We Planted a Flag Before the Category Had a Name

In 1997 I co-founded a company called PriceSCAN.

The premise was simple. Who would buy anything without being able to do instant price comparison?

But in 1997 that capability didn't exist. You couldn't comparison shop across retailers in real time. You had to visit stores, make phone calls, clip newspaper ads.

We built the infrastructure to change that. Structured product data, real-time price feeds, a consumer decision engine before anyone called it that.

We planted a flag before the category had a name.

A few years later Google defined search. They used that position to systematically eliminate independent comparison shopping engines, offering free placement to retailers until the competition was gone, then charging for it. The EU sued them over it. The category we helped create was absorbed by the dominant platform.

I've watched this same sequence repeat across every technology wave since.

A capability emerges that changes how people make decisions. Early movers build around it before the consensus forms. The window closes. The early architecture compounds into durable advantage.

The organizations that move before the wave peaks don't just get there first. The rules are different early. Access that exists now won't exist later. Some advantages can't be acquired at any price once the window closes.

AI is the same wave. Different capability. Same pattern.

We are early. Not at the beginning, but early enough that the architecture decisions being made right now will determine who compounds the advantage and who pays to acquire it later.

The window is open. It won't stay that way.