Source

Sequoia says sell the work. For social content, the owner keeps the judgement

By Cerevia · 14 October 2026

In “Services: The New Software” (5 March 2026), Sequoia Capital partner Julien Bek argues that the next trillion-dollar company will be a software company that sells services: finished work, not tools.

What it says

For every dollar spent on software, the essay says, roughly six are spent on services. It separates intelligence, the work AI can increasingly do, from judgement, the work that still needs experience and taste. A copilot sells a tool to a professional who stays responsible for the output. An autopilot sells the outcome to the buyer, and so reaches the larger budget. The suggested way in is work that is already outsourced and mostly intelligence.

Our take

Social content for a small business splits along the essay’s line. Drafting a post is intelligence, and a good system should do it well. Deciding what the brand may say is judgement, and the owner is the one whose name is on it.

So Cerevia does not try to be an autopilot. It sells a checked draft and a record of what worked: it reads the brand from the owner’s own site, drafts against it, shows its reasoning, and pairs reported results with the decisions that produced them. The owner approves and publishes. Over time that record is what makes judgement cheaper to exercise.

Where we would test the essay is trust. It assumes buyers will hand over the outcome. A brand with a name to protect may not, and may prefer to hand over everything except the final yes. That is the bet.

Sources

• Julien Bek, Sequoia Capital: “Services: The New Software”, 5 March 2026

Cerevia is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Gartner, Sequoia Capital, Adobe or OpenAI. Names and logos belong to their owners and appear only to identify each source. Figures are the source’s own.