Dharmesh Shah on AEO, AI Agents, and the AI App Store

This interview by Rowan Cheung features Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, discussing how AI is transforming business distribution and content strategy. The centerpiece is Shah's framework for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)—optimizing content to be cited by LLMs rather than ranked by traditional search engines. Shah argues the atomic unit has shifted from web pages to snackable, citable content chunks that LLMs can synthesize into answers.

Shah also discusses Agent.AI, his no-code agent builder platform with 2 million+ users, offering insights on agent marketplace dynamics, agent-to-agent collaboration, and the maturity curve from deterministic workflows to autonomous agents. For PMs building AI products or managing go-to-market strategy, he provides practical advice: start agents deterministically before adding autonomy, treat agents as teammates requiring training and performance reviews, and apply functional decomposition to break complex problems into AI-solvable components.