Jean-Denis Greze was CTO of Plaid. His next startup, an AI tax product for small businesses, brought in nearly $1M in revenue its first year, and he projected $2.5 to $3M the next. He shut it down anyway. The reason: in the age of AI, it was never going to be venture scale. Incumbents could use the same technology to automate tax prep for their existing customers faster than a startup could win market share. Tax is also sold once a year, so he had about a one-month window to pivot before the…