Hung argues that with the cost of development now cheap and code easy to deploy, distribution, brand and image are what's fundamentally important. He points to Fireflies AI — founded by two students from MIT — which grew fast because of deep integrations into the tools enterprises already use.
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Companies, even tech companies, are resistant to changes: if they've been using a product that's really good — "like 9 out of 10" — it's hard to convince them to switch to "a 9 point 25 out of 10 product." So the lever is integration. Hung explains that Fireflies AI, a smart note taker selling B2B, knew enterprises already had their own CRM and communication tools, so they built deep integrations that let a user "just click one button and have their meeting data smoothly transition and float into their ecosystem." That's how they survived even though platforms like Google Meet and zoom could turn out the same feature — but don't have the integrations to go with all the different tools enterprises now use.