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Some findings from across our Varick customers that might shape how you think about AI adoption going forward:
1. Customers are getting wiser about spend. A few months ago, most were willing to spend an unlimited amount on tokens from OpenAI and Anthropic. Today they're asking us to diligence their AI spend and to match the right model to the right work. That means more work for us and meaningful savings for them. They want to know AI is actually cheaper than just adding headcount, and they want the math to back it up.
2. Customers are accepting that this isn't instant. A few months ago, customers expected to become AI-native over the course of a week and a few software adoptions. Now they're accepting the reality: becoming AI-native means rethinking the architecture of your entire company. I don't mean that in a corny sense. It literally means changing the org charts, the work, and the handoffs in every crevice of the company.
3. Customers are done with the big shops. Microsoft, IBM, McKinsey, Deloitte, and the rest are all pitching AI transformations, and our customers are fed up with paying eight figures for a slide deck. This is the whole reason we have a business: we sit at the bleeding edge of AI while having the business sense to identify the root of a problem and then build the agents to solve it. This used to be something I had to convince customers of before the first sales call. Now they're the ones telling me, "we're never working with McKinsey again."
This past month we had the highest inbound volume we've ever seen. Between April 1 and May 1, 56 companies doing between $500M and $25B in revenue reached out to us. Some of these companies are direct competitors with one another. It's fascinating to watch the race for enterprise AI-nativity unfold in real time. I like to imagine that we change the course of history for our clients.
AI transformations are now the consensus path to realizing AI ROI. AI SaaS doesn't get you there, and giving every employee a Claude or Cowork subscription doesn't move the needle either. The only way to get to hundreds of millions in annual ROI is to combine a team that can learn your business processes on the ground with the engineering capacity to automate every manual process worth automating.
We bet on this thesis a year ago, and we're vindicated more every single day. If you're interested in transforming your company with AI, or interested in joining the company that's leading the AI transformation wave, visit our website.
Cheers.
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Must read. Very thorough analysis on AI scaling.
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Jun 13
As a result of a US government directive, we are suspending access to Claude Fable 5 for all users. You can continue to use all other Claude models.
Here’s what this means for you:
Across Claude products, new sessions will run on your selected default model or Opus 4.8, and existing Fable 5 sessions will end with an error.
On the Claude Platform, requests to Fable 5 will also return an error. Please update your integrations to other Claude models.
We know this is a disruption to your workflows; we appreciate your patience and support.
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A thank you to Varick's clients.
When we started, our earliest clients would tell us what to build and we'd build it. This was the wrong model for both parties.
Our real edge was more than building the agents. It was knowing which work should be automated and where each agent fits across the stack, and building the common spine so the second workflow isn't completely separate from the first.
When we pioneered audits before implementations, it was born out of necessity. We saw firsthand the importance of being involved in the discovery and planning phase that so many companies were skipping.
Then we moved past single workflows into full department transformations. We look at every process, and we're honest about where AI should be used vs where things should remain manual, at least today.
Most agent builders in our space won't do this. They'll pick an easy workflow, jump client to client for their 'narrative', and never get their hands dirty.
To our clients: thank you for trusting us with work this important. Every project we've taken on has achieved positive ROI in production, and we intend to keep it that way.
We're hiring.
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CTOs of startups (YC or otherwise) that aren't going the way you hoped: let's chat for 10 minutes; I want you at Varick.
We're building the product behind the services powering the AI transformation of every enterprise on the planet, and we're drowning in demand. Your work will run inside dozens of companies doing billions in revenue.
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Incredible
May 31
Maybe that culture is fine for you at linear, and it looks like it’s working great for you! You’ve created something worth over a billion dollars in 7 short years, that’s something very few people on the planet have done before.
But sometimes there are big problems that need solving, and there is more creative thinking, not less, that happens with contact with the big problems. In our case, creating the financial operating system that owns the creation, transfer, financing, and investment of risk, using AI to automate the paperwork of the most regulated entities to make every business and person a little more profitable, waste a lot less time, and be more protected, is a big problem.
Maybe there were super geniuses at the Manhattan Project working 1 day per week like zen masters. I doubt it though, because if you’re obsessed with a problem, you work hard. Nowhere did I or do I glorify lack of sleep (I always think sleeping right and exercise are very important), and different people have different visions, cadences, and ways they want to run their companies. And that’s ok, but you attacking our style based upon sound bites when we are solving a really important problem, by market sizing probably the biggest problem large language models can solve, isn’t it.
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If you're a software engineer that is down for a paid work trial (1-2 weeks, converts to an internship or full-time offer), come by our office today or tomorrow.
I'll interview everyone and get back to you with a decision by Sunday midnight.
DM me to set it up and I'll send you the address.
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Imagine an AI company that forward deploys into your enterprise to first understand how everything works, then architects what an agent solution looks like custom built for you, and only then builds the agents.
Someone should uhh… someone should make a company that does that.
May 30
Imagine replacing 90% of your employees with a team of geniuses who have no idea how your company operates.
Total chaos. Nothing works.
That’s what AI feels like today.
The missing piece is extracting all the domain knowledge from people’s heads and providing that as structured context to the models.
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Hiring one-two software engineering interns for the Fall to work on Applied AI at Varick
Reach out if you:
- Have project or internship experience with GraphQL, RAG, and/or agent ontology
- Extremely AI native and are interested in learning how to build and deploy agents end to end
- Excited about working with a team that's reshaping how companies use AI
- Are ready to work hard alongside very talented people at the fastest growing applied AI company on the planet
Apply online / DM me with one line of why you’d be a fit, or better, a link to a relevant project, along with your resume. This is full-time, in person in our office in SF.
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"OpenAI and Anthropic are effectively telling the market they can't solve every problem with a generic AI coworker."
You know who could've told you this a year ago?
Varick
And we're the best in the business. Join us we're hiring if you're cracked.
OpenAI and Anthropic are effectively telling the market they can't solve every problem with a generic AI coworker.
You don't pour billions into massive forward-deployed joint ventures if you think the next model release is going to take care of it.
In the cloud supercycle, semis led and software followed (and you didn't need Qualcomm or ARM to tell you the value was migrating up the stack).
In AI, the infra layer itself is telling us the application layer is a separate, massive opportunity they can't fully capture.
a16z's @joeschmidtiv on why the app layer isn't dead: a16z.news/p/avoiding-death-o…
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AI transformation at the enterprise level is a 60T market: the largest unsolved market in history.
Over the last few months, 100 companies doing $1B to $100B in revenue have reached out to us. We do zero outbound. The contracts are 8 figures, with 9 to 10 figures in savings and revenue uplift per client.
Most "AI services" firms top out transforming startups. A 10,000-person company is a different problem entirely.
Our only constraint right now is hiring talented people fast enough. You have to understand AI deeply, know how to apply it, and be a brilliant communicator. Lowering the bar would fail our clients, and we refuse to do so.
If you know someone great who wants in on what could be a generational company being built out of SF, send them our way. We'll give you a $20,000 referral bonus if they join.
We're hiring Staff Engineers, AI Engagement Managers, Forward Deployed AI Strategists, AI Engineers, and Full Stack Engineers, full-time, in-person, in SF.
Apply below or DM me - I read every one.
May 27
AI as a Service (consulting) is a wide open opportunity.
The largest service industry in a few decades that no one is really talking about as much as they should be.
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