Dropbox gave you 500 MB of free space for every friend who signed up, and gave your friend the same. It didn't ask people to be generous. It made sharing the smart thing to do for yourself.
A lot of AI tools at work need that same push, because right now most people keep them quiet.
People hide the AI tools they use
Surveys from Microsoft, LinkedIn and Slack all point the same way. Many people use AI at work and don't tell their manager or their teammates. The top reasons are that it feels like cheating, or that sharing it means giving away a head start.
That makes sense if the tool only helps one person. But many AI tools work better when more people use them. An assistant that can work with a teammate's assistant, share notes on a customer, or pass along a follow-up gets more useful with every person who joins. If you keep it to yourself, you get only a small part of what it can do.
Some tricks really do stop working when everyone copies them
It's worth being honest about the other side. Some advantages exist only because few people have them. Early banner ads got clicked. Cold email used to get replies. When everyone automates the same channel, it wears out for everyone, and nobody gets read.
One question to ask
Before you pick up any AI tool, ask: does this get better or worse when the people around me use it too?
- If it gets better: share it early. Bring in your team and make it easy for them to join.
- If it gets worse: expect your advantage to fade. Use it while it lasts and spend that time building trust with real people.
For developers building AI features, the same question applies to what you ship. If your feature gets better as more of a team uses it, build the invite into the product, the way Dropbox did.
That's the idea behind GrowEasy.ai. CRM, WhatsApp and calling live on one platform, so a whole sales team gets better together instead of one person keeping a private trick.
Tej Pandya, founder of GrowEasy.ai
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