'I woke up today and Claude killed my startup': San Francisco founder after her product becomes obsolete

Ira Bodnar, founder of ad automation startup Ryze.ai, said a new feature released by Anthropic’s Claude and Manus significantly hurt her company’s growth, calling it a moment that “killed” her startup.

In an article on X (formerly Twitter), Bodnar said Ryze.ai had acquired several hundred paying clients within two months and was growing rapidly.

“I woke up today and Claude killed my startup. We got several hundred paying clients in 2 months, was growing like crazy,” Bodnar wrote.

However, after Claude and Manus introduced new connectors for Meta Ads, the company’s close rate dropped from 70% to 20%. Ryze.ai built an AI agent designed to automate ad management by integrating with Google and Meta ad accounts.

While Bodnar said Claude currently can only do analysis and cannot make changes in ad accounts or access Google Ads, she added that this could change in the coming months.

“Claude just made our entire product category obsolete,” she wrote, arguing that marketers may eventually rely directly on AI assistants to launch and manage ad campaigns.

Bodnar said the disruption signals a broader shift in go-to-market (GTM) technology. She predicted that traditional outreach automation tools could decline as AI agents handle outreach directly. She also said outreach infrastructure tools may struggle if agents begin buying domains and setting up campaigns on their own.

In addition, she argued that much of creative production could move inside platforms like Meta and Google, where ads may increasingly be generated automatically within ad accounts, especially for small businesses.

At the same time, she said some categories are likely to remain stable. Customer relationship management systems will continue to play a key role because AI models cannot store and own a company’s customer data.

She also said enterprise-level complex workflows, such as customer data platforms and engagement systems used by large brands, are likely to remain strong. Niche tools, including server-side tracking and similar infrastructure, could also survive. Bodnar also made broader predictions about how software may be discovered and sold.

Referring to model context protocols (MCP), she said AI assistants could choose one tool directly without users comparing options in a marketplace, similar to the iPhone App Store in 2008.

She further argued that AI has made building products almost free while making distribution harder than ever. As more companies launch quickly, standing out becomes more difficult. She warned that social platforms could become heavily flooded with AI-generated content boosted by bots, making brand, storytelling and trust more important than ever.

Bodnar also predicted the rise of ads inside large language models, calling it the next trillion-dollar channel. She said agent-driven commerce could push markets toward commodity pricing, as AI agents compare products based on specifications and value rather than brand. She also suggested that AI-to-AI sales may change enterprise buying processes, with agents reading documents, comparing pricing and making decisions without traditional demos.

Despite the setback, Bodnar said Ryze.ai had already begun pivoting. The startup is now focusing on complex workflow automation for large ad agencies managing hundreds of accounts, as well as offering AI-driven ad services to small and medium-sized businesses.

She said the broader opportunity in AI-driven distribution and marketing remains significant, even as standalone tools face pressure from rapidly evolving foundation models.