Can a handful of engineers really do the work of an army of consultants? That’s the bet behind Ode with Anthropic — the joint venture dedicated to embedding forward-deployed engineers in enterprise firms, backed by Anthropic, Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs and others.

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Ode’s leaders Chris Taylor and Eddie Siegel, who founded Fractional AI, the applied AI services startup that Ode acquired earlier this year to serve as the new venture’s core. The three discuss why so many enterprise AI pilots never make it to production and why they think AI-native services are about to become one of the biggest categories in tech.

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Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:30 Fractional AI becomes “Ode with Anthropic”

1:13 Why non-AI companies are the real AI winners

2:04 Working with Blackstone, Anthropic, and beyond

3:05 Inside a real project: fixing LogicGate’s bottleneck

7:29 How long does it take from hypothesis to production?

9:19 Measuring ROI: revenue, efficiency, and evals

16:37 Model choice vs. workflow redesign, and why it’s Claude-first

23:10 Hiring generalists over specialized AI talent

26:39 Can this scale without turning into another consulting firm?

30:49 Outro

Down rounds carry a stigma, but they’re not always the end of a startup’s story.

Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures shares an example of a company that survived a difficult fundraising process involving a down round and investor-friendly terms. It wasn’t easy, but making the hard financing decision ultimately gave the company a chance to keep building.

For founders, the lesson is simple: The best fundraising outcome isn’t always the highest valuation — it’s the one that keeps your business alive.

Get more of Hudson’s advice in the latest Build Mode podcast episode wherever you prefer your pods.

Do you fit into one of the trendiest founder archetypes?

Fundraising has always been competitive, but today’s market is especially tough for first-time founders. In the latest episode of our Build Mode podcast, Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures breaks down the most popular founder archetypes right now: repeat founders with proven track records and exceptionally young technical founders.

That leaves experienced, first-time founders facing a higher bar, even when they have a compelling business idea. But there’s still hope! Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.