Someone on my team recently gave me the feedback, “You live 10 years in the future. Most people are doing their best to get through this week.”
Fair point. But as CEO, the most important part of my job is to see the future before it arrives, have a theory about what it means for our business, and make sure we are ready for it.
And right now, we are at the precipice of an exceedingly rare moment of exponential change that should command every CEO’s attention. It is the kind that will reorder industries, turn decades of competitive advantage into an asset or liability, and make companies dramatically more valuable or more vulnerable.
Earlier this month, I sent my leadership team a memo titled “The AI Agents are Coming (Faster Than You Think).” For years, I’d held the conviction that this change was coming, but it was finally evident; We have observed that on average, traffic on Zocdoc from AI agents has doubled roughly every 10 days since early September.
Within days, the team launched a “Welcome, Agents” campaign, inviting all AI agents to use our healthcare access infrastructure to reliably connect patients to care. We moved fast because when change becomes exponential, waiting for certainty is an existential risk.
The deceptive part about exponential growth is that it looks insignificant until suddenly it isn’t. By the time you recognize the magnitude, it is too late to prepare.
Will AI agents make your business more valuable or more vulnerable?
If you do not yet know whether your business is more valuable or more vulnerable, you are inherently in the latter camp. You cannot prepare for a future you have not yet come to understand.
Some companies will become more valuable because they provide something agents need: differentiated products, trusted results, or infrastructure to complete transactions. Others will discover that their competitive advantage rests on undifferentiated content or a consumer interface that agents will bypass.
At Zocdoc, we believe AI agents will make our business more valuable. The same will be true for companies like Shopify, Stripe, Airbnb, DoorDash, Lyft, SeatGeek and more, whose value comes not primarily from their consumer interfaces, but from what’s beneath it: verified information, trusted results, and serving as infrastructure that enables real-world transactions.
That is because an agent is only as trustworthy as its ability to deliver. It can generate an answer, but it cannot generate a real reservation, an available hotel room, or a product in stock. The companies that help agents verify reality and transact reliably stand to become more ubiquitous and indispensable.
In Zocdoc’s case, an agent can recommend a dermatologist. But it cannot verify that the doctor is actually in-network, has real availability this Thursday at 10:15 a.m., and reliably book an appointment that will be on the provider’s calendar when the patient arrives.
That requires more than unverified content scraped from the open web. It requires trusted infrastructure that connects to the real world. For nearly twenty years, we’ve connected healthcare’s fragmented systems, insurance networks, provider schedules, and scheduling integrations and workflows.
We originally built that infrastructure to power our own marketplace. Now, we are extending it to power access to care wherever patients start their search, including through AI agents. We no longer require patients to solely come directly to Zocdoc.com; we are happy to bring better access to care to them.
This is the opportunity we see in agents: a new distribution channel that will help patients reliably access care, help our network of providers reach patients who are searching for them, and help AI platforms keep users’ trust and deliver on their potential. Importantly, the incentives are aligned, too. Providers pay Zocdoc a fee when we help them reach and book new patients, whether through our marketplace or other channels like AI agents. We can also generate revenue for eligible agent partners.
You are early until you are late
Waiting for certainty is not a viable strategy amid a rare change like this. Our “Welcome, Agents” page was a small step. But the more important steps prepared us to act on it: having a thesis, building on an existing advantage, and acting quickly.
That is what all leaders must be doing, yesterday: identifying what agents will commoditize, what they will make more valuable, and what their companies must build or change to benefit. I would rather be early and learning than late and scrambling.
A wave of exponential change does not give you the luxury of waiting until the future is obvious. By the time the wave arrives, you will either be riding it or getting swept away.
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