The Vertical AI Playbook: Yanolja's Strategy for Industry Dominance

18/07/2025 31 min

Listen "The Vertical AI Playbook: Yanolja's Strategy for Industry Dominance"

Episode Synopsis

We discuss the vertical AI strategy for market dominance, contrasting it with general-purpose "horizontal" AI. It presents a three-stage playbook exemplified by South Korean travel-tech company Yanolja: first, workflow replacement to capture proprietary data; second, establishing platform lock-in by standardizing that data, making AI models swappable but the data network indispensable; and third, activating a self-reinforcing data flywheel through intelligent, autonomous agents. The strategy is compared with Palantir Technologies, highlighting similar foundational approaches in workflow integration and data structuring but diverging philosophies on data monetization. Ultimately, the text argues that enduring competitive advantage in AI will belong to companies that build comprehensive, industry-specific data "bodies" rather than just relying on generic AI "brains."