Value Stack mapping and Value Capture
AI lets you capture more
The mistake I see most founders make right now is treating AI as a feature upgrade.
They bolt a model onto the product. They ship a copilot. They add “AI-powered” to the homepage. And they think they’ve done the work. They’ve changed the technical strategy. The architecture is different. The roadmap is different. The hiring plan is different.
But the business strategy is identical to what it was before AI existed. Same pricing. Same unit of value. Same way of capturing the upside. They rebuilt the engine and kept the same toll booth.
That gap is where companies die.
Here’s the thing about technology shifts. They don’t just change what you can build. They change what’s worth charging for. When the cost of producing something collapses, the value migrates somewhere else. If your business model doesn’t move with it, you’re capturing value in a place that’s draining.
Think about McDonald’s. Everyone thinks McDonald’s is a hamburger company. It isn’t. Ray Kroc said it himself. The business is real estate. McDonald’s buys and controls the property, then leases it to franchisees. The burgers are the thing that generates foot traffic and proves the location works. The land is the thing that captures the value. The product everyone sees is not the product that makes the money.
That’s the move most founders miss. They build the better burger and forget to ask where the value actually accrues.
AI is doing this to software right now. For twenty years the SaaS model worked because software was expensive to build and seats were the natural unit. You charged per seat because each seat represented a human doing work inside your tool. The value scaled with headcount, so the price scaled with headcount.
But AI breaks that link. If the AI is doing the work, charging per seat is charging for the wrong thing. You’re pricing the chairs in a room that’s emptying out. The customer is getting more done with fewer people, which means under a per-seat model your revenue goes down precisely as you deliver more value. You’ve inverted your own economics.
Some companies are already moving to outcome-based or consumption-based pricing, and that’s a step. Charge for the work done, not the seats filled. But I’d push founders further than that. Don’t just change the meter. Ask the McDonald’s question. Where does the value actually accrue in this new world, and what do I need to own to sit on top of it?
Maybe it’s the data the AI runs on. Maybe it’s the workflow the work flows through. Maybe it’s the system of record that everything else has to integrate with. Maybe it’s the distribution. The burger is whatever your customer thinks they’re buying. The real estate is the thing underneath it that nobody can route around.
The technical question is “what can AI do.” The business question is “now that AI can do that, what is scarce, and how do I own it.”
Founders who only answer the first question are building better burgers on land they don’t own. The franchise looks busy. The lines are long. And the value is accruing to whoever holds the lease.
Change the technical strategy. Everyone is. That’s table stakes now. The founders who win this cycle are the ones who also have the nerve to change what they sell, how they charge, and what they own.
Build the burger. But know what business you’re actually in.