The Exchanges

Q What about internally? Like, what was the vibe internally at Amplitude on the team? Like, was there anyone internally asking, hey, like, should we be building AI products or doing something with AI?

A There were a few, uh, people that were kind of testing out ideas, but I think we were so focused on our regular motion. Like, we were coming out with a lot of other products outside of analytics. We were doing You know, we launched experimentation. We were building session replay internally. We were building this thing, uh, activation, which targets your users based on their behavior, and so there was a lot to do. That was just kind of right in front of us. Um, that was clear, like, okay, hey, we can be much more competitive with, uh, you know, and, and there's this revenue that's just sitting here if we go build these things. You know, there were a few folks that were messing around with it, and there, there were some people that had used cursor and other things, but the, the, the organization as a whole did not have, it's not like it was conscious and aware of this change, this, this, this massive change that was about to happen. I give a lot of credit to Wade, and I give a lot of credit to the command team of being the tip of the spear in terms of showing people what is possible, um, and then getting the organization to, to embrace. By, uh, early twenty-twenty-five, I was convinced, and I was like, all right, we have to be very aggressive on this. Um, so the first order is to train the organization of what the capabilities of AI are, specifically engineering.

AI assessment note: “There were a few, uh, people that were kind of testing out ideas”

Q What was like the light bulb moment for you? When did you flick into, and this needs to be my priority?

A It's hard to say that there was, there was one moment. Um, we've always had this vision at amplitude of a self-improving product where you have a product that dynamically responds to your user feedback. So it knows what features you like. It knows when you're getting frustrated and stuck. Um, it knows how to change things based on your input as a user. Um, and I had always thought this vision was like, you know, 10 years out if, if, if, you know, if, if even that close. And one of the things that's becoming clear, it was actually a lot closer. Uh, that, that moment was actually probably a lot closer than we had realized, uh, because of what we saw happening on, uh, the coding side with AI. I said, okay, look, we, you know, whether or not a self-improving product is gonna be possible, it's clear at least a step towards it, we're gonna have to go do it. So, and the way to do this is we're gonna have to train the organization on this. I started working with, uh, James, uh, the founder, CEO of Command, as well as Wade, Um, our engineering leader to figure out how do we train the organization on AI, and then we, we came up with an AI week, and unfortunately for a bunch of reasons, we weren't able to actually do that until June, but that was a, that was a key, uh, pivot point. What we did was we got a bunch of the existing leaders in the organization. So, you know, our VPs of product…

AI assessment note: “because of what we saw happening on, uh, the coding side with AI.”

Q I don't think everyone realizes how Amplitude started out. Can you maybe talk about your journey to actually finding the Amplitude idea and maybe reflections on it a decade later?

A So before Amplitude, um, we started this company called Sonalite, which was a voice recognition I was like, early version of Siri, and it had this really amazing demo, actually, where you could, it listened in the background for your voice, and this was before any of the Hey Siri, Hey Alexis stuff. Um, and so it, like, listened in the background on Android phone, and as far as we could tell, we were the first to come out with the technology. We didn't know anything about what made for a successful product, or business, or company, and we were just kind of taking our shot on that. Um, we were just two kids at a, at a college, um, that We're like, okay, what's a problem that seems barely at the edge of possible? Let's, let's, you know, that's probably an interesting place for us to, to go to. Um, you know, and we ended up choosing, choosing voice recognition, not because we were passionate about the space. So we, we did YC with that. We did, uh, went through the whole batch, did demo day, did this amazing demo on stage. We got tons of press written about us. Uh, but the product and the tech, it was just not good enough. It wasn't a good enough, uh, product. And so we ended up right after demo day, deciding to shut that down. Um, and then We had always, uh, built our own analytics in-house, uh, you know, it's like, it's what you do as an engineer. You're always like, I want to bui…

AI assessment note: “So before Amplitude, um, we started this company called Sonalite”

Q have an existing customer base. They don't have revenue. They can like, their customers are going to be more forgiving if the thing doesn't work yet. And these seem like advantages for like new startups attacking incumbent companies with like an AI product. Um, but from your perspective, what are, what are like, what are the advantages that like incumbent companies have over them? How do you think about it?

A I think the real business has to be downstream of AI visibility. Uh, it's a valuable, there's value in it, like, you know, just like there's value in, in the SEO world, but it's so easy to do. You know, we, we did it, you know, as, as I mentioned in, in, in, uh, probably more like a few months and a few weeks, but we, we did it very quickly, um, and gave it away for free, and it's been this incredible lead generation for us. Um, and so the commoditization is going to happen real, real fast. I mean, you talk about like, you know, people talk about, Uh, hey, uh, SaaS going away because of AI. I think that's a great example of it. Um, and so, in contrast, if you look at, I think, businesses that have done very well here, so like, there is a business, I think, that is very viable here, which is what Aerops is doing, where they're, yes, they have some visibility aspects, uh, but they have, uh, a whole content generation business to help you create blog posts and other material, um, on that, you know, and, and that's the, that's their real business, and so I think all of these visibility businesses, like, You can, you can get it for free from us. You can get it, you know, you're going to be able to get it free from a lot of other places, and you're going to have to construct a real business kind of downstream. And maybe to give the flip side of it, like, um, you know, I, I think inno…

AI assessment note: “because we have an existing revenue base of hundreds of millions, we can give away this”