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Marin's local AI guy · AI Automation for Small Business

We find where your business is bleeding money. Then we fix it with AI.

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.

Your business is bleeding cash. You just don't know where.

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

How it works

  1. Diagnose

    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.

  2. Build

    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.

  3. Operate

    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

What it costs

Outcome-priced, predictable, no hourly billing. Every engagement is a one-time setup fee plus a monthly retainer. Annual prepay saves 10%.

Discovery Call

$250one-time

45-minute audit + written roadmap. Credited to your project if you move forward.

Starter

$500–$1,000setup · $50–$100/mo

One automation. Voicemail-to-text, email triage, simple workflow.

Most popular

Growth

$1,500–$3,000setup · $150–$300/mo

2–3 connected automations + integration with your CRM and tools.

Premium

$3,500–$7,500+setup · $400–$800/mo

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

Why Raven Studio

Local.
Marin-based. Face-to-face meetings, local references, real accountability. Fiverr can't show up at your shop on Tuesday.
Outcome-priced.
Setup fee + flat monthly retainer. We don't bill hours. You're not paying for our time — you're paying for the leak to stop.
Design-driven.
Most AI consultants think automation is a workflow problem. It's a design problem. We come from Intuit. We've shipped products to millions of small business owners. We know how to make tools your team will actually use.
Methodical.
Every engagement starts with structured discovery. We don't guess. We don't pitch random AI tools. We find the real problem, quantify the cost of leaving it broken, and fix the highest-ROI piece first.

Infrastructure

How we deliver fast

Three tools. Each one compresses a step that used to take weeks.

01

Raven MCP

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 →
02

ComfyUI + Wan video pipeline

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.

03

Intuit's Design for Delight (D4D)

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

Use cases

The client's problem first. Then what we'd ship.

Local tradesPlumbers · Electricians · HVAC · Contractors

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.

Gyms & wellnessYoga · BJJ · Personal Training · Wellness Studios

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.

Restaurants & hospitalityRestaurants · Cafés · Hotels · Event Venues

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.

Real estateAgents · Teams · Property Managers

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.

Professional servicesAccountants · Attorneys · Advisors

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

A letter from Drew

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

Find your leak. Stop the bleed.

45 minutes. $250. Credited to your project. No hourly bills.

Book a Discovery Call →