Question 1

How has online shopping changed over the past 25 years?

Accepted Answer

_Twenty-five years later, online shopping looks surprisingly familiar._

Surprisingly, e-commerce hasn't changed much in the last 25 years. If you compare Amazon in 1999 to Amazon today, the core structure is essentially the same. You still need to select a category, then a subcategory, and you better know what you want and where it fits. The 1999 version had long written lists. Today looks slicker with more images, but shopping is still complicated. Most of the time, subcategories let you filter by stars or price, but they don't really describe product dimensions. For those details, you still need to click into the product and read if you care. It's still a transactional act of buying.

— [AI in E-Commerce](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2024-10-03-ai-in-e-commerce/) · _The Keynote on AI_

Question 2

How has the shift from SEO to GEO changed what websites need to do for brands?

Accepted Answer

_Websites now feed AI rather than convert human visitors directly._

Websites used to be designed to convert human visitors, but now their main purpose needs to be feeding data into AI. The three-party model of searcher, Google, and end content is disintegrating into a two-party model. Decisions are getting made before consumers hit the website, so the website is no longer the main conversion point. Instead, websites should be clean data delivery mechanisms to computers, very explicit about who you sell to, your target use case, pain points, and the entire buyer journey. If it's not explicit, the AI has no way to know and might recommend somebody else.

— [Marketing to Humans Changed, with Alex Dees](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2026-03-24-marketing-to-humans-changed-with-alex-dees/) · _The Keynote on AI_

Question 3

How is AI changing e-commerce?

Accepted Answer

_Fine-tuned models, attribution, category death._

> To explore this question, I looked at one industry: e-commerce. In my online certificate programs, I've explored AI use cases across many industries such as healthcare, media, coffee, finance and e-commerce. While healthcare tends to be slowest to adopt AI, e-commerce consistently leads.

— [ShopTalk 2025: Just 1% Of Vendors Use Generative AI To The Max](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/03/21/state-of-genai--only-1---shoptalk-2025-in-numbers/) · _Forbes_

Question 4

How is the Amazon homepage dying?

Accepted Answer

_Retail unbundling, AI assistants as the new aisle._

> The days of big online retail as we know it are over. Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, and many others will all need to reinvent themselves as e-commerce changes. Once again, the homepage is dead. What will this mean for the big brands?

— [The End Of Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy? AI-Driven Retail Unbundling](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/30/the-end-of-amazon-walmart-best-buy---ai-driven-retail-unbundling/) · _Forbes_

Question 5

What advice do you have for someone considering building a fintech or launching in Africa?

Accepted Answer

_Hard lessons from exploring Africa and fintech opportunities_

For Africa, most successful businesses are traditional, non-tech businesses like furniture or services. Building something successful requires being hands-on, spending 10 years in the country, and building local relationships. It's really a lifestyle question. For fintech, the space has been extremely hot over the last four or five years. I think you either need to go very close to the rails, like payment rails and banking APIs, or do something very verticalized like payments for healthcare in Europe connecting insurance refunds. Otherwise it's super difficult to create something that works in fintech.

— [AI Products: Why ‘Good Enough’ Beats Perfect](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2024-11-14-ai-products-why-good-enough-beats-perfect/) · _The Edge_

Question 6

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Accepted Answer

_Why being discoverable to AI assistants is the new SEO._

> For brands a new playbook is emerging: AEO. AEO is just the beginning.

— [Study Shows LLM Conversion Rate Is 9x Better — AEO Is Coming](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/19/study-shows-llm-conversion-rate-is-9x-better---aeo-is-coming/) · _Forbes_

Question 7

What mistakes do brands make in AI-driven e-commerce?

Accepted Answer

_Common pitfalls and how to avoid them._

> And underneath it all, brands risk losing their narrative to an intermediary that now owns the customer touchpoint. Having spent years building fine-tuned AI models for online retail, I keep watching e-commerce executives respond to all of this by making the same three mistakes. Each one is avoidable, and each one is expensive.

— [Three Mistakes Brands Make In The Age Of AI-Driven E-Commerce](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2026/05/23/three-mistakes-brands-make-in-the-age-of-ai-driven-e-commerce/) · _Forbes_

Question 8

What problem does your e-commerce AI startup solve that existing technology cannot?

Accepted Answer

_Enabling conversation-based product discovery for e-commerce brands_

We built fine-tuned models to help e-commerce companies offer the right products at the right moment on their websites. For example, if you go to Cartier's website, you're now used to a chat-like interface from ChatGPT where you can say, I want a retirement watch. But what does a retirement watch look like? Should it be round, with leather? Today, Cartier can't handle that. The brand understanding specific to Cartier or any other brand is not necessarily baked into ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others. We created fine-tuned models to enable these conversational search experiences that understand specific brand contexts.

— [After the Gold Rush, with Kurt Wagner](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2025-10-21-after-the-gold-rush-with-kurt-wagner/) · _The Keynote on AI_

Question 9

What replaces SEO in the LLM era?

Accepted Answer

_Strategies for being discoverable to AI assistants._

> But based on research I conducted with Cornell Master's students, that shift is happening much faster. LLM-driven traffic is already starting to outperform traditional search — not in volume, but in value. Traffic from LLMs converts at nearly 9x higher rates than traditional search. This is the biggest disruption to search since the dawn of the internet.

— [Study Shows LLM Conversion Rate Is 9x Better — AEO Is Coming](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/19/study-shows-llm-conversion-rate-is-9x-better---aeo-is-coming/) · _Forbes_

Question 10

Why did you leave your healthcare company to start an AI e-commerce company?

Accepted Answer

_From healthcare prediction models to e-commerce AI startup founder_

I was president of a NASDAQ listed company in New York in the healthcare space, running product and technology for a third party administrator. We built predictive algorithms to reduce the burden of diseases for our members. I left to build a startup focused on fine-tuned large language models for e-commerce because I saw an opportunity. The technology behind it, transformer models, exists since 2017, but how everyone uses it creates new questions. I realized I could create value by knowing things the industry didn't know yet, specifically solving search and discovery problems in e-commerce with this new architecture better than anyone else.

— [After the Gold Rush, with Kurt Wagner](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2025-10-21-after-the-gold-rush-with-kurt-wagner/) · _The Keynote on AI_

Question 11

Why do LLMs convert better than search?

Accepted Answer

_Trust, personalization, and conversion lift from AI traffic._

> Some predict that by 2028, more people will discover products and information through large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Gemini than through traditional search engines. But based on research I conducted with Cornell Master's students, that shift is happening much faster. LLM-driven traffic is already starting to outperform traditional search — not in volume, but in value.

— [Study Shows LLM Conversion Rate Is 9x Better — AEO Is Coming](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/06/19/study-shows-llm-conversion-rate-is-9x-better---aeo-is-coming/) · _Forbes_

Question 12

Why do you say the website is dead, and what does that mean for brands?

Accepted Answer

_Websites lose traffic but gain higher intent visitors via agents._

It's hyperbolic. The website is not dead. The newspaper is not dead, the homepage is not dead. It's only reduced in importance. An agent can go look up websites, read those websites, do the research, compare it, create a metric for themselves to say what is the most explosive or most fruitiest and then give me back an answer. Your traffic goes down, but your revenue probably doesn't because you should see more high intent consumers. Consumers that used an agent to be informed and then they come to your website.

— [From Google to Cornell: Rethinking AI Workflows | Lutz Finger | Build AI Podcast 17](https://www.lutzfinger.com/transcript/2026-04-16-from-google-to-cornell-rethinking-ai-workflows-lutz-finger-build-ai-podcast-17/) · _Build AI_

Question 13

Why does e-commerce need fine-tuned AI?

Accepted Answer

_Why general-purpose LLMs aren't enough._

> To explore this question, I looked at one industry: e-commerce. In my online certificate programs, I've explored AI use cases across many industries such as healthcare, media, coffee, finance and e-commerce. While healthcare tends to be slowest to adopt AI, e-commerce consistently leads.

— [ShopTalk 2025: Just 1% Of Vendors Use Generative AI To The Max](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lutzfinger/2025/03/21/state-of-genai--only-1---shoptalk-2025-in-numbers/) · _Forbes_

Q&A, E-commerce

How has online shopping changed over the past 25 years?

How has the shift from SEO to GEO changed what websites need to do for brands?

How is AI changing e-commerce?

How is the Amazon homepage dying?

What advice do you have for someone considering building a fintech or launching in Africa?

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

What mistakes do brands make in AI-driven e-commerce?

What problem does your e-commerce AI startup solve that existing technology cannot?

What replaces SEO in the LLM era?

Why did you leave your healthcare company to start an AI e-commerce company?

Why do LLMs convert better than search?

Why do you say the website is dead, and what does that mean for brands?

Why does e-commerce need fine-tuned AI?