Discovery Call
45-minute audit + written roadmap. Credited to your project if you move forward.
Marin's local AI guy · AI Automation for Small Business
Local. Outcome-priced. No hourly bills. The same AI that Fortune 500 companies pay millions for — applied to your 4-person business.
Built by a Senior Staff Designer at Intuit — the Silicon Valley blue chip behind QuickBooks, Mailchimp, and TurboTax. 12+ products shipped to millions of users · billions in revenue driven.
Every small business has them — the missed after-hours call, the quote that took three days to send, the lead that got lost in the shuffle, the form someone fills out manually fourteen times a week.
They don't show up on your P&L. They show up as a vague feeling that you're working harder than the numbers suggest.
We find them, quantify them, and stop them.
Process
45-minute structured discovery call. We use Intuit's Design for Delight framework to find where you're losing time and money — not where you think you're losing it. You leave with a written roadmap.
We build the automations that fix the top 1–3 leaks. Voicemail → AI receptionist. Email → triaged inbox. Quotes → same-day turnaround. Whatever the audit surfaces, we ship.
We run the automations on our infrastructure (or yours). Tweak as your business changes. Add new ones over time. You pay a flat monthly retainer — no hourly billing, ever.
Pricing
Outcome-priced, predictable, no hourly billing. Every engagement is a one-time setup fee plus a monthly retainer. Annual prepay saves 10%.
45-minute audit + written roadmap. Credited to your project if you move forward.
One automation. Voicemail-to-text, email triage, simple workflow.
2–3 connected automations + integration with your CRM and tools.
Full workflow overhaul. Multi-system integration. Custom AI agents.
Not sure which tier? Start with the discovery call. We tell you which tier you're in — or whether you don't need us at all.
Differentiators
Infrastructure
Three tools. Each one compresses a step that used to take weeks.
Design exploration in days, not weeks.
The design-intelligence layer that compresses brand and UX exploration from weeks to days. A brief that used to require six weeks of back-and-forth now takes ten. Open source. Used by AI engineers worldwide.
ravenmcp.ai →Production motion in hours, not weeks.
Production-grade motion generation in hours, not weeks. What once required a full motion studio now runs on our infrastructure overnight. Same stack that powers the AI-by-AI YouTube channel.
Start with the customer's problem. Always.
The methodology behind QuickBooks, TurboTax, and Mailchimp. Customer Problem Statement → Ideal State → Leap of Faith Assumptions → Hypothesis. Every Raven engagement starts here — before a single line of code or automation runs.
Use cases
The client's problem first. Then what we'd ship.
The brief
"We're losing jobs because we can't answer the phone fast enough after hours."
Constraint
Owner-operators. No admin staff. Calls come at 9pm.
What we'd ship
AI receptionist qualifies the lead, schedules the callback, and texts you a summary by morning. Connects to your existing scheduling software.
Outcome math
Stop losing ~$80K/year in missed after-hours leads you didn't know were slipping.
The brief
"Onboarding new members takes too long and our retention emails go out late — or not at all."
Constraint
Small staff, high churn risk, waiver/compliance overhead.
What we'd ship
Automated member onboarding, waiver collection, class reminders, and no-show recovery sequences. You get back to coaching.
Outcome math
Cut new-member admin from 45 minutes to under 5. Retention sequences run without touching a keyboard.
The brief
"We're spending hours a week on reservation conflicts, Google review responses, and supplier re-orders."
Constraint
Staff is on the floor, not at a computer. Peak-hour admin is the enemy.
What we'd ship
AI handles reservation conflict resolution, templated review responses (human-reviewed before posting), and recurring supplier order triggers.
Outcome math
Recover 8–15 staff hours per week. Response rate to reviews goes from sporadic to consistent.
The brief
"Lead follow-up falls through the cracks when I'm showing property. Listing copy takes forever."
Constraint
Solo agents or small teams. CRM discipline is inconsistent under load.
What we'd ship
Automated lead follow-up sequences, listing description generation from MLS data, and open house logistics on autopilot.
Outcome math
No lead goes cold after 48 hours. Listing copy that used to take 2 hours takes 10 minutes.
The brief
"Client intake is a mess — gathering documents takes a week of email ping-pong."
Constraint
Billable hours are the unit of value. Every hour on admin is money left on the table.
What we'd ship
Structured intake flows, automated document-gathering requests, compliance reminder sequences, and email triage routing.
Outcome math
The billable-hours mind already understands the math. Recapture 5–10 hours per week per professional.
About
I spent twelve years building products inside Intuit — QuickBooks, TurboTax, Mailchimp. Shipped twelve products to tens of millions of users. Learned Intuit's Design for Delight framework not as a slide deck but as the actual operating system for how you discover what customers need, what's stopping them, and what a better future looks like.
That methodology — Customer Problem Statement, Ideal State, Leap of Faith Assumptions, Hypothesis — is the sharpest tool I know for finding where a business is actually bleeding versus where the owner thinks it's bleeding. Two very different places, almost always.
I started Raven because the gap is obvious once you've seen both sides. The same AI that Fortune 500 companies spend millions deploying is now accessible to a four-person HVAC shop in Marin. The design rigor that built those Fortune 500 products is available to the same shop. But nobody has connected those two things at a price and a trust level that makes sense for a small business owner.
That's what Raven is.
I work with Marin businesses because I live here. I can meet you, understand your operation in person, and be accountable in a way a remote Fiverr gig can't. I take a small number of clients deliberately — Raven is not a growth-at-all-costs agency.
What Raven won't do: decks for decks' sake, AI tools pitched without a clear problem they solve, or engagements designed to keep you dependent on us. The goal is to fix the leak and make you more self-sufficient, not to manufacture complexity.
If that sounds like what you need, book the discovery call.
— Drew Cunliffe, Marin
45 minutes. $250. Credited to your project. No hourly bills.
Book a Discovery Call →