John McGuire

This is such an important topic. We invested in Eztia Materials because we heard from the construction community on how impactful overheating on a Jobsite can be.

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AI search is emerging as a meaningful new lead channel. India-founded startup Gushwork recently raised $9 million in a seed round led by Susquehanna International Group and Lightspeed Venture Partners to help businesses surface inside AI-driven discovery platforms such as OpenAI, Perplexity AI, and Google. The company reports more than 300 paying customers and approximately $1.5 million in annualized recurring revenue a few months after launching its AI-search-focused product, with strong recent growth and a substantial waitlist. According to its internal data, around 20% of customer traffic comes from AI-driven search and chat platforms, generating a disproportionately higher share of inbound leads. What’s unfolding is less hype and more structural evolution. Search behavior is expanding beyond traditional results pages into AI summaries, conversational interfaces, and AI-assisted browsing. Buyers are increasingly asking models direct, decision-oriented questions, which shifts visibility from keyword ranking toward being cited inside generated answers. That requires brands to build machine-readable authority through structured content, credible references, and consistent topical depth rather than relying solely on conventional SEO tactics. For marketing and tech leaders, the implication is pragmatic. Traffic volume may matter less than intent quality, as AI-driven discovery appears to capture users further along in the buying journey. Execution-heavy optimization work is becoming more automatable through AI agents, while human teams focus more on positioning and differentiation. High-consideration B2B sectors may feel the impact earlier, given their research-driven purchasing processes. The broader takeaway is simple: as AI systems increasingly mediate discovery, brand visibility will depend not only on ranking in search engines but on being recognized and surfaced by large language models when buyers ask who to trust. https://lnkd.in/egvj4PnM

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Customer obsession isn’t a pre-PMF phase of company-building. For the most successful founders, it never stops. T.J. Rylander, General Partner at N47, joined me on CLIMB where we talked about patterns he’s seen across succeeding investments like Skydio, Luminary Cloud, and Encord. Founders like Adam Bry, Pete Schlampp, and Eric Landau don’t just focus on a sharp understanding of the pain to get started. They build it into a culture of customer obsession even after and especially as the revenue shows up. He shared an early insight from meeting the Encord team. Their product vision wasn’t framed around growth curves or new technical capabilities. It was simple: delight the customer. For TJ, that stood in contrast to many legacy and AI-first platforms they had evaluated with strong revenue ramps but unhappy users who openly admitted they were looking to make a change. That NPS gap matters more right now than legacy SaaS companies want to admit. In this AI era, buyers are scrutinizing spend. Switching costs feel lower. And “good enough” software is easier to rip and replace than ever. If you’re building today, the takeaway is to stay close to your customers even as you scale. Find ways to make sure you’re hearing their feedback from your teams on the ground so you know when they’re settling instead of satisfied. What are some ways you have seen leaders build customer obsession into their org as they scale?

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