# Agents should answer to users, not advertisers Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/agents-should-answer-to-users-not-advertisers/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy. - Speaker: [Jean-Denis Greze](https://realalpha.app/builders/jean-denis-greze/) · Jean-Denis Greze is founder and CEO of Town. · Led Plaid’s EPD from $10M to $300M+ in ARR, then co-founded Town, an AI assistant for everyday work. - Host: [Erik Torenberg](https://realalpha.app/people/erik-torenberg/) · General partner, Andreessen Horowitz · Helped build Product Hunt; founded On Deck, Village Global and Turpentine. - Show: a16z Podcast - Episode: [Why a $1M Startup Wasn’t Worth Building in the Age of AI](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/), Oct 19, 2026 - Moment: 52:29 to 59:33 of the episode (7 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/agents-should-answer-to-users-not-advertisers/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3149 ## Quote > “The only source of money for the agent is **your wallet as the user**.” > — [Jean-Denis Greze](https://realalpha.app/builders/jean-denis-greze/) at [54:47](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3287) · a16z Podcast ## Takeaways 1. User-funded agents have less incentive to steer recommendations. 2. Some shopping friction and ads remain useful for discovery. 3. Amazon may need its own agent rather than blocking others. ## About this segment Jean-Denis Greze argues that agents should be funded by users, though ads may still help with discovery when people want them. He sees Amazon's ad business at risk if it blocks agents instead of building one. From “Why a $1M Startup Wasn’t Worth Building in the Age of AI”, Oct 19, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/) ## Transcript Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there. [52:36](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3156) has vastly surpassed human traffic. So that's kind of point one. And then the other thing that's been in the news a lot is about this kind of adversarial versus call it maybe synergistic approach to agents, kind of this new generation of agents, not agents as in like, you know, ChatGPT is, you know, just searching something on the internet, but actually doing proactively things on your behalf. So like Amazon has obviously adopted a somewhat adversarial approach, which makes sense because they're an advertising company. [53:01](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3181) And like there was this covenant that existed on the internet for a long time. I go to Yahoo Finance to look up a stock quote. Yahoo pays money to go get a feed of stock quotes from the NASDAQ or something. But my eyeballs then hit an E-Trade ad. And the covenant is like, I, Yahoo, give you, Alex, free stock quote if you give me your eyeball. And that covenant has been broken. So people that have kind of hit that broken covenant are adversarial, but it feels like there's a big opportunity to be synergistic. [53:31](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3211) It's like, wow, it's like the new SEO. If I can be on the receiving end of agent traffic and not block it, not figure out how do I stop this, but how do I welcome it? it seems like a massive opportunity on the other side there too. Yeah, I mean, you know, Amazon's loss should be Walmart's gain. Yeah. I mean, Walmart, they don't have the advertising business. And so, you know, their incentives are going to be different. [53:57](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3237) And I think some, I mean, to your point, distribution has changed. I think the part that's interesting about the agent, by the way, is how does distribution change if you no longer trust your agent themselves not being interested in things? is like a little bit of an interesting question mark. So say you use the Meta agent and Meta has large advertisers and then you ask it and say like United Airlines advertises a lot more on Meta than nobody airlines. [54:27](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3267) And then you ask it to do a flight. What happens if you feel like it's no longer giving you the neutral thing? Because this is the thing is there's always a, there's still human incentives to promote products and marketing. And so what does that look like in the world where you, the human's eyeballs, are no longer looking at things? It's a very open question. I'm a firm believer in the, you want a neutral agent that is yours. [54:53](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3293) The only source of money for the agent is your wallet as the user. And then whoever is creating that agent, their incentive is to give you the best information for you as a human with no distortion in terms of the great forces of marketing. And then you as a human, you have taste and you express your taste as you make the choices that you do. And you can ask your agent like, hey, what are people talking about on Instagram? [55:20](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3320) Or like what's being advertised on it? You can ask that question because there you want to be flavored by the world of advertising and marketing. But again, you want your agent to be neutral vis-a-vis that. You talk about adversarial versus not. I think the other thing that is interesting to me conceptually are like experiences, like friction that you enjoy as a human, but that friction that you don't. [55:42](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3342) So me walking around Soho and New York City shopping, it's friction that I enjoy. I like that I have to walk between stores. I like that there are other humans waiting in line because I can copy their styles. I like the friction. It's a part of that shopping that is enjoyable. I like doing it. Then there's friction that I don't enjoy. I want to like order toilet paper at home. I don't, I'm not, you know what I mean? [56:04](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3364) I just want the same toilet paper that I've been ordering for a while. Like just get it in there as quickly as possible. Like, and as cheaply as possible. And so I think sometimes when we think about agents too much, we think too much about reducing friction and toil and making things as efficient as possible. But humans don't always optimize, you know, for efficiency. And so, you know, the Amazon example for me on the ad is like, actually, I think there's times when I'm on Amazon, like when I'm buying Legos for my kids, where I do want ads of other construction, like toys for my son. [56:39](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3399) Because I may realize one, it's not Lego branded, and I don't know about it, and it's interesting. And then I want to ask my agent for some reviews of it, and I'm like, that's interesting. Is it popular with the kids, and maybe I want to buy it? And in that experience, I think Amazon can make a ton of money, and there will still be value for places that are aggregates of supply with advertising and marketing. [57:01](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3421) But I think there's a lot of times where you optimize for friction where you don't want that stuff. So if I were Amazon and I had the $80 billion or whatever $70 billion a year advertising business, the question that I would ask is like, hey, I don't think you want to block agents because I think that is, I think they may be a bigger than Amazon company, like a headless Amazon could be a huge business, right? [57:23](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3443) But I think it puts more pressure on them to create a separate experience where you do want the ads and that's really good. and making that worthwhile to go on on its own. And I think I would still go to Amazon for those things at the end of the day. But AI is moving so fast that it's going to change distribution and human habits at a rate where I don't think anyone can predict what the winning platforms will be in those spaces. [57:48](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3468) And there's going to be huge losers, right? And Amazon might lose a huge chunk of their advertising business trying to fight the future because they can't predict what it would look like without. like the other one essentially is Muse for me I don't know if you've seen the discussion around Muse it's like free okay cool it's free personal agent cool people are like well one day they're going to have to put ads in Muse but actually maybe they never have to put ads in Muse maybe Muse just gives them data that allows to target you better on Instagram and when you go to Instagram you're on Instagram because you don't want efficiency if you're on Instagram you want to be entertained right and if they can target better on Instagram because of the information from Muse and Muse is still free. [58:29](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3509) And on Instagram, now when you see the good that you like, they can also get you to pay for it using a wallet that they've accumulated on you from Muse or Muse can look online for different variants of the thing. It's like a really nice flywheel. And what it means is that you've divorced the monetization from the agent experience for this personal use case. And that's where a property like Amazon is at a disadvantage, I think, is it might be with agents. [58:58](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3538) Like you can't, having just been the aggregator of supply just may not be a good business model in the world of agents. It just may no longer be. And so there's really not much they can do about it. They're going to lose. And probably the counter move for them, honestly, is they should have a personal agent. Yeah. They should have a muse. Like that's actually the counter move for them. It's not to block muse, it's to have a muse. [59:21](https://realalpha.app/v/o_5f4N6Nq80/?t=3561) Have a better muse. A better muse and have the exclusive on shopping for that and hope that's enough of an incentive and put it part of Prime.