Latency-First Companies

When every product has an AI copilot, differentiation shifts back to the physics of response time. The most impressive founders I’m meeting are obsessed with latency—they build custom inference caches, colocate near their customers, and treat milliseconds as a design material.

Latency-first companies don’t chase breadth. They pick a painful workflow, shave the decision loop to the bone, and monetize the delta. The business model looks like a utility bill: pay for speed, not seats. It’s refreshingly honest and very hard to disrupt once the muscle is built.