Services-as-Software
An AI company selling the finished work itself instead of selling a tool to a professional. The distinction from Sequoia's Julien Bek (March 2026): a copilot sells the tool, an autopilot sells the work. Adapted from Bek's example: instead of selling software to an accounting firm, delivering the closed books.
AI and GrowthTerm 76 / 81
In practice
For a founder the real question is market size: which budget does your customer pay from, software or people and services? Bek writes that for every dollar spent on software, six are spent on services; an autopilot goes after the second budget. His other argument is about defensibility: sell the tool and you are racing the model; sell the work and every model improvement makes your service faster and cheaper. The price shows up in unit economics: whoever delivers the work also carries the operations and the liability for mistakes, and gross margin can look more like a services firm than a software company (our reading).