Friedman: Vertical AI agents risk turning into bespoke consulting businesses
Jared Friedman · State-Of-The-Art Prompting For AI Agents · Y Combinator · May 30, 2025 · at 4:22
Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman explains how vertical AI startups struggle to balance customer-specific customization with building scalable software products.
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“And so their challenge, like a lot of these agent companies is like, How do you build a general purpose product when every customer like wants, you know, has like slightly different workflows and like preferences has a really interesting thing that I see the vertical AI agent companies talking about a lot, which is like, how do you have enough flexibility to make special purpose logic without turning into a consulting company where you're building like a new prompt for every customer.”
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