Ed Grosvenor
On Artisan Beer
“AI has kind of broken that whole hours model for them internally too. I'm going to spend 20 or 30 minutes highly concentrated on whatever problem I'm trying to solve for the client, and I'm going to hit a button. And now I have to wait until the agent comes back with results. So do I have multiple clocks that I'm just starting and stopping as I shift from one client to the next? The whole model just doesn't work anymore.”
Artisan Beer · AI Builders · November 2026
Context
Ed was explaining why clients are warming to retainers instead of hourly billing. Their own employees no longer work in hourly chunks either, so pricing by the hour makes less sense.
Transcript
…better. You know, just sort of that sort of thing. And what's funny is I think that ultimately that ends up in me spending a lot fewer hours with any given client, but it feels to them like they're getting more value than they were getting when they were paying me for just writing code. You see,
that is perfect. I feel that is the way forward. Like less hours, you're still getting paid well. It's not hourly. And they are getting much more value. Like that, to me, is great. That's great. I
think the reason that the prospective clients are starting to soften on this and they're more willing to have this conversation is because AI has kind of broken that whole hours model for them internally too. That they understand that like, I need to spend a certain amount of time highly focused on this problem and put a plan in place and put some automation in place. And then I'm going to send off my agent. My agent's going to crunch away into all of this work. So like the whole idea of, you know, I'm going to pay you per hour. It's probably going to be like, how would I even track that? Right. Because I'm going to spend like 20 or 30 minutes highly concentrated on whatever problem I'm trying to solve for the client. And I'm going to hit a button. And now I have to wait until the agent comes back with results so I can evaluate that and decide whether or not it's actually on the right track, whether I need to pivot or, you know, whatever. So it's like, do I have multiple clocks that I'm just starting and stopping as I shift from one client to the next? It's like the whole model just doesn't work anymore.
And I think that the
clients just recognize that it's not really working for them internally either because their employees are no longer working in like hourly chunks. They're working in, you're getting to a more of a value pricing type. They're thinking of interesting. Have you seen
that? Yeah. Have you seen that with other agencies that you talk to as well, like engineering kind of agencies? Well, so like it feels like a right model. Yeah. Go ahead.
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