The Businesses That Will Win the Next Decade Already Look Different. Here’s How

I spend my days inside companies helping them get on the right side of history. I see lots of patterns. But the one that matters most to me is what this moment means for the businesses that actually keep the economy running.

After building Morning Brew and now running Tenex, an AI transformation firm, I’ve had a front-row seat to what actually separates businesses that adapt from those that don’t.

And, from where I sit, the next decade isn’t a naysayer’s tech trend. It’s much more like the industrial revolution than another app launch.

The cost of intelligence is dropping fast. One strong engineer paired with the latest models now can do the work of five to ten.

Projects that used to take quarters now take weeks. 

And what took weeks now takes days.

When that happens, the usual sources of advantage start to weaken. Companies can no longer say, “We have the best tech,” or “It would take years for a competitor to catch up.” If almost anyone can build the thing, the conversation now shifts to one question: Who actually wins and keeps the customer?

And what I keep seeing is that the businesses that will thrive in this shift already share three strengths:

1. They have great taste. 
2. They have real distribution and trust. 
3. They treat AI as the cheapest leverage they’ve ever had.

Taste and the feel of your experience

“AI will make everything the same” is one of the laziest arguments I hear. Spend ten minutes switching between different AI tools, and you’ll see exactly why that’s wrong.

Take Claude versus ChatGPT. Both companies have incredible technology, but in practice, the experience of using them feels different. The way the tool answers you, structures information, and comes across as more or less “human” is not an accident. That gap is taste. And taste is a choice.

Consider what Anthropic and OpenAI have both built. Both have extraordinary technology under the hood, but spend 10 minutes with Claude and 10 with ChatGPT, and you’ll see the experience is genuinely different; the way each tool responds to you, structures information, and comes across as more (or less) human. These differences aren’t accidental; they are the result of product teams who have a strong point of view on what a great experience looks like for the user on the other side.

To me, taste isn’t just aesthetics. It’s customer obsession. Having a strong point of view on what a great experience looks like for the person on the other side, and then holding that standard in every interaction: 

• your response times, 
• your clarity, 
• your onboarding, 
• your packaging, and 
• your follow-through.

Here’s why this matters more now than it ever did: As building technology gets easier and less expensive, your customers have more choices. The companies that win the relationship won’t necessarily have the best tech stack. They’ll have the best taste.

You still get to decide what “great” looks like. That part doesn’t get automated.

Distribution and trust

The second strength is distribution. In plain language, this is who already has the trust and attention of the people they want to serve.

At Tenex, I wear two hats. I’m a co-founder of an AI transformation company, and I’m also a creator. The reason we have been able to win work with some of the biggest brands in the world is simple. Executives at those companies already trust me because they have followed my content for years. That trust spills over into the business.

Anthropic understands this as well. Their employees aren’t only building in the background.  Many of them are visible and active online. If you spend time on X, you do not just know “Anthropic.” You know some of the actual people behind Claude and its related products. 

You don’t need a Fortune 500 logo to do something similar. Distribution might look like:

• Showing your face consistently on one or two platforms that your customers already use
• Turning your strongest people into visible experts, not just names on an org chart
• Treating every piece of content as a way to earn trust over time, and not just to chase quick clicks

The way I think about it: Anthropic has built a bench of creator-talent – employees who aren’t just building in the background, but actively showing up online, sharing how they think, and answering real questions from real users. 

Every company can do a version of this, whether that’s empowering internal people to be visible or bringing in external creators who already have your audience’s trust. As technology gets easier to copy, that kind of human distribution becomes your real moat.

Low-cost intelligence and new leverage

Here’s the part of this shift that makes me most optimistic: Intelligence just got cheap.

Here’s what I mean by that. 

Historically, if you wanted high-quality work (like contract review, financial projections, or deep sales research), you had two options. You either did it yourself and paid with your time, or you hired someone and paid with your margins. Scarcity of time and people set your ceiling.

So when I think of SMBs, one thing is always true. There are more things to do than people to do them. You are resource-constrained by default. Scarcity of labor and scarcity of people have always been a constraint for SMBs.

AI flips that. For about $20 a month, you can get human-like output from a tool that would have cost you five or six figures a year before. Whether you need to redline a contract, project cashflows, or research potential customers and find their emails, all of that is now possible with this technology.

So for the first time, SMB owners can experience abundance – not because the work went away, but because you finally have leverage that isn’t a full-time hire.

I tell business owners to treat AI like a genius intern. It is insanely hard-working and supersmart, but it needs guidance and context. You are the first mile and the final mile. You set direction at the start, then you check the quality at the end, so it actually represents your company well.

That is the best way to leap ahead. You move from “we cannot afford that level of help” to “we can afford leverage, and we can point it at work that matters.”

What this means for you right now

If you run a business, the question is not whether AI will replace everything.

Better questions are:

What makes a small business competitive in the AI era?

Do you know the experience you want your customers to have, and are you using AI to raise that standard?

Are you building real distribution and trust so people know you, not just your logo?

Are you using AI as low-cost intelligence to free up your time for the work only you can do?

The businesses that will win the next decade will not simply be the ones with the biggest budgets. They will be the ones that combine human taste and trust with the most affordable leverage we have seen in our lifetime. 

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