The end goal is that every small business should run itself — busy work done by agents, with business agents interfacing with consumer agents and insurance company agents.
Stein lays out a three-step master plan: first dominate dental practices ($1B revenue opportunity), then expand to other doctor office types, and finally build AI agents that can run any small business. The ultimate vision is a network of agents — business-side, consumer-side, and insurance-side — all interoperating autonomously. ✦ AI generated
Stein (Lassie co-founder) · a16z Podcast · 2026-07-30 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 34:17
“How are you prioritizing what you build, who you sell to? Is there, you think, a world where Lassie for dentists makes lassie for physical therapists better?”
Yeah. I think three steps like the end goal here is that uh every small business should run itself, right? And the busy work is done by uh agents. uh we want to build agent for the business that then will interface with the personal agent of a consu consumer highly likely that then will interface with an agent at the insurance company or other parties that the business needs to interface and interact like with. Uh but step one is to Alexis's point like there are 160,000 dental practices in the US alone $200,000 in labor that Dr. Sloop and others can't find. So like um serving that market first. You're looking at a $1 billion in like a recurring revenue as a market um so we're that's like step one and then uh likely like we will pick another doctor office type um that like is not well served and has a big temp um and and needs consumer-l like product right because what we discussed a big part of not this you get the AI to work 95% accurateish it needs to really work and the onboarding needs to be as simple as onboarding on Coinbase. um or stripe. Um so like it will likely be another like doctor office type like um and then [sighs] uh the last uh part there is I think uh we've then trained AI agents uh to like run the small business and all small businesses at an abstract level like have a system of record they need to read and write into. Um they all have customers in doctor offices they happen to be patients but it's interacting and transacting around payments. You need to book appointments. So I think the end goal is if we served all the the doctor offices that we help all the small businesses across the world because we're just the best in you know building AI agents that uh salt of the earth people or people in Iowa and Paduka Kentucky and hopefully in Amsterdam like down the line where I'm from um and Germany Hamburg where Frederick is from can can start like using as well.
verbatim transcript · starts at 34:17
34:17we want to build agent for the business that then will interface with the personal agent of a consu consumer highly likely that then will interface with an agent at the insurance company or other parties that the business needs to interface and interact like with. Uh but step one is to Alexis's point like there are 160,000 dental practices in the US alone $200,000 in labor that Dr. Sloop and others can't find. So like um
34:41serving that market first. You're looking at a $1 billion in like a recurring revenue as a market um so we're that's like step one and then uh likely like we will pick another doctor office type um that like is not well served and has a big temp um and and needs consumer-l like product right because what we discussed a big part of not this you get the AI to work 95%
35:03accurateish it needs to really work and the onboarding needs to be as simple as onboarding on Coinbase. um or stripe. Um so like it will likely be another like doctor office type like um and then [sighs] uh the last uh part there is I think uh we've then trained AI agents uh to like run the small business and all small businesses at an abstract level like have a system of record they need
35:26to read and write into. Um they all have customers in doctor offices they happen to be patients but it's interacting and transacting around payments. You need to book appointments. So I think the end goal is if we served all the the doctor offices that we help all the small businesses across the world because we're just the best in you know building AI agents that uh salt of the earth
35:45people or people in Iowa and Paduka Kentucky and hopefully in Amsterdam like down the line where I'm from um and Germany Hamburg where Frederick is from can can start like using as well. Um so that's the that's the end goal but I think again similar to superhuman and Robin Hood we work that like laser focus on getting one thing really really right. Um and then scale it like from
36:05there. Yeah. >> But the end goal is to help them all. >> Amazing. I love that as a master plan. It's a good one. A big one. Um you both have been part of scaling many important companies in the past. Robin Hood and Coinbase and Superhum among others. And building a company in 2026 is like a whole brave new world. It's so different than ever before. What are like the
36:30biggest things you've carried over? You mentioned some of them already. And then what have you kind of had to unlearn or what do you think is new to being founders right now? >> There's a bunch of stuff that uh we're applying now that I I learned at Superhum. Um I think for one uh focusing on uh the right ICP and being really strict about who you onboard uh to
- ·Busy work done by autonomous agents
- ·Business agents talk to consumer agents, insurance agents
- ·Three-step plan: dental → doctor offices → all small businesses
- ·160,000 dental practices in the US alone
- ·$200,000 in labor per practice is unfillable
- ·Addressable market: $1B recurring revenue
- ·Pick another underserved doctor office type
- ·Requires 95% accuracy + Coinbase-easy onboarding
- ·All small businesses share patterns: records, payments, booking