Do not sell the need; answer a question somebody already has to answer, with a deadline

There are two groups, the people who see how fast agents are moving and the much larger group who do not, and the second group will not ask for an agent risk tool because they do not see the risk. The way in is a question somebody already has, with a deadline, in the language of the room: a contract, where legal and procurement ask what a vendor's agent will do with the data; a security questionnaire, where a startup's first serious enterprise customer asks which agents touch their data and how they are bounded; an insurance renewal, where the question is whether AI is excluded from cover; the board's risk appetite; and twenty minutes with the assistant you already run. None of these asks anyone to understand agents first.

Decided by. Nobody yet: a candidate for Dinis to read, comment on and decide (keep, rewrite, merge, cut, article first, later, not doing it).

Note. A founder is on both sides: as the seller, and as the startup that, in the article's words, will be diligenced on its agents before long. The insurance argument is RiskMandate's, summarised from its pages, not independently surveyed.

Where it comes from

What can your agent reach? RiskMandate and the Agent Behaviour Policy, explained for the person who has to decide How does it get into the room? (newsroom)

What it answers in the 2018 book

none named

Where it goes

Chapter Sell, part Start the company (drafting); topic Be a founder (or a one-person service).

Other ideas proposed for the same chapter: Send an agent, not a spreadsheet: due diligence derived from the code, not composed by the vendor, A startup should double down on understandability: less code, the same tools, and it can be checked and pass, Selling a service: each step small enough to say yes to, and each ends with something they keep, The market is crowded at the top and thin on evidence: sell the record the client keeps, A service only scales with people: a curated marketplace of consultants, joined by proof of work, The reason to move is never sovereignty or cost: sell value that lands the day they switch, Answer the hard questions in full, publish what is live and what is design, and check your own site against the answers.

Node idea:answer-the-question-already-in-the-room in graph.json; see it in the graph. Source: admin/content/graph/ideas.json.