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San Francisco founder says a Claude AI feature ‘killed’ her startup, made ‘entire product category obsolete’
In an article on X, the co-founder explained how her startup’s close rate dropped from 70% to 20% overnight due to one Claude AI feature.
A San Francisco-based entrepreneur revealed how a single update to Anthropic’s Claude “killed” her startup. Despite having hundreds of paying clients and rapid growth, the founder watched her sales close rate plummet from 70% to just 20% overnight.
“I woke up today and Claude killed my startup. We got several hundred paying clients in 2 months, was growing like crazy. One Claude/Manus feature and our close rate dropped from 70% to 20%. Claude just made our entire product category obsolete,” Ryze co-founder Ira Bodnar wrote on X.
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“We built an AI agent that automates ad management for you. Like, you can give it access to all your Google and Meta accounts and it will manage it for you. Pretty cool. Customers loved it.”
She further explained, “Claude and Manus both released connectors for Meta Ads. Claude still can't make changes in ad accounts — it can only do analysis, and it has no access to Google Ads. But give it a few months, and it will. So building here feels pointless.”
Will her startup survive?
However, in the following lines, the entrepreneur shared that for now, her business would survive. “Our current business will be fine anyway. We knew what was coming and started actively pivoting a few weeks ago. Now we also build complex workflows for huge ad agencies managing 100s of accounts — like some of our clients manage 600 accounts with 6 people. Pretty insane.”
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In her post, she further discussed the changes AI is likely to bring to the marketing and distribution industries.
How did social media react?
An individual posted, “Good article. Have been working for a bit on selling to agents within B2B - would love to chat and share learnings/bounce ideas.” Another added, “I have lots of thoughts on how I am going to build similar tools that will perform better, and more proactively than what cowork could do in the advertising space.”
A third commented, "It's wild how fast Claude and Manus are shifting the landscape for ad management, Ira. You hit the nail on the head regarding the GTM stack. Brand and taste really do feel like the last moats when outreach automation becomes a commodity. I’m curious, as you pivot toward those complex workflows for large agencies, how are you positioning that human hustle and storytelling to win over those massive 600-account portfolios?”
A fourth wrote, “So you used your tech as a wedge into orgs and now looking to build something differentiated… doesn’t sound like failure.”
What is Claude AI?
It is an artificial intelligence which is trained by Anthropic using Constitutional AI. The company says that Claude AI is “safe, accurate, and secure.”
It can be used to process “large amounts of information, brainstorm ideas, generate text and code.” The AI can further help an user in understanding subjects and also coach them “through difficult situations.” The tech company explains that its product helps in simplifying the user’s “busywork”.
Currently, there are 5 pricing plans available for the users: Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise. There is also a free version but it comes with limited use.
