Frederick Schrader, co-founder of Lassie, discusses the limitations of off-the-shelf foundation models when applying them to small business and healthcare administrative tasks.
“The models are trained on so much data and they're so large and yet they actually don't really know how to do any of this work. Like they don't have the workflows encoded in any way.”
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More from Frederick Schrader
Insight
Schrader: SMBs lack dedicated staff to operate software tools
“A huge difference between SMBs in general and enterprises is that in SMBs there's nobody to use the tools. Like you can build a tool, but there's nobody sitting there that's going to use it.”
Frederick SchraderJul 29, 2026▶ 18:21“Every small business should run itself” | Lassie with a16z
Disclosure
Schrader: Lassie ships products at 95% automation rather than 100%
“We want to get to like a sufficient level of automation across any product to before we sell it. So, you know, for us, I think that's like, 95 plus, say, but not necessarily a hundred. Like, I don't think we're going to wait until we get into to a hundred with…”
Frederick SchraderJul 29, 2026▶ 19:20“Every small business should run itself” | Lassie with a16z
Insight
Schrader: Onboarding non-ICP customers is more painful for AI labor products
“If we onboard the wrong practice and say we can't actually automate that much of their work, then now we're kind of stuck with this customer that you know, we claim we're going to automate a bunch of labor for them. We can't do it. Are we going to do it? Are w…”
Frederick SchraderJul 29, 2026▶ 36:54“Every small business should run itself” | Lassie with a16z
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