Ready to build your own Founder-Led Growth engine? Book a Strategy Call
Frontlines.io | Where B2B Founders Talk GTM.
Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
Target customers who have proven business models, not just potential:
Don's go-to-market strategy specifically targets AI agent companies that have raised Series A or later rounds. His reasoning: "Hopefully the VCs that are backing them have done some due diligence. And the money they're earning is actually real." Rather than chasing every potential customer, focus on those who have already validated their revenue model and can immediately benefit from your solution.
Understand the fundamental cost structure of your customer's business model:
Don identified that AI agents have an inverted cost model compared to traditional SaaS—most costs are operational (OpEx) rather than capital (CapEx). He explains: "The cost model is basically flipped. Most of your cost is actually on the opex... Your operating costs fluctuate based on the request." This insight shaped Nevermined's entire value proposition around cost monitoring and settlement rather than just payment processing.
Create category language early, even before market adoption:
Don coined "AI commerce" in 2023 when "people were like, what the hell's an AI agent?" His approach: "It always helps to categorize and provide language that's going to allow people to understand what it is that you're talking about... It's the memeification of the category." Don't wait for your market to mature—create the vocabulary that will define it.
Focus on the operational reality, not the theoretical use case:
While competitors focus on connecting bank accounts to AI agents for consumer purchases, Don focuses on the underlying workflow costs: "How much does the workflow cost to actually render that outcome?" Understanding the true operational mechanics of your customers' business—not just their surface-level needs—can create significant competitive differentiation.
Leverage deep domain expertise to identify non-obvious problems:
Don's 20 years in AI revealed that variable AI agent responses create variable operational costs—a problem most founders wouldn't recognize. He notes: "Until recently most people didn't realize that is a major issue in operating these solutions." Deep industry experience can help you spot problems that newer entrants miss entirely.
Conversation
Highlights
Building Payment Rails for AI Agents: Don Gossen’s Vision for AI Commerce
Don Gossen had been working in artificial intelligence for two decades when most people still considered AI agents science fiction. While others debated the possibilities, Don was already building the infrastructure for what he believed would be the next fundamental shift in commerce: trillions of AI agents functioning as both merchants and consumers.
In our recent episode of Category Visionaries, Don, the Founder and CEO of Nevermined, shared how he’s creating an entirely new category—AI commerce—by solving a problem most people haven’t yet recognized exists.
The Problem Hidden in Plain Sight
When your AI assistant orders you a $15 pizza, Don explains, “The true cost to you isn’t $15, it’s $15.20.” That extra twenty cents represents something revolutionary happening behind the scenes. “That’s 20 cents goes to paying, maybe your assistant agent, but definitely your agent paying this underlying subset of agents that are actually going to coordinate that workflow.”
This seemingly minor detail reveals the foundation of Don’s vision. AI agents won’t just serve as proxies for human actions—they’ll become independent economic actors that need to transact with each other at massive scale and velocity.
Don describes two emerging modalities of AI agents. The first is “agent as proxy”—the AI assistant everyone thinks about. But the second is where the real opportunity lies: “agent as independent economic actor.” These specialized agents handle specific tasks within larger workflows, and each needs compensation for their work.
“You know, I know where the Papa John’s endpoint is, I know what the price of pepperoni is, et cetera. Let’s bring it all together,” Don explains, describing how these specialized agents coordinate to deliver outcomes.
The Infrastructure Challenge
Current payment systems simply cannot handle what Don foresees coming. “Digital services being rendered by AI agents and transacting with massive volume, super high velocity, probably at very low value,” he explains. When he scenario-planned this future back to today’s infrastructure, the gaps became obvious.
“You take a pull of the infrastructure that exists very quickly, realize that to achieve scale and meet those objectives, you have to re envision some of the payment infrastructure that’s going to be required,” Don says.
This realization led him to focus on building payment rails specifically designed for agent-to-agent transactions—a problem space he was uniquely positioned to tackle after twenty years of building AI systems at scale.
Creating a Category Before the Market Knew It Needed One
Don coined the term “AI commerce” in 2023, at a time when “people were like, what the hell’s an AI agent? What are you talking about? Why did things actually need to pay one another?” The timing might have seemed premature, but Don understood the strategic value of category creation.
“I found historically this isn’t my first startup, it’s not my first go rodeo. It always helps to categorize and provide language that’s going to allow people to understand what it is that you’re talking about even, or at least start to grasp the concept,” he explains.
The term itself was deliberate: “It was tongue in cheek. It was a play on E commerce. Where do we take that this is an evolution, you know, historical digital transactions or digital based transactions. We’re removing humans from the loop and now having digital actors or silicon based actors instead of carbon based ones actually perform the transactions.”
A Go-to-Market Strategy Built on Proven Revenue
While many startups chase potential customers, Don’s approach is methodically focused on companies with validated business models. “Specifically we’re going after verticalized AI agent builders and those that have done at least a series A, if not B or c, hopefully the VCs that are backing them have done some due diligence. And the money they’re earning is actually real.”
This strategy targets companies like Artisan and 11x on the sales side, Maven and Olivia for customer success, and Harvey for legal applications. “So then we can help them commercialize their propositions and start to, you know, earn revenue ourselves,” Don explains.
Nevermined operates on a commission model, taking a one percent cut of agent-to-agent transactions. “Our go to market and our business model is predicated on a commission, right, Rent seeking. We take a 1% cut,” Don says. This aligns Nevermined’s success directly with their customers’ transaction volume.
Understanding the Economics of AI Agents
Don’s deep experience revealed a fundamental insight that shapes Nevermined’s entire value proposition: AI agents flip traditional SaaS economics. “The Valley loves SaaS because it’s zero cost of distribution. You got a ton of capex that goes into building the product. But once the product’s ready and you get product market fit, you know, it doesn’t cost very much to scale,” he explains.
“AI agents are completely different. Right. The cost model is basically flipped. Most of your cost is actually on the opex… Your operating costs fluctuate based on the request.”
He illustrates this with a concrete example: asking a San Francisco vertical agent about the weather costs almost nothing because the answer is cached. But asking it to create a personalized itinerary based on your preferences and schedule “costs a hell of a lot more than pulling the weather information for you.”
“Until recently most people didn’t realize that is a major issue in operating these solutions,” Don notes. This insight became central to Nevermined’s differentiation strategy.
Competing on Problem Definition, Not Features
While competitors focus on connecting bank accounts to AI agents, Don takes a fundamentally different approach. “Most of our competition is trying to figure out, how do I get access to a bank account and give money to this agent so it can pay for the pizza? And we’re saying, how much does the workflow cost to actually render that outcome of Brett receiving that pizza?”
This difference in problem definition stems from Don’s operational experience building AI systems. “Both me and my co founder come out of the same kind of place, right. Like we didn’t stay in academia and you know, theorize about how this stuff was going to come to fruition. We actually built the systems at large companies and understand how they’re built and how to support them.”
The focus on workflow costs rather than payment mechanics represents Nevermined’s core competitive advantage. They solve for cost monitoring and settlement—helping AI agent builders understand their variable operational expenses and translate those costs into settlements with users who, increasingly, will be other AI agents.
Navigating the AI Hype Cycle
Despite widespread concerns about an AI bubble, Don remains confident in the trajectory. “I do think we’re in a natural cycle for all of this,” he says. “Obviously something like AI comes out and there’s going to be a lot of hoopla or the type of capability… that’s going to lead to a lot of intrigue that’s going to lead to a lot of FOMO and investors that want to get in and ultimately a lot of disappointment.”
However, Don sees current infrastructure investments as validation rather than waste. “I think an alternative way to look at that is now the capital is being spent on infrastructure, right? Data center, build out, power plant, build out, et Cetera, that’s going to handle the scaling of these models and the training and some of the inference.”
His twenty-year perspective provides context others might lack. “These are complicated systems, not just to build, but to scale and industrialize. So what we’re going through now from a usage point of view is understanding and learning how to actually deploy, industrialize and support these solutions.”
Don predicts the shift will become apparent soon: “In 6, 12, 18 months, I think we’re going to start to see, you know, the flip. We’ll get out of this trough of disillusionment onto sort of the escalating, moving into sort of the enlightenment side of things.”
Building Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s Commerce
Nevermined’s approach reflects a bet that AI agents will fundamentally reshape how digital transactions occur. By focusing on agent-to-agent payments rather than human-to-agent interactions, Don is building infrastructure for a future where specialized AI agents coordinate complex workflows and need efficient ways to compensate each other for their contributions.
“The TAM for this is absolutely massive. You know, the proverbial sky’s the limit,” Don says, referring to his vision of trillions of AI agents conducting commerce. While that future might seem distant, his methodical go-to-market strategy focuses on the companies already generating revenue from AI agents today.
As AI capabilities continue advancing and deployment challenges get resolved, Don’s early investment in AI commerce infrastructure positions Nevermined to capture value from what could become one of the largest technological shifts in commerce history. The question isn’t whether AI agents will need to pay each other—it’s whether the infrastructure will be ready when they do.
Recommended Founder
Interviews
Tony Zhang
Founder & CEO of Tera AI
Tony Zhang, Founder & CEO of Tera AI: $8M Raised to Build the Future of Robotics Operating Systems
Richard Potter
Co-Founder and CEO of Peak
Richard Potter, Co-Founder and CEO at Peak: $118 Million Raised to Power the Future of AI-Enabled Businesses
Harry Xu
CEO and Co-Founder of Breeze ML
Harry Xu, CEO and Co-Founder of Breeze ML: $4.6 Million Raised to Create the Future of AI Governance
Jayashree Rajan
CMO of Nexla
From Engineer to CMO — Lessons From Jayashree Rajan’s Journey
David DeWolf
CEO & President of Knownwell
David DeWolf, CEO & President of Knownwell: $2 Million Raised to Build the Future of Commercial Intelligence
Alon Talmor
CEO & Founder of Ask-AI
Alon Talmor, CEO & Founder of Ask-AI: $20 Million Raised to Power the Future of Enterprise AI
Rich Taylor
Vice President of Seek AI
Rich Taylor, VP of Marketing at Seek AI: $10.5 Million Raised to Transform Data Analysis with Generative AI
Johannes Peeters
Co-Founder & CEO of VoxelSensors
Johannes Peeters, Co-Founder & CEO of VoxelSensors: $7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Spatial Computing
Tanay Kothari
CEO and Co-Founder of Wispr Flow
How Wispr Flow manufactured viral moments by personally onboarding 500 users on Google Meet | Tanay Kothari ($56M Raised)
Vahan Petrosyan
CEO & Co-Founder of SuperAnnotate
Vahan Petrosyan, CEO & Co-Founder of SuperAnnotate: $53 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Training Data Infrastructure
Ryan Alshak
CEO & Founder of Laurel
Ryan Alshak, CEO & Founder of Laurel: $55.7 Million Raised to Build the Future of Gen AI for Timekeeping
Douwe Kiela
CEO and Co-Founder of Contextual AI
Douwe Kiela, CEO and Co-Founder of Contextual AI: $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of Enterprise Language Models
Jonathan Dambrot
CEO and Founder of Cranium
Jonathan Dambrot, CEO and Founder at Cranium: $32 Million Raised to Power the Future of AI Security
Krishna Gade
CEO & Founder of Fiddler
Krishna Gade, CEO & Founder of Fiddler: $68 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Observability
Ofer Ronen
CEO & Co-Founder of Tomato.ai
Ofer Ronen, CEO & Co-Founder of Tomato.ai: $12 Million Raised to Build the Accent Softening Category
Davit Baghdasaryan
Co-Founder and CEO of Krisp
Davit Baghdasaryan, Co-Founder and CEO of Krisp: $19 Million Raised to Build the Voice Productivity Category
Daniele Grassi
CEO of Axyon AI
Daniele Grassi, CEO of Axyon AI: $5.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of Financial Markets with AI
Sercan Esen
CEO & Co-Founder of Intenseye
Sercan Esen, CEO & Co-Founder of Intenseye: $93 Million Raised to Transform Workplace Safety Through AI-Powered Computer Vision
Aron Kirschen
CEO of SEMRON
Aron Kirschen, CEO of SEMRON: $7.3M Raised to Build Ultra-Efficient 3D AI Chips
David Plon
CEO & Co-Founder of Portrait Analytics
David Plon, CEO & Co-Founder of Portrait Analytics: $10M Raised to Build an AI-Powered Thought Partner for Institutional Investors
Adi Bathla
CEO & Co-Founder of Revv
Adi Bathla, CEO & Co-Founder of Revv: $33 Million Raised to Power the Future of Auto Repair
Amr Awadallah
CEO & Founder of Vectara
Amr Awadallah, CEO & Founder of Vectara: $53 Million Raised to Build the RAG-as-a-Service Category
Chandini Jain
CEO & Co-Founder of Auquan
Chandini Jain, CEO & Co-Founder of Auquan: $8 Million Raised to Transform Financial Intelligence Through AI
Sud Bhatija
Co-Founder & COO of Spot AI
Sud, Co-Founder & COO of Spot AI: $93 Million Raised to Build Video AI Agents for the Physical World
Patricia Thaine
Co-Founder & CEO of Private AI
Patricia Thaine, Co-Founder & CEO of Private AI: Over $11 Million Raised to Help Organizations Anonymize PII to Achieve Regulatory Compliance
Christian Stein
CEO & Co-Founder of Threedy
Christian Stein, CEO & Co-Founder of Threedy: $11.5M Raised to Power the Future of Industrial 3D Computing Infrastructure
Gabriel Bayomi Tinoco Kalejaiye
CEO and Co-Founder of Openlayer
Gabriel Bayomi, CEO and Co-Founder of Openlayer: $4.8 Million Raised to Power the Future of Machine Learning Testing
Alex Sambvani
CEO & Co-Founder of Slang AI
Alex Sambvani, CEO & Co-Founder of Slang AI: $20 Million Raised to Power the Future of Voice AI for Restaurants
James O’Brien
Co-Founder & COO of Ducky AI
James O’Brien, Co-Founder & COO of Ducky: $2.7 Million Raised to Build Internal Data Search for LLMs
Damien Garot
Stellar of Stellar
Damien Garot, CEO & Co-Founder of Stellar: $9.3M Raised to Build the Future of Reliable Internet Connectivity for Autonomous Vehicles
Anand Kulkarni
CEO of Crowdbotics
Anand Kulkarni, CEO of Crowdbotics: $58 Million Raised to Power the Future of Rapid Application Development
Sauraj Gambhir
Co-Founder of Prior Labs
Sauraj Gambhir, Co-Founder of Prior Labs: $9 Million Raised to Build Foundation Models for Structured Data
Sumanyu Sharma
CEO & Founder of Hamming AI
How Hamming AI accidentally created a new category by focusing on customer problems instead of category creation | Sumanyu Sharma ($3.8M Raised)
Ryan Sevey
CEO of Mantium
Ryan Sevey, CEO of Mantium: $12 Million Raised to Help Teams Deploy and Monitor their AI Process Automations
Deirdre Mahon
VP of Marketing of super{set}
Why Marketing Beats Sales Hiring at AI Startups
Jorge Penalva
CEO & Co-Founder of Lang AI
Jorge Penalva, CEO of Lang.ai: $40 Million+ Raised to Build the Customer Experience Operations Category
Phillip Liu
CEO of Trustero
Phillip Liu, CEO of Trustero: $8 Million Raised to Build the Future of Compliance AI
Ravin Thambapillai
CEO and Co-Founder of Credal
Ravin Thambapillai, CEO and Co-Founder of Credal: $5 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Security
Malte Pietsch
CTO & Co-Founder of Deepset
Malte Pietsch, CTO & Co-Founder of Deepset: $45 Million Raised to Build the Future of LLMs
Mike Conover
CEO & Co-Founder of Brightwave
Mike Conover, CEO & Co-Founder of Brightwave: $6M Raised to Build the Future of AI-Powered Investment Research
Matt Theurer
CEO & Co-Founder of HyperSpectral
Matt Theurer, CEO & Co-Founder of HyperSpectral: $8.5 Million Raised to Power the Future of AI-Powered Spectral Intelligence
Roger Luo
Founder & Managing Partner of Embedding VC
Funding the Future: Roger Luo, Managing Partner at Embedding VC
Alan Cowen
CEO and Founder of Hume AI
Alan Cowen, CEO and Founder of Hume AI: Over $17 Million Raised to Measure and Improve How Technology Affects Human Emotion
Bob van Luijt
CEO and Co-Founder of Weaviate
Bob van Luijt, CEO and Co-Founder of Weaviate: Over $67 Million Raised to Power the Future of Vector Databases
Darko Vukovic
CEO & Founder of PolyAPI
Darko Vukovic, CEO & Founder of PolyAPI: $5 Million Raised to Transform Enterprise Middleware Through Native Code Developm
Meryem Arik
CEO & Co-Founder of Titan ML
Meryem Arik, CEO and Co-Founder of TitanML: $2.8 Million Raised to Revolutionize LLM Deployment
Igor Jablokov
Chairman of Pryon
Igor Jablokov, Chairman of Pryon: $50+ Million Raised to Build the Future of Enterprise Knowledge Management
Nilo Rahmani
CEO & Co-Founder of Thoras AI
Nilo Rahmani, CEO & Co-Founder of Thoras AI: $6.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI-Powered Infrastructure Optimization
Deon Nicholas
CEO & Co-Founder of Forethought
Deon Nicholas, CEO & Co-Founder of Forethought: $92 Million Raised to Power the Future of Customer Support with AI
Jeong-Suh Choi
CEO of Bobidi
Jeong-Suh Choi, CEO Bobidi: Nearly $6 Million raised to Deliver Better, More Inclusive AI Solutions for Developers
Inna Sela
CEO & Founder of illumex
Inna Tokarev Sela, CEO & Founder of illumex: $13 Million Raised to Power the Future of Enterprise LLM Deployments
Justin McCallon
CEO and Co-Founder of Callidus Legal AI
How Callidus scaled Google ads from 3 to 40 leads per day | Justin McCallon
David Reger
CEO of NEURA Robotics
David Reger, CEO of NEURA Robotics: €185M Raised to Power the Future of Cognitive Robotics
Nikola Borisov
CEO & Co-Founder of Deep Infra
Nikola Borisov, CEO & Co-Founder of Deep Infra: $9 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Model Hosting
Alex Levin
CEO & Co-Founder of Regal AI
Alex Levin, CEO & Co-Founder of Regal AI: $82 Million Raised to Transform Customer Communication with Voice AI
William Gaviria Rojas
Field CTO & Co-Founder of CoactiveAI
William Gaviria Rojas, Field CTO & Co-Founder of CoactiveAI: $44 Million Raised to Build the Future of Multimodal AI Applications
Rick Bentley
Founder of Cloudastructure
Rick Bentley, Founder of Cloudastructure: $57 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Video Surveillance
Joe Witt
CEO & Co-Founder of Datavolo
Joe Witt, CEO & Co-Founder of Datavolo: $21 Million Raised to Unlock the Potential of Unstructured Data for AI
Kostas Pardalis
Co-Founder & CEO of Typedef
Why Typedef starts go-to-market activities during the design partner phase instead of after | Kostas Pardalis ($5.5M Raised)
Tom Trowbridge
Co-Founder of Fluence Labs
Tom Trowbridge, co-founder of Fluence Labs: $9 Million Raised to Build the Future of Decentralized P2P Computing
Krish Ramineni
CEO of Fireflies
Krish Ramineni, CEO of Fireflies: $19 Million Raised to Build the Future of AI Meeting Assistants
Anand Gopalan
CEO and Co-Founder of Vayu Robotics
Anand Gopalan, CEO & Co-Founder of Vayu Robotics: $12.7 Million Raised to Build the Next Wave of Robotics Solutions
Jonathan Schneider
CEO and Co-Founder of Moderne
Jonathan Schneider, CEO & Co-Founder of Moderne: $20 Million Raised to Build the Future of Code Remediation
Ashley Montanaro
CEO and Co-Founder of Phasecraft
Ashley Montanaro, CEO & Co-Founder of Phasecraft: $22 Million Raised to Build the Future of Quantum Software
Jorge Torres
CEO and Co-Founder of MindsDB
Jorge Torres, CEO and Co-Founder of MindsDB: $50 Million Raised to Enable Developers to Integrate Machine Learning into Applications
Jason Corso
Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Voxel 51
Jason Corso, Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer of Voxel 51: $15.5 Million Raised to Build the Future of Developer Tools for Machine Learning
Linda Watkins
SVP of Marketing of Edge Impulse
The Founder Whisperer: A Marketing Leader’s Guide to Technical CEOs
Jonathan Corbin
CEO & Co-Founder of Maven AGI
Jonathan Corbin, CEO and Co-Founder of Maven AGI: $28 Million Raised to Build the Future of Customer Experience
Barbara Lewis
CMO of Coactive AI
The Siebel vs Salesforce Truth Every B2B Marketer Should Know
Suman Kanuganti
How Personal AI scales enterprise contracts by selling to COOs and business users first | Suman Kanuganti ($16M Raised)