Era of Agents: The Internet Will Inevitably Become Agent-First

Hey guys. In the last video I talked about the fact that phones as we know them are going to disappear. They’ll likely transform into some kind of smart wearable — an accessory you wear on yourself, maybe glasses — and then they’ll be in standby mode, ready to jump in whenever you need them. And this will inevitably transform the web into agent-first.

And what does that mean? Today the web is human-focused. It’s all around the human: how you discover information — you go to Google, find a website, find a service, find a plumber, go to their website, fill out some stupid form, and then click the submit button. And that will not be needed anymore. The agent will do it on your behalf. It will find the service you need — the plumber, for example. It will find a list of plumbers, present it to you, and hopefully let you choose (I really hope so). Or maybe you’ll go into YOLO mode and it will choose for you, book the appointment, and basically complete the whole workflow for you.

But essentially, again, the web is becoming agent-first. The whole UX is going to change from human-focused to agent-focused. Today we optimize the UI — the background colors, the buttons, the page flows — and minimize the number of clicks and so on, to steer the user into the desired behavior. Tomorrow we’ll be doing the same stuff, but for the agents: we’ll be steering the agents to make the desired choice. Sometimes this choice may coincide with the user’s intent; sometimes we may use it to manipulate a bit. That’s okay — that’s what’s happening today as well, so this will keep happening.

But essentially, what this means is that the whole internet as we know it will transform completely. The whole interaction layer will be rewritten from scratch — interaction between programs, interaction between the programs themselves, interaction between programs and humans. And what that means is that there are huge opportunities for small startups, such as my own startup, FrontSail AI — an opportunity to come in and use these tectonic shifts to catch or acquire some of the market share. And that’s an opportunity for you.

These days capital is kind of not evenly distributed, and everyone is afraid that Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google will just eat the whole world. But I don’t think this will happen. Worst case, they’ll just buy you out — they’ll acquire your startup, just because you’re already there, you’re more flexible, you’re more advanced to some degree, and it’s cheaper for them to buy you out than to develop it from scratch. And this will hopefully contribute to distributing wealth more equally in our society. So — time of big opportunities, guys. Use this time. Best of luck to you. See you.