Yesterday on LinkedIn I wrote about how so many parents are building ‘agents’ to sit on chat groups, emails, social media, and keep the calendar and todo lists up to date.
There is a huge amount of administrative work that every parent ends up doing, and it only gets more complicated if you have more than one child or more than one school or sports situation.
I find this interesting because it’s an example of AI used to shift the power dynamics of a shitty system in the favor of a person, instead of the other way around.
We all have to exist within and use systems that are not optimized for us, and that we can’t change. These agents are one tool that we can use to reface complex and cruel systems into something that works for us, in the ways that we need.
If I were a VC (I am not!) I would propose a category here and call it consumer-empowering enterprise software or something along those lines; and look for the markets where:
- the consumer must use the software but the provider has no incentive to care about their experience, with high switching costs (you won’t change to another school because you don’t like the way they share announcements, you won’t quit your job because HR uses a bad software system),
- this often happens in ecosystems where the full experience isn’t owned by any single entity or platform (cough, healthcare, cough), and
- where the core need is information management and consolidation, and there are real consequences for failing to perform and
- where the system benefits from friction, or at minimum doesn’t care about you experiencing it (insurance claims, appeals, warranty support, etc.) and
- where the ability to have an agent ultimately take action for you would be an absolute cherry on the sundae cake and provide a ton of value. (ie, handle the customer support bot to get the warranty form, fill in the form, follow up after six weeks when there’s been no response, write the note to the credit card company before the deadline, etc.)
Given that framework, there are lots of opportunity spaces to build in here, for yourself, or as a tool for others:
- healthcare coordination — if you have even mildly interesting health considerations, coordinating information across providers, making sure follow-ups happen, and meds are organized, that questions are answered
- Insurance and individual benefits management — help optimize your plan selections and make sure you track, file, and use your benefits, and get the care you’re entitled to
- Personal tax information management — if your taxes are even mildly interesting, record and file the receipts and docs, and highlight best strategies to prep the package for your accountant (or more)!
And so on with:
- Home ownership
- Estate settlement
- Vehicle acquisition and maintenance
- Eldercare
- Any project where you might hire a general contractor
- Customer support, and getting service your warranties entitle you to
- Managing parking tickets and other straightforward legal matters
- Group travel planning and on the ground coordination
So look for the spaces with severe fragmentation, high coordination cost, long-lived state and needs to follow up repeatedly, lots of documents/messages/information to manage, and enough economic or emotional value and high enough consequences for mistakes that just collecting that information is hugely beneficial.
It’s also worth saying out loud that the people who can build these agents themselves today are privileged enough to have knowledge and access to do so; we should focus on making the tools open and accessible for everyone who would benefit from taking some of the power back from these systems.
PS. If you want to play with building this sort of thing yourself, please be very thoughtful about the security and risks, use a system (like nanoclaw) that helps manage those things, and consider if a local LLM is necessary to keep information private!
Originally published on Medium.
Hilary Mason 