AI is not going to take jobs — in many cases you can't find a person to hire at all, so the real market failure is everything to the right of the supply-demand equilibrium.
Alex counters the 'AI takes jobs' narrative with the reality that many small businesses simply cannot hire. He uses the example of a dentist who retired because his key assistant left, and frames the problem as a market failure — work that people would pay for but no one is available to do at any reasonable cost. ✦ AI generated
Alex Rampell (a16z) · a16z Podcast · 2026-07-30 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 12:28
Part of why he retired was he lost his like, you know, key woman that did the books and everything else. He's like, I can't deal with this anymore. I quit. Yeah. ... And he said that if this had been around, he wouldn't have retired. ... So it's not like oh AI is going to take the jobs. In many cases you can't find somebody. This is the part that people don't realize or you can't find somebody but there's like a imagine that there is something that every human on earth would pay a dollar for but the cost of manufacturing that thing is $100. You just have a market failure and I kind of call this everything to the right of the supply demand equilibrium point on like an econ 101 graph.
verbatim transcript · starts at 12:28
12:08we can charge for work at a way that is cheaper than humans, better than humans. But I think both of those sell the opportunity short because in many cases you can't even find a human. actually the the best and funnest story of the the lassie um introduction or like the our announcement that we made together with you or your your announcement your your amazing video. >> It was a great collaboration.
12:28>> Um so um my my first dentist hopefully he's listening to this podcast. His name is Ronald Sloop. Um it was my parents like first friend when they moved to Florida. I'm from Florida. Um he retired as a dentist. >> Was he a Dutch uh guy? He sounds very Dutch though. >> No, you know, Ashkanazi Jew from, you know, somewhere in Poland, Ukraine, whatever my family's from, too. So, you
12:49know, uh, but, you know, he's probably 75, 80 years old right now. But part of why he retired was he lost his like, you know, key woman that did the books and everything else. He's like, I can't deal with this anymore. I quit. Yeah. >> And then he sold his practice to his like junior practitioner and now he's out of the dentistry business. So, he saw this announcement. He's like, oh my
13:07god, this is amazing. And I'm not talking this up because your like my dad called me about this because he saw the prosperity. Wow. I talked to Dr. Sloop about this. And he said that if this had been around, he wouldn't have retired. >> Like this is why he's now like doing nothing with his life. U just like you know playing golf or something in Southern California. He moved there from
13:25Florida apparently. Um because it's just too hard to hire the person. So it's not like oh AI is going to take the jobs. In many cases you can't find somebody. This is the part that people don't realize or you can't find somebody but there's like a imagine that there is something that every human on earth would pay a dollar for but the cost of manufacturing that thing is $100. You just have a market
13:46failure and I kind of call this everything to the right of the supply demand equilibrium point on like an econ 101 graph. So, it's like, wow, everybody would, you know, have somebody like, why isn't there a a Dutch receptionist at every dentist in America? >> Because, you know, there might be a guy that only speaks Dutch that shows up. Yeah. Like, why not hire somebody who speaks Dutch? Well, because there's only
14:06a one in aundred chance that a Stein that only speaks Dutch shows up at their office. You're going to have to pay that person 40,000 euro. Like, it just doesn't make sense. But if it were free or if it cost a dollar, then every dental receptionist would have a Dutch counterpart, right? You know, stuff like that. So, it's just it's anyway, so that that's where the the market just expands
14:27massively once you throw in labor because it's like you have this tiny tiny market for software, which by the way is not that tiny. It's like a trillion dollars. >> Um, concentrically around that, you have like you know big on financial transactions that's even bigger. That's why Visa has a very big market capital. >> White can exist or businesses. But then you go the the the concentric circle