AI application startups educate their model vendors to compete against them
Ashish Toshniwal · Best of 3500 Minutes from Top Founders & Investors in 2025 · Dec 30, 2025 · at 9:05
Entrepreneur Ashish Toshniwal discusses the strategic defensibility challenges faced by AI application startups building directly on foundation model APIs.
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“Every startup in the AI application space, every, you know, service as software startup has to first and foremost internalize that their vendor is also their competitor. The model provider is both vendor and competitor. And that's a hard place to be. And they are actually educating their vendor on how to compete with them.”
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