Optimizing for AI Agents: Why Founders Must Build for AI, Not Human Eyes | Adugbo Victory

Hi everyone. My name is Victor Adegoke. I'm a founder. I'm also a GTM and growth strategist. I'm also a blockchain educator.

I've trained over 200 developers who transition from web 2 to web 3. Just a whole lot of stuff. I don't want to bore you with all of that, but let's say for example, I have a speaking engagement, let's say in London, right? Usually what we would do now would be to go on Google and say, I'm looking for hotels in London. And then you open multiple websites.

You probably see a lot of websites that are around the conference that you're actually going to. And then you compare the prices. You basically read reviews. And then you check for availability. You might see hotels and they might not be available, right?

You finally make a decision. But tomorrow, you basically would just tell your AI agents to look for an hotel for you around your budget, let's say for example, $250 near your conference area, good reviews. You want to be able to cancel in case you don't like the hotel, right? And what does what happens next? The AI agent basically searches, it evaluates, it compares, it recommends, and it acts for you.

We've been hearing a lot of automation and things like that, right? We're basically moving into a period where you really would not have to do bookings by yourself. So you may never need to visit a hotel's website or any website to carry out certain actions. So the interface between the customer and your business is very, very crucial because the interface has changed. The customer is not disappearing.

So, when we talk about distribution channels these days, we usually talk about distribution channels like Google, we have TikTok, we have Instagram, we have Facebook, right? We basically do a lot of our promotion on this platform to increase our visibility and things like that. So, before we have human, Google, Bing, depending on where you're looking from, you go to the website, you find the product. But soon, it's going to be from humans to AI agents to the product directly. I feel like a lot of times when we're actually even developing or writing codes, if we do not specify for our AI agent or our ID to say use a specific tool, maybe for icons or for display or for animations, the AI agent basically chooses at the end of the day, right?

So, AI agents are becoming a new distribution channel. And we have to build with that in mind. If you're a founder, if you're basically part of the growth team, right? So, the distribution has always followed the interface of website, search engines, and app store. When you basically build your products, you basically have a website, and then you try to rank on search engines, and then if you it's going to be a mobile app, you basically will do a lot of promotion to the app stores.

It could be on iOS, it could be on Play Store.

[sighs]

Also today, we have social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, where people want to talk about their products. Everybody has sort of become an influencer. They say you have to dance before people use your product. So, we're doing a lot of dancing on TikTok these days. And then we have creator networks.

But tomorrow, it's going to be you and your AI agent. It could be ChatGPT, it could be Gemini, whatever you like. So, agents are increasingly becoming the gateway between intent and execution. You really don't have to do a lot of thinking anymore. Like, they're saying it's a nightmare right now, but they just basically take the stress away from a lot of things that you're doing.

Instead of basically going through hundreds of links, which is the reality, a lot of people just prefer to just ask their AI, um I'm looking for this, and whatever answer the AI agent basically gives them is what they go with. We've basically become lazy like that. So, the AI agent tries to understand your intent, it evaluates the available options, it also ranks the alternatives, it recommends, and then potentially executes. So, how do you optimize for humans and for AI? For humans, I like to believe that we all like visually appealing things.

In fact, the product might not be so good, but because it's kind of catchy, we like things like that, right? So, if optimizing for human eyes, we optimize for things like a beautiful UI, which is why we have UI designers. You have to come up with something that is very catchy and captivating. You know, your logo has to be very sharp. And then we have copywriters that write very impressive copies, and then there's a lot of storytelling, which is why we have dev rels, and um a lot of influencers that basically try to tell your brand story.

Then we have brand awareness. Depending on how you choose to do your brand awareness, you try to rank for keywords also, and then you have call to action buttons on your website, and you also have to make your platform easy to navigate as much as possible. But, when you're optimizing for AI agents, a couple of things you need are a clear structure, explicit information. The AI does not want you rambling and telling it a lot of stories, right? It wants explicit information.

If your product does exchange, you need to specifically say, "We do exchange." If it's a stablecoin rail, you say, "This is a stablecoin rail." Simple, straight to the point. And also machine-readable data. The information that you're going to be putting out is something that AI agents need to be able to crawl and understand.

Imagine building a product that AI agents cannot necessarily read through or crawl. There is no way you're going to be recommended by, you know, this AI agent. Then you need evidence and credibility. AI agents try to make the best choice or the best available choice for you. So, if you don't have credibility as a product or your website doesn't have enough credibility, there is no context or relevance.

You really would not be selected by this AI agent. And then, we basically have to build APIs that these AI agents can interact with, and also a structured workflow. So, even though we're saying we should optimize for AI, doesn't mean that we should abandon humans. We have to build for both simultaneously. So, what does it mean to be AI native or to be discovered by AI?

we have to ask ourselves a couple of questions. Can an AI understand your company without guessing? We throw a lot of buzzwords usually. Everybody wants to be the next big thing, so we throw around, you know, a lot of buzzwords. AIs are not interested in those kind of things.

You have to be very clear about your offering and what you do. So, your digital presence should clearly communicate the what, the who, the why, the how, the proof, and the action. What do you do? Who is it for? What problem do you solve?

How does the product work? Why should anyone trust you? And what can an act What can an agent actually do? You need to actually tick these boxes. If you don't tick these boxes, then the chances of you being discovered by these AI agents or crawlers is next to zero.

So, a website isn't just a storefront anymore. It's not just something that you want to display to people. It's not just beautiful UIs. It can be a machine-readable representation of your business. Because right now, AI basically does a lot of the heavy lifting, right?

AI basically makes decisions for a lot of people. So, if your website is not machine-readable, the chances of your product even being used these days is going to be almost next to zero. So, you need to make your business easy to understand for humans and for machines. And you can do that by building around structured product information, clear use cases. Your pricing should be very clear and concise.

And you need documentation, integration, FAQs, case studies, reviews, and customer evidences. So, that means your go-to-market basically changes to while you plan for the agentic economy. We've highlighted some of these things already. Um

[snorts]

So, why should you care even though you're in the web 3 economy? What happens when an agent can do the following? Discover, decide, and transact. I'm sure a few of us know about the some sub-cents um economy, which means that you can actually use stablecoins to carry out sent transactions, which is designed for agents. So, if you have a product and AI agents cannot really use that product or transact from after finding your product, then you're not ready for the agentic economy.

So, the founders checklist quickly, you need to ask yourself these five questions. Can AI understand us? Which means is your value proposition very clear? Can AI discover us? Do you have enough strong digital evidence?

Can AI trust you? You need a couple of independent signals that validates you as a source of authority. And can AI use us? Are your workflows exposed through APIs so much that these AI agents can basically carry out transactions with your product? And can AI transact with us?

If the answer to most of these questions or all of it is no, you still have like a whole lot of work to do. So, the best products or the winners would not simply have the best products. They would have products that are easy to discover, easy to understand, easy to trust, easy to use, and easy for agents to act on. So, we need to stop optimizing for human highs only because your next customer is probably definitely going to be a human, but the first entity that decides whether your product gets considered may just be an AI agent. Thank you.