Prophia’s Counterintuitive AI Strategy: Why They Hid Their Most Innovative Technology from Customers
Every startup founder dreams of that perfect “wow” moment – when you reveal your groundbreaking technology and watch your customers’ eyes light up with amazement. But what if that moment could actually hurt your company? In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Cameron Steele, CEO of Prophia, shared how deliberately hiding their AI capabilities became key to their success in the commercial real estate industry.
The Hidden Innovation
Since 2019, Prophia has been using natural language processing and machine learning to extract critical data from commercial real estate documents. But as Cameron reveals: “We didn’t really talk about that at all with our customers because they didn’t really trust that it made them nervous.” Instead of leading with their technological innovation, they focused on the end result: better data management for their customers.
Understanding Market Psychology
Commercial real estate isn’t just any market – it’s the world’s largest asset class. But as Cameron explains, it’s also deeply traditional: “Investors and asset allocators in this category have some of the worst quality data and some of the worst tools for helping them make decisions.” Some companies were still manually typing lease information into digital forms.
This creates a paradox for innovators: the market desperately needs technological advancement, but it’s also deeply skeptical of it. Prophia’s solution? Meet customers where they are, not where you want them to be.
The ChatGPT Effect
The strategy paid off, but everything changed with the emergence of ChatGPT. Cameron describes the shift: “Then 18 months ago, chat GPT hit the mainstream and a lot of things changed. Our customers started asking us, what are you guys doing in AI?”
Suddenly, the very technology they had been purposefully downplaying became a selling point. But by then, Prophia had already established trust and demonstrated real value to their customers. The AI revelation came from a position of strength, not speculation.
Building Trust Before Innovation
This approach helped Prophia grow to manage 270 million square feet of commercial real estate on their platform – more than all of downtown Chicago. Their success came from understanding a crucial truth about traditional industries: trust comes before innovation.
As Cameron puts it: “Find a cohort of forward thinking customers that believe in you and believe in your vision and they want to invest behind you. I don’t care what business you’re in, if you don’t have dedicated customers supporting you’re not going to get anywhere.”
Lessons for B2B Founders
Prophia’s experience offers several key insights for founders selling innovative technology to traditional industries:
- Lead with Results, Not Technology Instead of highlighting their AI capabilities, Prophia focused on the concrete benefits: better data management and improved decision-making capabilities.
- Time Your Technology Reveals Wait for market readiness before emphasizing technological innovation. As Cameron’s experience shows, external events like ChatGPT can create natural opportunities to highlight your technical capabilities.
- Build Trust Through Familiarity Prophia succeeded by making their solution feel like a natural evolution of existing processes, not a revolutionary disruption.
- Let Customers Pull Innovation Rather than pushing AI on skeptical customers, Prophia waited until their customers started asking about AI capabilities.
The Future of Conservative Market Innovation
Today, Prophia is more open about their AI capabilities, but they haven’t forgotten their core lesson about market timing. Their vision for the future focuses on practical outcomes: “real time benefits to changes information about your business that can impact how you operate and manage your assets.”
For B2B founders, the key takeaway is clear: sometimes the path to technological revolution requires strategic patience. As Cameron notes, success comes from making “a little incremental progress every day that compounds.” In traditional industries, revolution often comes disguised as evolution.