If you’re building or backing an AI startup right now, there’s a risk you might be ignoring. And it’s not your competitors.

I sit in pitch meetings more often than I probably should. Some have brilliant demos. Some have traction. Many talk fast. Most use the word ”disruption” at least twice. But now and then, I walk away with a knot in my stomach. Not because they’re wrong. But because they’re fragile—and they don’t seem to know it.

You see, there’s a difference between building AI—and simply using someone else’s. And if you’ve spent time in product and tech, you know that difference isn’t theoretical. It’s existential.

Chris Dixon, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, once noted that building on someone else’s platform always carries the risk of being overtaken or replaced by it. I see that happening every week now. Startups take a public API, wrap it in something slick, add some tuning, and call it innovation. And maybe it is—for a moment.

But then OpenAI or Google or Amazon decides to include that same functionality in their next release.

What was your “product” yesterday becomes a line of prompt syntax tomorrow.

You’re renting relevance from someone else’s roadmap. And rent goes up.

The real threat isn’t a competing startup getting $50 million. It’s that the platform absorbs you before you’ve found ground to stand on. Not out of malice—just momentum.

Matt Turck, managing director at FirstMark Capital, argues that the best way to defend your business in the AI era is to own something truly unique—like your own data, your own distribution, or a clearly defined niche.

If all you own is an interface to someone else’s model, your position is only as strong as the inertia in the market—and inertia doesn’t last long.

And here’s what many people don’t want to say out loud:

You don’t have to be polite about the platforms. They’re not your friends. They are doing what they are built to do: absorb good ideas.

And I know this because I’ve done it. I’ve been a platform manager. I’ve looked at startups, at their UX, their use cases, and simply folded them into my own roadmap. Not because I had anything against them. But because that’s how platforms grow.

If your team spends months mapping out use cases, building UI layers, and stitching APIs together—you might think you’re gaining ground. But in the eyes of the platform, you’re just validating their future feature list.

They don’t need to kill your company. They just need to make your company unnecessary.

They own the stack. They own the channels. And if you don’t own something real—data, users, workflows—they will eventually own your customers too.

This is the kind of thing I help founders stress-test. Not the UI. The logic underneath it. The part that still exists if the model goes offline.

I’ve led product teams. I’ve watched us fall in love with solutions and forget to ask the simple, stubborn questions:

What do we actually own? What makes this hard to replicate? What would still be here if the AI engine vanished?

Those questions aren’t poetic. They don’t belong in pitch decks. But they’re the reason you still have a product when the hype settles.

I’m not here to kill dreams. I’m here to help them survive the next update.

Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, once pointed out that success isn’t about being first, but about being right, clear, and genuinely needed.

If I’m in the room with you, I’m probably the one asking the awkward questions. Not because I doubt you. But because I want to see you still standing when everyone else’s wrapper gets absorbed by the platform.