Notes on Jaime DeLanghe’s Talk: “AI for Every Business: Unlocking Your Product’s Potential”

I will start sharing some of my study notes here. The first is on the talk “AI for Every Business: Unlocking Your Product’s Potential” by Jaime DeLanghe, VP of Product at Slack, at ProductCon NY’24.

Notes grouped by topic

Key considerations for effective AI solutions

Start with the user needs to solve real problems

1. Anchor in genuine user needs, not just shiny tech;
2. Understand underlying pain points first;
3. AI product development is very similar to product development.

Broaden the scope of solvable products

1. Find the intersection between user needs and what technology can solve today;
2. Not just text, but also images, videos, …;
3. Ask: What’s your user trying to do for a long time that you haven’t be able to meet for them?

Consider commodification

1. Differentiate your solution to not have something that everyone else also has;
   1. Just adding a button to an existing AI model is not enough. Anybody can do that;
2. Add additional value in a way that only you can.

Build trust

1. Think about how to build trust from the start;
   1. How can you ensure trust and security to keep data safe?;
2. Make sure you are avoiding the known hazards.

ROI

1. Thoughtful application is key;
2. How can you make sure this is worth your Return on Investments for your business and users?

Slack’s approach to AI solutions

1. No prompt engineers: it needs to work for everyone.
   1. You shouldn’t have to take a course to be able to use it;
2. Trustworthy;
   1. Prioritizing own data, including storing data internally;
   2. Have citations to source material to make sure users can double-check sources.
3. AI needs to do meaningful work for users.

Other examples of companies leveraging AI

1. Canva is doing great work here with the Cold Start Problem and next-level template generation;
   1. Me: Canva’s Product Newsroom with their launches;
2. Interesting work happening in the creation space in general;

Video

You can watch the talk below.

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One of my challenges in writing this kind of post is transforming bullet point notes into a more readable format. I tried organizing them into groups to better summarize my insights. I still need to figure out how to add my own comments (I used “Me:”) into the notes.

Leave a comment if you have any suggestions on how to improve this kind of post.