The Future of Agencies is AI-Ready

The one thing you need to know in AI today | AI-Ready CMO

Y Combinator just published its Spring 2026 Request for Startups. One of the categories they are looking into is AI-native agencies. It confirms EVERYTHING we’ve been talking about... So if you own an agency, are thinking about launching one, or are working with them, this one is for you.

The problem with agencies is well known. They are hard to scale. You have low margins, manual work, and you grow only through headcount. We know, we owned one together centuries ago, and we worked at agencies many times in leadership positions. We’ve seen the numbers. We know the pain.

The opportunity now is this:

Instead of selling software to customers to help them do the work, you can charge way more by using the software yourself and selling them the finished product at 100x the price.

Aaron Epstein, Y Combinator

In practice, agencies will look like software companies, with software margins.