The 9 Stages of AI Agent Adoption, Explained

The gist

1. He describes an agent as a customer with a credit card and no eyes, working on a trust ladder of research, prepare and pay.
2. He argues companies block agents mainly because agents skip ads and upsells, like Amazon's sponsored products and airline seat upgrades, while building their own assistants.
3. Of his nine stages, he flags a Plaid-style trusted identity and payments layer, and the overlooked eighth stage, where ads return inside agent recommendations.
4. He suggests giving 10 real buying questions to two or three agents, checking bot protection, and listing price, delivery and returns in plain text.
5. His startup ideas include agent readiness services for one niche industry, a Plaid for one vertical, insurance for agent mistakes, and agent traffic analytics.