Is Your Product at Risk of AI Disruption?

The four risk vectors

Reforge's AI Disruption Risk framework evaluates four independent dimensions of exposure. High risk on any one factor is manageable. High risk on three or four is collapse exposure.

Use Case risk

Can the core task your product enables be done with a general-purpose AI tool? If yes, your product's core value depends on something that's now commoditized. Defensibility has to come from somewhere else — workflow integration, data, brand, network effects.

Growth Model risk

Does your acquisition depend on channels that AI is reshaping? SEO content sites face AI Overview compression. Paid social faces creative-cost collapse as AI lets every competitor produce 10x the variants. Affiliate and review sites face commoditization of the content they earn revenue from.

Defensibility risk

What makes you hard to replace? Honest assessment, not aspiration. Brand and integrations are defensible. UI on top of capability that's now consumer-grade is not.

Business Model risk

Does your monetization assume features that AI is making free? Per-seat subscription on a capability now available consumer-grade for free? Pay-per-document for analysis that ChatGPT can do at no marginal cost?

The strategic response

Reforge's prescription is uncomfortable but consistent: lean in. Build the AI-native version. Cannibalize yourself before competitors do. The companies that survive AI disruption are the ones that accept the displacement is happening and build the next thing actively — not the ones that defend the current state until the data proves them wrong.