We live in the world of AI-slop-induced supersaturation.
What is supersaturation?
On January 6, 2014, Mark Schaefer published his groundbreaking article, “Content Shock.”
The key line from the article:
“Depending on what study you read, the amount of available web-based content (the supply) is doubling every 9 to 24 months. Unimaginable, really. However, our ability to consume that content (the demand) is finite.”
If only Mark knew what was going to happen on November 30, 2022, the date ChatGPT launched.
That content shock became supersaturation: not only has content exploded, but trust has taken a precipitous dive because of AI.
A 2026 Fractl study said that AI distrust doubled from 20% in 2025 to 40% in 2026, with Gen Z as high as 54%.
And Sociality’s 2026 “AI in Social Media” report said:
“The central paradox of AI in social media in 2026: 89.7% of social media marketers use AI at least several times a week. Simultaneously, 50% of Gen Z have unfollowed, muted, or blocked accounts because they think the content is AI-generated per Sprout Social’s Q1 2026 Pulse Survey. 88% of consumers say AI video tools have decreased their trust in social media news.”
The current super-saturation has had a devastating impact on the performance of experienced marketing teams and startup founders.
If you read subreddits, like r/b2bmarketing, r/startups, and r/agency, the conversations seem to be all about how difficult marketing is now, and how marketing has stopped working the way it used to.
One small business owner on Reddit said: “Feels like a lot of traditional channels are getting saturated - cold emails, ads, even LinkedIn outreach.”
A marketer at a B2B tech company said: “Why does managing B2B marketing across multiple tools feel like a second full-time job?”
And this one hit home for me:
“I’ve been noticing something interesting in b2b over the last year. A lot of strategies that used to work consistently are becoming less reliable.
Cold email still works… but response rates are lower. LinkedIn content still drives reach… but engagement feels inconsistent. SEO still brings traffic… but not always qualified leads like before.
It’s not that these channels stopped working completely. They just don’t work the same way anymore.”
Brutal.
What’s a marketer, founder, or business owner to do?
Let’s diagnose the problem.
Yes, the problem is the AI-induced super-saturation of marketing channels, as I explained above.
But the underlying problem is an error startups have been perpetuating for years, and it has only now reared its ugly head: startups have done nothing to differentiate themselves.
Startups, in particular, rely on growth marketing tactics: cold outbound (DMs, cold email), ads, social media, content marketing, newsletters, and more, and only later, almost as an afterthought, do they think about differentiating themselves.
The problem was always there, but B2B firms found ways to push through it.
Sending more outbound emails. Sending daily newsletters instead of weekly newsletters. Posting on Twitter three times a day instead of once. Spending more on ads.
SSU Studio, a boutique marketing agency, described it perfectly:
“Early-stage, you need a site fast. You look at what the category leaders look like. You reference a few shots. You pick a template that “looks legit” and move on to actually building the product. That decision feels rational at the moment.
Then you raise a round. The investor says the site looks fine, focus on GTM. So you do.
Then you hire your first marketer. They look at what the category leaders are doing. They optimize what exists instead of questioning whether the foundation is right. The patterns calcify.
By the time you are at $5M ARR and the brand is actively hurting your sales process, unwinding it feels expensive and risky. So you keep going.
The bland B2B SaaS brand is not a design failure. It is a prioritization failure that compounds over time.”
Did you notice the most damning line?
“Then you raise a round. The investor says the site looks fine, focus on GTM. So you do.”
Focus on GTM, differentiation be damned.
The AI-induced supersaturation has just compounded this lack of differentiation.
Your differentiation comes from inside you
The solution? I’m not going to give you the usual pablum everybody seems to be repeating everywhere: make your marketing “more human.”
Yes, it should be more human, but it should be human with a purpose.
In my upcoming book, Unopposed: Design a Personal Category Only You Can Own, I argue that founders should become the face of their startups - but they need to do this in a very particular way: they need to be known for One Unforgettable Idea.
What is The One Unforgettable Idea?
It is the single idea a founder owns so completely that they stop being compared and become their own category. It comes out of them rather than from an agency; it was there from the beginning, and everything their company is known for grows out of it.
The key to creating your One Unforgettable Idea is to find it within you: in your unconscious expertise. In the things you do so well it becomes instinct.
How to find your zone of genius
I’ve developed a method for uncovering that secret method, framework, or process you’ve developed over years and years as a professional, that you’re not consciously aware of.
I call it the Founder Excavation, and I lay out the method right here.
Informed by the field of cognitive psychology - a method called Applied Cognitive Task Analysis - or ACTA - the method identifies your zone of genius that you aren’t even aware you have.
But there is a problem
ACTA was designed to reveal how professionals perform a task. When applied to founders, it can only really apply to founders of services companies, like custom software development firms, accountants, management consultants, marketing agencies, solopreneurs.
But what if you’re the founder of a product company? What if the thing you deliver has value independent of you - the founder?
The process breaks down in that case.
But I came up with a solution.
There are three additional ways to differentiate yourself with your hidden zone of genius that have nothing to do with how you deliver a service.
Four places to dig for your hidden genius to cut through the supersaturation
Before I get into the four ways, let’s go over the questions.
The purpose of questions is to unveil knowledge you have deep in your bones, that you’re not consciously aware of.
Somebody - a colleague, an employee, even AI - shouldn’t come right out and ask you, “Tell me how you’re different.”
You’ll make something up!
However, these 14 questions should get to those lower layers of your consciousness to surface the wisdom you consider “instinct.”
The 14 questions of the excavation
These are the actual questions the applied cognitive task analysis discipline prescribes. They apply to the difficult work a professional performs by instinct:
Task Diagram Interview Questions
Goal: Get a macro-overview of the task, break it into steps, and identify which steps are cognitively difficult.
Step breakdown: “Can you walk me through the main steps of this task from start to finish?”
Identifying difficulty: “Which of these steps are the hardest or require the most judgment?”
Novice vs. expert gap: “Where do beginners or trainees usually struggle, make mistakes, or get stuck?”
Time and triggers: “What event or trigger signals that this task needs to begin, and how do you know when it is successfully finished?”
Knowledge Audit Interview Questions
Goal: Survey the expert’s toolkit and extract concrete examples of how they handle specific cognitive challenges.
Past incidents & cues: “Can you describe a time when you had to notice a subtle cue or warning sign that others might have missed? What was the cue?”
Perceptual skill: “What patterns, anomalies, or red flags do you look for that tell you something is going wrong?”
Procedure vs. improvisation: “When standard procedures don’t apply, how do you adapt or improvise?”
Costly errors: “What is a classic or dangerous mistake a novice might make here, and how do you prevent it?”
Mental models: “What critical piece of background knowledge or mental model do you rely on to make sense of a confusing situation?”
Simulation Interview Questions
Goal: Probe real-time decision-making, trade-offs, and strategies inside a high-stakes or complex scenario.
Scenario setup: “Imagine you are dealing with [insert a difficult, realistic scenario]. Walk me through what is going through your head right now.”
Prioritization: “You have multiple competing demands and limited time/resources. What do you address first, and what do you let slide? Why?”
Hypothesis generation: “When this key metric or indicator drops unexpectedly, what are the first two or three hypotheses you test?”
Uncertainty & incomplete data: “You don’t have all the information you need. What assumptions are you making, and how do you act safely with partial data?”
Recovery / Pivot: “Your first approach just failed. How do you re-frame the problem and pivot your strategy?”
Let’s apply these questions to the four founder scenarios
A services provider founder
If your company performs a service, like custom software development, marketing services, management consulting, or anything where a service is performed, use the 14 questions exactly as I laid out here.
A product founder with the product is the focus
Founders often overlook certain features inherent in the product. Use the following questions to get at the relevant differentiating feature:
What’s a feature you consider obvious that customers are surprised or excited to discover?
What happened that convinced you to build it that way?
What did you notice about the customer’s problem that existing products weren’t addressing?
If you removed that feature or capability, what would become harder for the customer?
A product founder with the sales process is the focus
Paul Graham, the famous Silicon Valley venture capitalist and startup philosopher, says founders should do the hard work of making the first sales.
The founder knows how to sell, and that knowledge could uncover gold:
Tell me about a sales conversation where you realized the customer was asking for the wrong solution. What tipped you off?
What question do you ask that reveals something important the customer hadn’t considered?
Think of a prospect who initially didn’t see the value. What helped them understand it?
When do you recognize that your product is the wrong fit, even though the prospect wants to buy?
A product founder where the founder’s worldview is the focus
When everything can be copied tomorrow by AI, or by a smart engineer in Shenzhen or Bengaluru, the only differentiator left is the founder’s world view, and the community you can attract because of that:
What does your industry accept as normal that you find absurd?
What experience led you to question that?
Tell me about a product decision you insisted on even when others disagreed. Why did it matter so much to you?
Where can a customer see or experience that belief in what your company actually delivers?
Let me tell you something: these questions work!
I just conducted an interview with the founder of a marketing agency, and he just let loose. I collected about 10,000 words worth of deep, detailed information about his process, stories of client scenarios, what he noticed that amateurs would get wrong.
Your next task is to turn these answers into a category you can own, and create your One Unforgettable Idea.
More on that next week!