We've Been Here Before

I take a lot of AI meetings. More than I can count at this point. Almost every conversation follows the same arc. A genuinely clever solution to a real problem, a demo, a founder who believes with complete sincerity that they've found something transformative.

Sometimes they have. More often, they've built something that solves one narrow slice of a larger problem. The question that continues to challenge the room is whether that slice belongs to the company presenting it, a feature waiting to be absorbed, or someone else entirely.

This moment feels familiar. Not alarming, just eerily familiar.

In the late 90s, having a website was going to change everything. It did, but not for most of the companies that raised money on that premise (cue the AOL noise here). In the early 2010s, mobile apps were going to reshape every industry. They did but think about how many you downloaded once and never opened again (now cue up the first game you played).

Think about how many companies raised real capital and simply vanished, exited, or rebranded. The pattern repeats: a genuine technological leap, a wave of investment, and then the long sorting process that determines who actually built something lasting versus who built a fad in the moment.

AI is the same pattern, faster and louder. Most of what's proliferating right now is version 2, 4, 6, 8 of itself. Incrementally better, marginally differentiated, solving narrow problems inside workflows that still require a dozen other tools to function. Alongside all the breathless fear about what AI will take over, there's a quieter and more honest problem emerging: select AI implementations are proving enormously costly with underwhelming returns. The hype has outrun the ROI in more places than anyone is comfortable admitting.

Which brings me to the fear itself, that AI will replace human judgment, run companies, make us obsolete. It won't. Not because AI isn't impressive; it's the most impressive tool we've ever built. But it is still a tool. And like every tool before it, its success or failure will come down to entirely human questions. How is capital being framed around it? Is the valuation honest? How much real work has gone into the business model? Who are the leaders? Do they have a trusted team? These questions determined which websites survived, which apps scaled, which companies endured. They will determine the same outcomes here.

Google wasn't just a better search engine. The iPhone wasn't just a better mobile device. Workday wasn't just a faster way to manage people data. Each one fundamentally changed the relationship between people and a category. Each one succeeded because the right humans made the right calls at inflection points and pivoted in times of failure. The technology didn't run itself. It never does.

That's the bar. And the companies that will clear it are probably not the ones with the cleanest demos and the most crowded cap tables today. They're being built by founders who understand that the technology is the starting point and who are honest with themselves about the human work that no model can do for them.

Those are the conversations I'm here for.

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Kristin Wood, Ph.D. is the CEO of III Ventures + Illuminate Consult,

based in Los Angeles, California, USA.

© 2026 III Ventures. Forward-looking statements are subject to risk. Past performance is not indicative of future results.