are you?)

Pedro laid out a framework that sounds simple at first, but it changes how you see EVERYTHING.

In the AI era, there are 3 types of business:

Level 1: The Feature

You do one thing, and one thing only… and whoever sits one layer above you can swallow you whole tomorrow morning.

A concrete example: remember all those apps selling

• “AI that transcribes your meetings"

• “AI that turns text into images"

• “AI that builds your quiz funnel"

Entire startups were built around ONE feature… they raised money, hired a team, sold monthly subscriptions.

Then OpenAI launched ChatGPT, Anthropic launched Claude, Google launched Gemini…

…and suddenly each of these giants was offering (for free, or close to it) what those startups charged $20 a month for.

What used to be a whole product became just a feature inside something bigger.

That's what happens when you're a Feature: you don't get to decide when the game ends. Whoever sits above you does.

And with these companies shipping new stuff every week… a Feature's shelf life has never been shorter.

Level 2: The Platform

This is a team game, the kind Shopify, YouTube, Skool and beehiiv play. Instead of executing everything yourself, you build the field OTHER people play on.

Creators create, readers read, advertisers pay… and the Platform orchestrates the whole thing, growing right along with everyone on it.

It's a different mindset: you stop thinking about your own slice of the pie and start thinking about how to make every player win, because every time a player wins, the Platform wins too.

Level 3: The Ecosystem

Two or more things that feed each other. For example:

• Apple has iPhone + App Store + Apple Watch…

• Amazon has Marketplace + AWS + Prime…

One service strengthens the next, which strengthens the next, and you keep buying the next "missing piece" of the ecosystem.

The line from Pedro I can't stop thinking about:

If you're selling a Feature… you're in a game that gets harder with every AI update.

But if you're building an Ecosystem… YOU make the rules.

Where your funnel ends, someone else's begins

Now, before you say it:

"Sure, Lucas, but I'm not Apple. I don't have billions in the bank…"

Hold on.

Because this is where it gets really interesting, and where Gian, my business partner in Master Heroes, comes in with a line he dropped at that same meetup:

Your ecosystem doesn't have to live under one roof.

It used to make sense to hire a big team and bring everything in-house, because execution was expensive and scarce.

Today, execution is the part a machine does in minutes.

What's left for us humans is the part the machine can't do: thinking, connecting, building relationships.

And the best way to build relationships… is to build things WITH people.

Walk through this with me:

1) What does your customer buy BEFORE they get to you?

2) And what will they need AFTER they're done with you?

Those two answers point straight to your partners in the ecosystem.

Forget building an "empire" with hundreds of employees…

The move is to build a network where every piece makes the others stronger, where your partner's success sends demand your way (read: new subscribers and new sales) and your success sends demand right back to them.

Alone, your company handles the before, the product and the after… and the funnel ends.

With partners, one funnel starts where the other one ends, and the cycle keeps turning (and you keep making $$$).

The bottom of your funnel becomes the top of theirs… and the whole cycle starts feeding itself.

And it works at any scale: with 2 partners, with 5, with 50… all that matters is the FIT.

A bonus question from Pedro (write this one down):

The piece nobody can copy

In an era where anyone can generate content on any topic in 30 seconds with a prompt, information has become a commodity.

Know what HASN'T?

Your perspective.

It's the gap between "5 tips to grow your newsletter" and "5 things I learned growing MY newsletter."

The focus shifts from "you" to "me"… and the moment it does, the content becomes irreplaceable.

Pedro said something I'm going to hammer home here:

What people want from you is your PERSPECTIVE, your point of view and your experience on the topic… the raw information is already everywhere.

They want to know what you think, what you've lived through, what you learned by getting it wrong, what your take is.

Because nobody can copy your perspective (not even AI).

And look at how this fits into the ecosystem:

Your perspective makes your piece irreplaceable in the network… without it, you're a Feature any AI can replace.

But with it, you're the hub that connects everything.

So where does your newsletter fit?

If you run a newsletter (or you're about to start one), here's where all of this lands: your newsletter is one PIECE of something bigger.

It's where you build trust, show your perspective, educate your audience and shift beliefs… but the ecosystem around it doesn't have to be all yours.

The partner who complements what you do…

The product that solves your reader's next problem…

The community that amplifies your voice…

All of that is your ecosystem.

And you don't have to build all of it yourself.

In other words, working more isn't the ONLY way to make more money.

You're going to see a lot more of this from here on out.

That's it.

Talk soon.

Peace ✌️

— Lucas