Quicksand Evaluations
Company-by-company analysis of software products being aged out by AI workflows. Which tools are sinking, which are adapting, and what the pattern reveals.
Airtable: A Quicksand Evaluation
Airtable’s sweet spot—flexible databases for semi-technical users—is being eliminated as AI bridges both directions.
Asana: A Quicksand Evaluation
Do small teams adopt Asana when they hit 20-30 people, or do they scale with lightweight tools because AI kept coordination needs lower than previous generations?
Canva: A Quicksand Evaluation
Is Canva’s aggressive AI integration enough to escape quicksand, or are they just making their existing editor faster while AI generation eliminates the need for editors entirely?
Figma: A Quicksand Evaluation
Figma disrupted Sketch by making design collaboration seamless. But they’re being disrupted by a more fundamental shift—the elimination of design as a separate phase.
HubSpot: A Quicksand Evaluation
HubSpot’s core product philosophy was established 14-16 years before AI changed how businesses generate and nurture leads. So where does that leave them today?
Loom: A Quicksand Evaluation
Will people trade the direct connection of video for delegated execution to AI?
Mailchimp: A Quicksand Evaluation
Being a generalist in a fragmenting market, for a channel that’s declining in relative importance, is a difficult position.
Miro: A Quicksand Evaluation
They won by being the remote whiteboard. They’re losing because remote work + AI means you don’t need a whiteboard at all.
Slack: A Quicksand Evaluation
Slack isn’t losing customers. But they might not gain the next generation.
Webflow: A Quicksand Evaluation
Webflow succeeded by democratizing web design—making it accessible to designers who couldn’t code. Now they’re being disrupted by making it accessible to anyone who can describe what they want.
Zapier: A Quicksand Evaluation
Zapier’s success was based on removing abstraction layers (no more coding required), and now they’re being disrupted by the same force (no more workflow design required).