Stut demonstrates the land grab playbook by entering the accounts receivable market with AI that replaces manual collections workflows, proving superior ROI to mid-market buyers through math rather than social proof.
Joe explains how Stut targets the accounts receivable market by showing mid-market buyers the math: their AI can collect more effectively than human teams, improving working capital and saving money, without needing marquee logos first. ✦ AI generated
Joe Schmidt · a16z Podcast · 2026-08-13 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 13:54
“Maybe do you guys want to talk about some of those playbooks that you've seen?”
Stut, this amazing business founded by two incredible entrepreneurs Tarc and Ben. And what they are going after is the accounts receivable market. For listeners who maybe have never thought about like AR, accounts receivable basically this is when someone owes you money in an enterprise context and you have to go collect the money from them. This is not glamorous. But however there has been a mechanism to do this historically. Right? There are collections teams and there's big pieces of software. There are big companies that do lots of AR that sell in this market. But it's been very manual. Right? These human teams have to interact with this piece of software and they have to go out there and collect. And so what Stut said was hey AI is actually quite good at having conversations with people. It's very good at looking at information internally and basically doing this process end to end. And so we could reimagine this historic way of doing collections and instead of having humans do it we can have humans plus AI do this and do it even more effectively. And what they basically went out and showed all of the early stage buyers was in doing this we have the math to prove it. We'll be more effective than your current solution and your current human teams at collecting. And this will improve working capital by a tremendous amount. It'll save you money. It'll actually make you more money. So, they were able to go out to the mid-market and just basically show the math and be like, would you like to have this solution, yes or no?
verbatim transcript · starts at 13:54
13:54land grab company that we're seeing in this new age. And so Stut this amazing business founded by you know two incredible entrepreneurs Tarc and Ben. And what they are going after is the accounts receivable market. And for listeners who maybe have never thought about like AR accounts receivable basically you know this is when someone owes you money you know in an enterprise context and you have to go
14:14collect the money from them. This is not glamorous. Um but however there has been you know a mechanism to do this historically. Right? There are collections teams and there's big pieces of software like you know I won't say their names because compliance will probably bleed them out anyway. So, there are big companies that do lots of AR that that sell in this market. But it's been very manual.
14:31Right? These these human teams have to interact with this piece of software and they have to go out there and they have to sell or have to go they have to go collect. And so what Stut said was hey AI is actually quite good at you know basically having conversations with with people. It's very good at looking at information internally and basically doing this process end to end. And so we
14:47could reimagine this historic you know way of doing collections and instead of having humans do it we can have humans plus AI do this and and do it even more effectively. And that what that they then saw that open up was like the rest of kind of like you know order to cash and basically the entire kind of accounts receivable suite. And so what they basically went out and
15:04showed all of the early stage buyers was in doing this we have the math to prove it. We'll be more effective than your current solution and your current human teams at collecting. And this will do XYZ for you know improve working capital by a tremendous amount. It'll save you money. It'll actually make you more money. So, they were able to go out to the mid-market and just basically show the
15:23math and be like, "Would you like to, you know, have this solution, yes or no?" Um, so that's a really good example of a of a of a land grab market. Um, and those entrepreneurs are just like unbelievable sellers. They hit the pavement better than anyone, um, just as good as anyone as anyone I've ever seen. Um, and uh and and they're doing a great job. You know, another example on the on
15:42the lighthouse side would be, you know, we had we had like Harvey in in our article, um, and they just did a fantastic job of winning the right law firms for this very new, very, you know, theoretically high-risk initiative where you're augmenting your human workforce with, you know, AI capabilities and really automating what, you know, um, you know, junior lawyers would be doing, um, on a day-to-day basis. And so when