The vendor model is broken.

A year ago, hiring a service partner often meant choosing between price, quality, and speed. Today, AI is blowing that paradigm up. Small, lean, AI-native teams are building more, faster, and better than traditional agencies or offshore firms ever could.

That’s a bold claim. But I’ve lived it. My small team at StealthX routinely outpaces global teams with way more people. Not because we’re smarter. But because we’re faster to adopt, test, and embed the right AI tooling into everything we do. It’s a huge part of our competitive advantage.

If you’re a product, design, marketing, or ops leader still working with vendors who haven’t evolved their ways of working, you’re leaving time/money on the table. Worse, you’re likely slowing down progress on enhancing your customer/employee experience and accelerating growth.

Here’s my take at how to vet vendors in 2025.

The legacy vendor model doesn’t cut it anymore.

The traditional model (US-based strategy + offshore delivery) worked when the delta between onshore and offshore was purely economic. But now?

• A 3-5 person team with the right AI stack can outpace a 20+ person team.

• A small squad of cross-functional builders can stand up a working proof of concept in a day.

• A non-technical founder can build version 1 of a digital product with authentication, payments, and dashboards while watching Netflix.

Three big things have changed:

1. Tooling: AI tools like Cursor, Replit, and Claude Code along with low-code platforms like Retool make full-stack dev accessible to non-engineers.

2. Agents: Tools like Lindy.ai allow users to deploy swarms of AI agents to execute complex workflows without writing code.

3. Infrastructure: n8n.io and other orchestration platforms let you stitch together automations across tools, drastically reducing manual effort.

Most vendors are still billing you for headcount and hours. They haven’t rethought their business model. They’re still optimizing for FTEs and utilization, not speed and outcomes.

What modern, AI-native partners look like.

The partners I trust today and the way I’ve built StealthX looks different. These companies are built for this moment. Here’s what to look for:

1. Lean, autonomous teams
Smaller is better. Think SEAL teams, not battalions. You want 2–4 person cross-functional squads with high trust and high output. What that looks like in action:

• 1 strategist/designer using AI to do research, wire-framing, content, UX copy, prototyping, and user testing.

• 1 technologist shipping working apps using agent-assisted dev tools.

• No 10-person project teams. No bloated resource plans.

2. AI integrated into their workflows
Not just “we use GPT.” Look for full-stack AI integration. Ask questions like:

• How are you using AI in design, research, dev, testing, documentation, and delivery?

• How are you managing prompt libraries, agents, or workflows?

• Are your team members training or fine-tuning models to specific domains?

3. Built for actual speed, not theater
Many vendors are still stuck in long discovery phases, bloated documentation, and waterfall or Agile delivery cycles disguised as speed. AI-native teams move from problem to prototype to product faster than you’d think possible.

How to vet your next partner.

Whether you're hiring a design firm, a dev shop, or a cross-functional consultancy, I’d suggest using some for of this checklist before you engage:

Strategy & delivery

• Do they work in small, cross-functional teams or large project groups?

• Can they show you an example of something they built end-to-end using AI?

• Do they price based on time and materials, or outcomes and velocity?

AI capabilities

• Are their teams actively using agents, copilots, and low-code platforms?

• Have they trained their team in how to use tools like GPT-4o, Manus, or n8n?

• Can they describe how AI reduced the timeline or headcount on a recent project?

Security & governance

• Do they have a clear approach to privacy and security when using AI tooling?

• Are they using paid, enterprise-grade tools with proper access controls?

Operating model

• Are decisions made by delivery teams, or escalated up through layers of governance?

• How fast can they test new tools and incorporate them into client work?

Cultural readiness

• Are they a team of “AI natives” or folks still figuring it out?

• Do they encourage learning, experimentation, and adoption or cling to status quo?

Why this matters for customer experience.

Let’s bring this back to CX. Today’s customers and employees don’t want more features. They want:

• Personalized experiences that adapt to their intent.

• Faster delivery of new capabilities.

• Seamless handoffs between digital and human channels.

You don’t get that from slow, bloated partners still stuck in 2019. You get it from small, fast teams who build with modern tools and real urgency. And increasingly, you’ll need vendors who can upskill your team while they deliver.

The bottom line.

If your current partners haven’t evolved, it’s time to ask hard questions. Because the companies that win in the next 12–24 months won’t just be the ones with the best brand or biggest budget. They’ll be the ones who work with teams that know how to move at the speed of change. Look for velocity. Look for AI fluency. Look for autonomy. That’s who will help you win.

Onward & upward 🤘
Drew

P.s. If we haven’t met yet, hello! I’m Drew Burdick, Founder and Managing Partner at StealthX. We work with brands to design & build great customer experiences that win. I share ideas weekly through this newsletter & over on the Building Great Experiences podcast. Have a question? Feel free to contact us, I’d love to hear from you.