Culture is now everything. The ability to maintain a meaningful differentiator is shrinking fast. With LLMs leveling the playing field across expertise and workflows. Finance, legal and SaaS are facing a major shift in how they operate, retain and grow their client base. For potentially the first time in history, all three industries will need to put culture front and centre—not as a marketing function, but as a core operating principle.
The rapid iterations of AI will not slow down. Claude specifically is already threatening the SaaS world with extinction. Will we even need apps in the near future when Claude can run nearly all of these tasks for you with agents? What differentiates funds, banking, legal expertise and PE when analysis, expertise and data becomes cheap to come by?
Every business now has to become a media company. With Google and Meta losing traction in the traffic space, it won't be long before LLMs are the primary driver of traffic, conversion and client acquisition. Media is the only differentiating factor in being noticed, referenced and surfaced to customers by LLMs.
It was thought that legal services would be the last to fall to AI—the need for accuracy, the hallucinations, the cases cited that never existed. But history repeats itself. Wikipedia was scoffed at as a reference point. "It's not a book!" they used to cry. Now Wikipedia is one of the most trusted sources in a world of AI slop and fake news. Give it time. The LLMs will catch up. They won't hallucinate. They will be more accurate than your associate, more accurate than most analysts at your fund. At that point, media, brand, creative and culture are all that matter.
LLMs will be more accurate than your associate, more accurate than most analysts at your fund. At that point, media, brand, creative and culture are all that matter.
For years SaaS marketers relied on ABM, LinkedIn and practices that most creative marketers scoffed at. That is rapidly changing. Harvey, the legal AI platform, recently hired actor Gabriel Macht in a Harvey Specter campaign. Legora quickly followed suit—hiring Jude Law—both going head to head on brand, knowing that their research, drafting and review technology isn't differentiated enough for a firm to choose between.
JP Morgan Chase hired Leanne Fremar, ex-Director of Digital Strategy at Polo Ralph Lauren and VP of Global Brand at Theory, as Chief Brand Officer to lead Sapphire Reserve and make it an Amex Platinum killer. It's working. Leanne is proof that culture is now the differentiator in finance and legal services — building client acquisition and loyalty that traditional methods can only dream of.
CFOs mandating platforms across entire firms aren't choosing on features anymore—they're choosing on trust, and which brand feels like it belongs in their world.
CFOs mandating platforms across entire firms aren't choosing on features anymore—they're choosing on trust, familiarity, and which brand feels like it belongs in their world.
This is what product-culture fit looks like. Tech companies are realising that product-market fit just isn't enough in this new age.
Only one thing is for sure: Taste is the new moat.
