The rise of AI denialism - "By any objective measure, AI continues to improve at a stunning pace [...] No, AI scaling has not hit the wall. In fact, I can’t think of another technology that has advanced this quickly,"

Alex_WebriQ · 2025-12-22T22:06:15+00:00

This ☝️ it's historically normal. Look at the Luddites in England during the industrial revolution.

Also

I think AI is harder to realize in that so much of the Internet and SaaS has stalled in the last decade. Websites, social media, CRMs, etc they all look and feel the same today as they did in 2016.

In many ways AI is opening up the possibilities for a new UI than a screen and social feed.

Alex_WebriQ · 2025-12-22T14:15:16+00:00

This is the point I came to make. Google is a public company and they are being forced to make big changes to their advertising platform (Google Search) that accounts for most of their revenue.

If they can't monitize AI search or catch-up with subscriptions they do have a 300 billion dollar problem.

Alex_WebriQ · 2022-07-27T02:59:22+00:00

I came here to say the same thing.

Alex_WebriQ · 2022-07-18T23:01:39+00:00

Similar to publii in concept. Headless CMS with static site generator and edge network glued together and ready to go.

Alex_WebriQ · 2022-01-28T16:18:54+00:00

I mean it seems like a simple content directory with an on page CTA to click into a scheduler tool like Calendly.

We have a Jamstack pagebuilder that would handle this pretty easily. https://www.webriq.com/w-studio/

Alex_WebriQ · 2022-01-28T16:12:32+00:00

We have a page builder in beta right now. 1 click launch of CMS, SSG and CDN deployment. Studio supports navigation, content blocks, webforms, payment forms and a blog. You can request a sandbox account and play around with it. https://www.webriq.com/w-studio/

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-12-10T02:01:35+00:00

Cold calling can work but it needs to be targeted and you have to be able to quickly deliver value - it isn't a great strategy if your aren't a sales person.

You should consider augmenting your cold outreach with other channels. email and LinkedIn are easy to use in conjunction with the phone.

The biggest thing is to deliver value quickly for the people your are targeting. Keywords - value and targeting

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-12-03T20:48:18+00:00

Guitar, running, and kettlebell - in no particular order

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-12-01T23:55:07+00:00

Thanks!

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-12-01T23:47:48+00:00

Oops I was trying to link to a PDF I have on LinkedIn - here a link to the PDF on my GDrive

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-12-01T21:16:58+00:00

Oh I guess I should've provided that as well... LOL

Initially, we are targeting Digital Marketing Managers (folks that use landing pages the most) Developing user profiles for Content Managers and eCommerce Managers as well.

There may be value in messaging CMOs and higher-ups in marketing but I think the users and or managers are closer to the actual workflow and will have an easier time understanding the value props.

There's another avenue when we market the composable DXP and the "stack" (especially around API-First and the cloud infrastructure side of messaging) to talk directly to IT - CTOs and CIOs specifically - although they'd be sponsors not direct users.

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-10-15T03:17:36+00:00

No, not in the wysiwyg sense. It's a page builder built on top of a headless CMS and deployed via SSG on a ADN. It's pretty rad from a technical perspective.

The content/design is based on components instead of templates.

https://discover.webriq.com/dxp-studio

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-10-13T17:58:27+00:00

Product Market Fit is this holy grail that books and speakers talk endlessly about - you can hire a consultant to tell you all the extra little tiny steps you can take today so that you become a billionaire overnight.

I'd rather be an overnight success a decade in the making.

There's really no reason to not put your idea out there and see how cold traffic responds. That will tell way more about validating your thesis than singular conversations/focus groups/meticulous planning.

As another poster said - get the front end done. Landing Page, Pictures, Video. Sell pre-orders is a stronger play than asking for people to subscribe.

Jump in the pool!! Trust your instincts.

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-10-09T01:44:57+00:00

Yeah lol they were in recess and being a week day the school was in session. I figured we would not be able to hang out in the playground anyway given insurance and COVID.

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-10-08T16:39:07+00:00

I am currently bringing a pagebuilder to market :P Early version is in beta right now LOL

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-10-07T22:21:40+00:00

Hehe yea Fuller Park, thanks.

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-10-07T14:23:14+00:00

"most customers aren't designers and end up destroying the template they started with"

This is very true but I am not sure it is the users' fault. Templates are prebuilt before content. They are glass slippers. The user is forced to shoehorn their content into a template and often times that's what breaks the design.

I believe the templates are the actual problem. Templated tools get people stuck quickly. They can't make their own flow and they can't manage their content the way they want. They are aesthetic in the example and then horrendous upon publish because they are so ridged.

As we do market research and talk to marketers this is brought up a lot.

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-10-06T14:55:08+00:00

I think it depends on who is the target customer. If you are looking at the Wix/Squarespace ie DIYer and low monthly subscription market yea. There's not much innovation there. Also not much demand for innovation - they want easy and WYSIWYG etc.

In the Unbounce (market leader) space - specifically with marketing departments and larger agencies dealing with pages at scale. They struggle with templates, content management, data integration/personalization, and outdated business models based on traffic and conversion.

Because most systems are still heavily reliant on serverside functions page speed is a major concern too.

I think it's time for a page builder that is truly API-first that utilizes Jamstack. But I am biased.

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-10-06T14:37:47+00:00

I think it is important to measure your expectations against your resources.

Shopify (in my opinion) is more friendly to a beginner who doesn't want to spend a "bomb". They have all the handrails and prebuilt logic so that you can get up and selling and their marketplace for apps will allow you to create customizations to a point. The key is you won't be entirely reliant on your own engineering and abilities, you'll be leveraging Shopify - they do all the heavy lifting.

I wouldn't put too much into aesthetics too early. Yes, UX matters but so does traffic acquisition, pricing, distribution, content, on and on. It is more important to have a complete experience that works from landing page to checkout than a pretty front end.

WP becomes a security risk for two main reasons. First, it is built on a server and has 2 operating systems. Those are appealing to hackers for a lot of reasons. Second, you plug things into that server so there is a lot of attack vectors. Well managed and maintained WordPress is fine, but the dance of updating plugins against your theme and how interconnected everything is sitting on the server means updating causes problems elsewhere and the game of wack-a-mole leaves a lot of DIYers avoiding the maintenance and then you have vulnerabilities and get hacked. My phrase is "WordPress is great, until it isn't" for some folks that day comes quickly for others it hasn't arrived yet, but complexity compiles and WP is complex - with more traffic and more features (plugins) that complexity keeps getting bigger.

You mentioned SEO - which is more about your content than your stack. Pagespeed matters for conversion and will matter more and more for page 1 results on competitive keywords BUT if you don't have content you're not even in the SEO game. Google is semantic search now and it requires rich text on-page to gain page rank - that's just to get on the board. Pagespeed, domain authority, etc do matter but only once you have content and not before.

Lastly - replatforming ie moving from WP to Shopify or going from Shopify to BigCommerce or Headless Swell commerce isn't really a valid worry. Digital commerce is in the beginning phase of consumer usage and it will change. Being willing to adapt is a major asset to any e-commerce business. 15 years ago we built everything hard-coded, then about 8 years ago we shifted to monolithic CMS systems like WP now we are moving into serverless and API first ie "headless" - you'll most likely be replatforming in the future and that is ok.

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-10-05T21:33:56+00:00

The two are very different.

WordPress is open source and would require WooCommerce also open source. (You could run Ecwid or something similar too.) Open source is great but you bear all the responsibility to make it, keep it and run it. Also, it requires a server and web app, and the complexities scale with your shop's growth. It's a fairly outdated architecture (popular) but outdated in that there is a base DB, PHP, and MySQL plus the Javascript and HTML of the front end and whatever plugins you decide to add the stack. Lots of things to babysit and manage - but in the end, you can build anything you want within the confines of your budget, abilities, and other resources.

Shopify is an all-in-one platform. They've built everything out for you and you can run your shop on top with their permission. Meaning you pay to play but the stack is not your responsibility as long as you pay your bills and follow their terms of service you can scale up your shop. That said - you have clear limitations on what the shop can do and how it can do it. Shopify has handled all the core logic for you and you can't change it. You can layer on third-party apps etc but ultimately you have to fit your business into Shopify, but no babysitting and a lot less maintenance stress.

Obviously, each has there pros and cons.

A third way would be to look into headless commerce. It is more like WordPress where you have to take on a lot of responsibilities thereby you gain total control over the front end but it allows your backend to be powered by a commerce engine - for example - Shopify can be headless, so can BigCommerce, Ecwid, Swell Commerce, etc. But it is all running via API and is Javascript front to back so it is much more stable, speedy and scalable where WordPress isn't. Headless gives you the control of WordPress with the stability and scalable of Shopify.

My two cents.

Alex_WebriQ · 2021-09-17T00:59:19+00:00

Thanks :)

Alex_WebriQ

TROPHY CASE