Stripe co-founder John Collison discusses agentic commerce on Odd Lots

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@TheStalwart @collision Here’s a piece I wrote on this back in December: https://newsletter.brxnd.ai/p/persuading-the-algorithm-brxnd-dispatch

This was a really fun chat, which covered among other things, the different between B2B and B2C agentic commerce, buying domain names in the agent, whether advertising is a creator of culture or a deadweight loss, and why registering domain names is so hard.

Could end up in an incrementally better system in which customer satisfaction (backend) is a larger factor for a product/service's sustained success than building a better mousetrap (ads on frontend) – user ratings are a thing rn, but they may be a bigger thing in agentic commerce future…

https://x.com/i/status/1979067276423762287 #ecommerce

@TheStalwart @collision I think one of the most interesting questions in the next decade of marketing is whether agents will be more persuaded by rational messaging than consumers. Intuitively it seems like the answer must be yes, but these models are so weird I don’t think we know yet.

Oh and we also talked about crypto and whether the micropayments era, after 20 years of overhype.

Plus we probably talked about a few other things

Full video: https://youtu.be/QhGqLqCzFac?si=kr4nr2Fehe0lCtVY

@heyitsnoah @TheStalwart @collision If, as a customer, I simply instruct my agent to focus on unpaid reviews from most reputable sources (and I will), I think I can make the answer be yes

@TheStalwart @tracyalloway @collision People like shopping. The act is the activity, not the items.

@mndl_nyc @TheStalwart @collision Could be! But also the orientation of the model to please you could counteract that at times.

I guess … again, my main point is that there is a preponderance of evidence that buyers across all categories behave much less rationally than they believe they do. This extends to b2b and developer marketing. LinkedIn has actually done a lot of good work on this with some leading academics https://business.linkedin.com/advertise/resources/b2b-institute

@bradnoble @TheStalwart @collision Developers aren’t allergic to marketing, they just tell themselves they are … Stripe is a master marketer, their marketing just looks different than a Coca-Cola ad.

@heyitsnoah @TheStalwart @collision Whoops -- I didn't imply that developer-focused companies don't do marketing. I said that I hope agents can be tailored to respond to marketing like developers respond to marketing -- responsive to proof signals over bluster. More proof, less bluster.

@TheStalwart @tracyalloway @collision Great great episode. It's going to be a weird time for ads and shopping.

@heyitsnoah @collision Completely agree. @collision said on the show that generally LLMs seem to exhibit choice making that are in line with what humans consider to be “good taste.”

@heyitsnoah @TheStalwart @collision Yes, it's going to be like telling your assistant to buy a piece of office equipment. Can he mess up? Sure. Can a printer salesman fool/hack him? Maybe. Can the printer salesman make a career out of fooling admins? I don't think so

@heyitsnoah @TheStalwart @collision Hope agents are like developers. Allergic to marketing and only responsive to trusted signals from peers or thought leaders.

Probably a slider on that setting.

@heyitsnoah @TheStalwart @collision Not all proof signals are rational. Peer signaling isn't strictly rational, for example. The experience of trying something and being satisfied enough is not strictly rational. A POV on MCP vs CLI vs API isn't, either. But they are all proof

@TheStalwart @collision brand loyalty moat is dead dying deceased

@bradnoble @TheStalwart @collision Stripe markets all over the place: billboards, podcast commercials, events. The idea that these companies don’t do marketing is patently untrue.

@heyitsnoah @TheStalwart @collision I should have included product and docs in my list of trusted signals. :)