Crowdbotics’ Long Game: Building a 10-Year Company in a 6-Month Hype Cycle

In today’s AI gold rush, most startups are racing to capitalize on the hype. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Anand Kulkarni from Crowdbotics revealed a different playbook: building for the decade ahead while still capturing immediate opportunities.

The Long View in a Short-Term Market

“You got to build a company that’s going to be relevant over ten years, not over the six months or twelve months that there is a dynamic hype cycle around language models,” Anand emphasizes. This perspective has shaped every aspect of Crowdbotics’ strategy.

Early Mover Without Early Hype

Though they were “one of the first commercial users of chat, GPT, excuse me, of GPT-3, on their API,” Crowdbotics didn’t lead with AI hype. Instead, they focused on fundamental value. “Were working on the same technology in the market two years ago, and people just didn’t believe us,” Anand recalls.

Building Beyond the Trend

Rather than creating another AI wrapper, Crowdbotics focused on systemic value. “Solutions that are in the market today, or that have jumped into the market lately, often think about a very narrow approach to software creation using artificial intelligence,” Anand observes. “To generate durable value here, you’ve got to have an approach that actually creates systemic value for the customer by doing something that is more than just what those tools are doing.”

The Modular Foundation

Their approach centered on practical, immediate value. “We are snapping together, recommending, selecting big building blocks of code into functional software,” Anand explains. This resonated with customers because it solved real problems, regardless of their belief in AI’s future.

Finding Sustainable Growth

The strategy has delivered impressive results. “For the last three years, we have doubled or tripled top line revenue every year. So 200% to 300% growth,” Anand shares. More importantly, this growth came from solving fundamental problems, not riding temporary trends.

The Enterprise Validation

Their focus on lasting value has attracted serious customers. “Some of these customers are building really enormous large scale products, things around instrumented hardware, connecting fleets, measuring large scale data across their entire organization, standing up large mission critical e commerce, retail or health systems,” Anand notes.

The Future Vision

Looking ahead, Crowdbotics isn’t just chasing the next trend. “Crowdbotics is a new way to create software,” Anand declares. “We are looking to create the next billion applications. Mission critical, meaningful, large scale applications on Crowdbotics.”

Key Lessons for Founders

For founders navigating hype cycles, Crowdbotics’ approach offers several insights:

1. Build for fundamental value beyond current trends
2. Focus on systemic solutions rather than point products
3. Let market validation come from serious use cases
4. Maintain growth through sustainable advantages
5. Think in decades, not quarters

The current AI boom validates their approach, but as Anand notes, success comes from “continuing to expand and multiply” on fundamental value creation, not chasing short-term hype.

For founders, the message is clear: in a world of six-month hype cycles, building for the long term isn’t just more sustainable – it’s often more profitable too.