Ai-Native

Sequoia’s ‘services are the new software’ frames autopilot startups as the next $1T category — useful as a snapshot, misleading as a strategy. The main read: an early autopilot startup is structurally the same organism as the agentic solo engineer, just in a different legal wrapper, which rewrites the solo engineer’s career map. Two shorter angles follow: the copilot/autopilot border is a moving line, not two markets; and the ‘$1 software : $6 services’ arithmetic is a vanishing arbitrage, not a stable model.

Some management teams are formally alive — meetings, plans, approvals — and functionally dead. In 2026, with the industry rewiring around AI-native and an economic crunch on top, that’s no longer ‘inefficient’ — it’s a 12-month trajectory to bankruptcy. Eight signs from one planning meeting, the contrast with a live team, and what to do if you’re on one.