Native or Added? Interrogating Three Vendor Pitches
Objective: Given three short vendor pitches, use the lesson's AI-native vs. AI-added test to classify each correctly and justify the call with a specific line from the pitch.
You're evaluating martech vendors for Concord Biotech's technical content team, who need to publish regulatory-grade documentation for global pharma buyers without adding a slow new procurement cycle to an already-lean team.
Three vendors pitched you this week. Before you take any of them to a demo, classify each as AI-native or AI-added and say why, using the lesson's test.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
Free tier handles short-text classification prompts like this without needing a paid plan
The process
1 step
Step 01 of 01
AI-added tools are legacy platforms with a bolted-on AI feature, the AI lives in a box inside years of non-AI logic. AI-native tools are built assuming AI does the heavy lifting from the start, so the input-processing-output architecture is different, not just the feature list.
For each of these three vendor pitches, is the AI the engine or the helper, and how can you tell from the pitch itself?
Procedure
- Paste the first vendor pitch into ChatGPT with the prompt: 'Is the AI here the core engine or a bolted-on feature? Quote the line that tells you.'
- Repeat for the second and third pitches separately, don't batch them, batching lets the model blur the distinction
- For each, note whether the product existed in a non-AI form first (a sign of AI-added)
- For each, note whether removing the AI would leave a usable, if slower, product (AI-added) or nothing at all (AI-native)
- Write a one-line verdict per vendor: AI-native or AI-added, plus the quoted evidence
VENDOR CLASSIFICATION, Concord Biotech content team 1. 'DocuFlow AI' - pitch: 'Our 15-year-old document management platform now includes an AI Assist button for first-draft summaries.' Verdict: AI-added. Evidence: '15-year-old... now includes' confirms AI was added to an existing non-AI product; removing it leaves a fully functional document manager. 2. 'RegWriter' - pitch: 'Describe the regulatory filing you need and RegWriter generates the full structured draft, citations included, from your source documents.' Verdict: AI-native. Evidence: input (a description) to output (a full draft) with nothing else described, there's no underlying non-AI workflow being assisted. 3. 'ComplianceCRM' - pitch: 'Our CRM now scores leads using AI and suggests next steps.' Verdict: AI-added. Evidence: 'CRM now scores' signals the CRM existed first; lead scoring is one feature bolted onto core CRM logic.
Healthy
Each verdict is backed by a specific quoted phrase from the pitch, not a guess based on the vendor's marketing tone.
Unhealthy
Classifying a tool as AI-native just because the pitch says 'AI-powered' or 'AI-first' in the headline.
What this means
The tell isn't the marketing language, it's whether a non-AI version of the product could plausibly exist and still function.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| A vendor's homepage headline says 'AI-native' but the pitch describes an 'AI Assist' button | Classify by the described architecture, not the headline; ask the vendor directly if the AI is required or optional | 5 min |
Final deliverable
A three-row classification table (vendor, verdict, quoted evidence) ready to hand to the team before any vendor is invited to demo.
See a reference example
VENDOR CLASSIFICATION, Yatharth Hospital marketing team (excerpt) 1. 'PatientCopy Pro' - pitch: 'Type a topic, get a full patient-education article with citations.' Verdict: AI-native. Evidence: no prior non-AI workflow described, the AI generates the artifact directly. 2. 'HealthCRM Suite' - pitch: 'Our established patient-engagement CRM now flags at-risk patients using AI.' Verdict: AI-added. Evidence: 'established... now flags' confirms the AI was added to a pre-existing CRM.
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- All three vendors correctly classified as AI-native or AI-added
- Each verdict cites a specific phrase from the pitch, not a generic impression
- The classification is not based on whether the pitch uses the word 'AI'