/Tech1d ago

Startups Pivot To Building Products Optimized For AI Agents

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Brad Flora
Garry Tan#251
Original postGarry Tan#251
Brad Flora@bradflora

I spent an entire office hour brainstorming ways to make a startup’s product more appealing to agents. This was a first as an office hour topic but it feels like a conversation we’ll be having more and more. The industry they sell to is massive but slow growing. Meanwhile every player is launching agents. They can painstakingly sell deal after deal after deal to each player over years… or build a product that’s immediately the consensus pick for all their agents. The latter path seems obviously better in 2026.

8:49 AM · Jun 9, 2026 · 27.7K Views
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Many users express enthusiasm for startups pivoting to products optimized for AI agents, seeing agents as the next major growth segment and already aligning their own work with that shift.

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12 comments with sentiment.
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VIEWS445
Ask The W@AskTheWHQ

@bradflora Agreed 💯. Building for agents also helps me uncover workflows that humans will eventually find valuable. Are there any patterns or best practices you've seen successful startups building for agents, consistently follow?

1dViews 445
LIKES3
Anand Paj@anandPa94

@bradflora I can help them! @tryscope_app

1dViews 66Likes 3
REPLIES1
Naman@namank

@bradflora There are a tonne of agents on the supply side, but are there any agents demand side (in any industry)

1dViews 127
Arag Agrawal@arag_agrawal

@bradflora right

make your product easy to recommend for the guy who makes the final call (i.e. agents)

1dViews 113Likes 2
vansh@vanshdevx

@bradflora The distribution channel is slowly shifting from people discovering products to agents recommending them.

1dViews 215Likes 1
Sam Crowell Richard@SamCRichard

@bradflora Question: did you ask various agents what would make it more appealing?

Sounds like a joke but builds a great roadmap

1dViews 153Likes 1
Ahmed Saleh@ahmedmawiri

@bradflora Double edged sword tho. The same product that welcomes a customer's agent also welcomes the bad ones ... we've seen agents create fake accounts, scrape, and farm free tiers at scale. Curious if telling good agents from bad came up in the brainstorm?

1dViews 105Likes 1
Nova@NovaByArun

@bradflora when you discussed this during your office hour, what was the biggest barrier agents had to actually using the product?

1dViews 291
Spencer@spencercamp

@bradflora I’m working on exactly this!

1dViews 215
LIKA@lika_build

@bradflora @ycombinator Exactly what I’m thinking about rn. If the traffic goes into agent then it is the way to be ranked higher and more helpful for an agent to conduct work.

22hViews 137
Brian Sowards (he/they)@briansowards

@bradflora let me save you a lot of brain work

it's a CLI tool just make it a CLI tool

if it can allow for sign up, auth key, and reports back on credit usage/avail

congrats! you've built an elite agent-first solution you will win

23hViews 32Likes 1
Mike@ExecutionLoop

@bradflora making ui elements that can be grabbed by agents easily completely disassembles the app store barrier to usage, esp with tools like linq

1dViews 97
Human Thomas@madebythomasai

@anandPa94 @bradflora @tryscope_app ☝️

1dViews 29Likes 1
Andrey@Andrey__HQ

@bradflora @ycombinator The latter also is building for the future, not just for the present

1dViews 86
Ilman Shazhaev@shzhv13

@bradflora Now the product has to win twice. First with the human buyer, then with the agent that actually uses it.

1dViews 83
Brett@BrettDavies

@bradflora Agentic discovery and utilization is unsettled and shifting. Some early best practices are available at http://anc.dev, the website dogfoods as a living example.

23hViews 74
Hang Huang@hanghuang_

@bradflora agents are the biggest growing user segment!

22hViews 63
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