Remember the Amazon FBA boom? When all you needed was an Alibaba find, a seller account and a dream? Between 2012 and 2020, thousands of entrepreneurs built entire businesses inside Amazon’s walls. And for a while, it was a gold rush. But like all gold rushes, the music eventually stopped. Costs went up, competition flooded in, and only a select few brands broke free.

Today, we’re standing at the edge of a similar moment — this time, powered by AI marketplaces. Imagine AI agents that don’t just recommend products, but handle the entire transaction right inside the conversation. The opportunity is huge… but the window will be even shorter.

In this episode, I unpack the striking parallels between Amazon’s FBA era and the coming wave of AI-powered commerce, explore what AI-native brands might look like, and explain why the gold rush could be over in months, not years.

This episode is sponsored by Connected Commerce at Acosta Group

Timeline

[00:00] – Looking back at the Amazon FBA boom and how it created a new business model for entrepreneurial suburbanites.
[02:13] – The simplicity and early profitability of FBA for first movers.
[04:02] – The predictable shift from organic discovery to pay-to-play on Amazon.
[05:23] – How AI marketplaces could compress the same cycle into months.
[07:14] – The rise of AI-native brands and how small teams could scale to $100M+.
[09:15] – The risk of losing control over customer relationships in an AI-driven shopping world.
[10:12] – Why the AI marketplace gold rush will close much faster than Amazon’s.

Links & Resources

Marketplace Pulse article Amazon Takes a 50% Cut of Sellers' Revenue
Retail Media Breakfast Club article Mary Meeker Is So Back: My Notes From Her 340-Page AI Futurecast
Karl Haller episode of Retailgentic podcast The AI-Native Brand Revolution: A Conversation with IBM’s Karl Haller
Follow Karl Haller on LinkedIn
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The Coming AI Marketplace Gold Rush

Retail Media Breakfast Club