In 5 years, most software won't have users. It'll have agents.
The products that win will be the ones agents prefer, not the ones humans have learned to use.
Optimising for agents will be a ket focus. Agents will read plain English: marketing copy, FAQs, help centre content etc. to make all critical decisions.
Brands will have to compete to be chosen by agents, just as they did to rank on Google in last 2 decades.
Agentic obliteration is coming.
Entire markets were reorganized around the internet in the early 2000s. Tower Records, Blockbuster, and the Yellow Pages fell, and iTunes, Netflix, and Google took their place, taking advantage of cheap distribution.
It happened again in the 2010s around cloud and mobile. BlackBerry, Kodak, and taxis fell, and the iPhone, Instagram, and Uber took their place, taking advantage of a computer in everyone’s pocket.
Now it’s going to happen with agents. Incumbents can’t simply tear down their UIs and business models to pivot. Public shareholders won’t allow it. Access to intelligence has been democratized, and categories that have historically monetized gatekept institutional knowledge will be most susceptible.
Law is obviously at risk (Harvey and Legora are exploding). Medicine will also change (Doctronic is already renewing prescriptions in Utah). And personal finance will be equally challenged.
Should be an interesting decade.