What a 10-person US business gets from us, and what it is worth.
Everything we have built for businesses, grouped by what it does for you, with the time and money it saves or earns. Figures tagged source come straight from a cited source. Figures tagged estimate are our own arithmetic on sourced inputs, with the working shown. Illustrations use inputs we assumed, so put in your own.
Monthly value by item, low to high.
Each bar runs from the conservative estimate to the high one. The intern's build is a one-time value and is shown below the bars.
- Our estimate on sourced inputs
Agent time saved
$913–$3,586 / month
5.6–22 h/week of staff time
- Illustration with assumed inputs
Faster lead follow-up
$500–$1,000 / month
illustration: 1–2 more $500 jobs
- Our estimate on sourced inputs
Suite instead of rented tools
$43–$528 / month
after server, AI and upkeep
- Our estimate on sourced inputs
Subscription review
about $110 / month
one unused 10-seat tool cut
Where the money comes from.
Get the work built
the programmeA trained intern, 1–3 months
Builds your business's AI agents under an AI mentor. You pay nothing and keep the software.
You get automation that would otherwise be an agency project, without a contract or a bill.
An AI agency's average Clutch project is $120,594; the most common band is $10,000–$49,999 [3].
Workflow library
664 workflow designs for 53 kinds of business, plus connectors and skills.
Your intern starts from a design made for your trade, so less of your time goes on explaining the problem.
Agencies bill the discovery stage by the hour [3].
Board of advisors and "Turn this into steps"
Six AI advisors read your interview answers and leave short notes; any note or proposed project becomes tasks with one button.
Answers a stated pain: predicting costs and margins accurately when pricing an estimate is the top operational challenge, named by 19% of owners [6].
Keep your intern (retainer)
Optional paid hours after the internship, for upkeep and new work.
Upkeep at a known monthly price, from the person who built it.
An administrative assistant costs $31.35/h with benefits [1][2]; an agency $50–$99/h [3].
Run the agents safely
the approvalsApprovals, standing permissions, "Pause all"
Agent actions on QuickBooks Online, Square, HubSpot and Jobber wait for a person, run within limits you set, and stop with one button. Bulk approval clears a batch at once.
You can let agents work without risking a bad email blast or a wrong invoice.
A marketing email that breaks the CAN-SPAM Act can cost up to $53,088 per email [7]. Zapier and Make have few such guardrails by default.
Agent time saved
All the agents together: replies drafted, records updated, reminders sent.
Generative AI saves its users 5.4% of their work hours; 1.4% across all workers [4].
Support agents with an AI assistant resolved 14% more issues an hour, and novices 34% more [5].
Know the business
the business memoryBusiness memory you can see, correct and delete
Every fact shows where it came from. You correct or withdraw it, and export it at handover.
New staff and every agent work from your own facts, and you keep them when the internship ends.
The novice gain in [5] came from passing on how the best people work.
Own the software
the Business Suite, MIT, on your own serverTeam chat, Tasks, Customers, Docs, the Assistant and Approvals
Installed with one pasted file on a server you rent. The assistant uses DeepSeek with personal details removed; it can still look up a customer by name.
The same jobs as a rented stack, at a flat cost for up to 50 people, and nothing stops when a bill does.
The rented equivalent for 10 people: $255–$631 a month, Slack not counted [9]. The suite: $103–$212 (a server $20–$29, AI $8–$32 and 2–4 h of upkeep at $37.64/h).
Leads
Lead forms for your website with spam protection, an inbox with a speed-to-lead timer and phone alerts, one-click hand-off to Customers, approved email follow-ups with an unsubscribe link, and a report of where leads come from.
Contacting a lead within 5 minutes instead of 30 made it 21 times more likely to be qualified [10]. 57% of firms say reaching customers is a challenge [8].
Replaces a forms tool at $34–$39 a month [9], and adds what forms tools lack: the timer and the report.
Three things we don't put a price on.
Board of advisors and "Turn this into steps"
Six AI advisors read your interview answers and leave short notes; any note or proposed project becomes tasks with one button.
Approvals, standing permissions, "Pause all"
Agent actions on QuickBooks Online, Square, HubSpot and Jobber wait for a person, run within limits you set, and stop with one button. Bulk approval clears a batch at once.
Business memory you can see, correct and delete
Every fact shows where it came from. You correct or withdraw it, and export it at handover.
Against the other ways to get this done.
The table scrolls sideways.
| Us | Rented SaaS | Zapier or Make, DIY | AI agency | Freelancer | Part-time admin | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront | Nothing; your review time | Nothing | Nothing; your own build time | Most often $10,000–$49,999 [3] | Hours × $50–$99 [3] | Hiring time |
| Each month | Server $20–$29 [9], AI $8–$32; a retainer is optional | $255–$631, growing per seat [9] | Zapier from $49, Make from $9 [11] | A new project or a retainer | Hourly, when needed | About $2,715 for 20 h/week (20 × 4.33 × $31.35) [1][2] |
| Time to value | Weeks to the first agent | Days | Days per automation, if you have the time | About 10 months on average [3] | Weeks | Weeks to hire and train |
| Who owns it | Your business; the suite is MIT | Rented | Rented, on the vendor's platform | Per contract | Per contract | Nothing is built |
| Data | Your own server; personal details removed before AI; memory exportable | The vendor's cloud | Passes through the vendor | Varies | Varies; shared logins | In house |
| AI guardrails | Approvals, limits, Pause all, a plain-words log | Varies | Few by default | Varies | Varies | A person's judgement |
| Weak spot | Intern skill varies. Version 0.1.1 of the suite has been installed with all its apps on a 2 GB practice server; 5 parts are not yet checked on a real public server. Which parts | Per-seat creep | Breaks quietly | Cost | Vetting, continuity | Cost; does not scale |
How to read these figures
The estimates rest on our assumptions: how often your team asks the assistant, the hours of upkeep, a $500 job and the hours of discovery a design saves. Replace them with your own numbers. Freed hours become money only through more billable work, more sales or a hire you no longer need.
Put in your own numbers on the build-instead page's calculator.
Slack's US price, Pipedrive, Confluence, Upwork's rates, NFIB, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses and SCORE could not be read when we checked, and are left out.
Sources, read 2026-10-08
- BLS, Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, Table 6, June 2026: bls.gov/news.release/ecec.t06.htm
- BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, secretaries and administrative assistants: bls.gov/ooh/…/secretaries-and-administrative-assistants.htm
- Clutch, AI development pricing: clutch.co/developers/artificial-intelligence/pricing
- St. Louis Fed, The impact of generative AI on work productivity, February 2025: stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/feb/…
- Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond, Generative AI at Work, NBER working paper w31161: nber.org/papers/w31161
- QuickBooks Small Business Insights, July 2026: quickbooks.intuit.com/r/small-business-data/…
- FTC, CAN-SPAM Act: a compliance guide for business: ftc.gov/business-guidance/…
- Federal Reserve Small Business Credit Survey 2025, employer firms: fedsmallbusiness.org/reports/survey/2025/…
- Vendor price pages, annual billing unless noted: ClickUp, Asana, monday, HubSpot, Notion, Jotform, Typeform, DigitalOcean, our server guide, DeepSeek
- Lead Response Management study (Oldroyd, InsideSales): leadresponsemanagement.org/lrm_study
- Zapier and Make price pages: Zapier, Make
Want this for your business? Start with a project.
Post a project for free. An intern builds the first agent with you, and in time your team can work in apps you own. We call you within 2 working days to scope it.