The a16z Show · Thursday, July 30, 2026
Lassie co-founder Stein Pella was inspired to start the company after witnessing his dentist, Dr. Quan, spending 200 hours a month on administrative paperwork. This experience highlighted a significant problem for small businesses, particularly in healthcare, where manual processes are prevalent despite modern technology adoption.
“A small business owner that is the number one rated doctor on Yelp, spending 200 hours a month on paperwork and busy work.”
“This was a couple of years ago, so I thought that this was a soft problem, because in the '70s, my mom worked in hospitals and that's what she did, she brought bags of cash to the bank and then processed payments by hand. But it wasn't a soft problem here.”
“So then we figured out that wait, our like hundreds of thousands of small businesses that literally do this all by hand. That would be quite a fascinating problem to solve.”