E08: Software Factories - Lights Out or Lights On? | Old School / New Tech

Ran Aroussi has spent 35 years building software infrastructure. Now he thinks we’re building AI for businesses backwards.

Most companies are adding copilots, chatbots, and agents, then asking employees to learn how to use them. Ran’s argument is almost the opposite: people shouldn’t have to adapt to AI. AI should adapt to the company.

He’s the founder of VarOps, where he’s building what he calls "Resident AI": AI that lives inside an organization, learns how it actually operates, and works through the tools and workflows people already use. No new destination. No constant prompting. Ideally, employees barely notice it’s there.

The idea grew out of a problem Ran believes the AI industry has underestimated: AI doesn’t understand organizations.

A chatbot might have access to every document, meeting, and message in a company and still not understand why a decision was made, which unwritten rule matters, who actually knows how something works, or that the official process hasn’t been followed in three years.

Retrieval gives AI information. It doesn’t necessarily give it understanding.

Ran’s work focuses on building that missing layer: a living model of the organization itself – its knowledge, decisions, relationships, processes, and unwritten operating context. He describes it as an "Organizational Language Model" (OLM) rather than another LLM with access to company data.