What Happens When Al Agents Can Spend Your Money?

Jean-Denis Greze (0:00)

Impact in the world is really, really important. We really wanted to build something that mattered and help people.

Alex Rampell (0:06)

I get pinged by Ben Horowitz about, I found this amazing tool, it's called Town, it changed my life, it's so great.

Jean-Denis Greze (0:13)

We're trying to build a product that works with people to find more and more opportunities for them to deploy AI to be better at their job. No one had built great AI around these very common knowledge worker workflows, like meetings, meeting prep, getting people to be prepared for their day.

Alex Rampell (0:29)

Why is Town better than OpenAI and Anthropic?

Jean-Denis Greze (0:32)

It is risky always to be competing with your suppliers. You get to ask yourself, is that naturally the right state of the world? What if OpenAI is not the best model provider for the next three to five years?

So the first thing is we're just like, look, we're neutral. We will use whatever supplier we think is the best for you in the moment. That's one reason.

SPEAKER_3 (0:51)

I think the second reason, which is like very important, is AI is getting remarkably good at coding. So why are so many everyday business tests still done manually? In this episode, A16z general partner, Alex Rampell, sits down with town founder and CEO, Jean-Denis Greze, the former CTO of Plaid, to discuss what it takes to make AI genuinely useful at work. Jean-Denis shares why he walked away from a growing tax software business to build Tau, an AI assistant that works across email, calendars and everyday business workflows. They discuss why AI adoption is still concentrated among people who know how to experiment with the technology, how agents could make useful automation successful to everyone, and why businesses may want AI assistants that aren't tied to a single model provider.

They also get into what happens when agents start acting on our behalf, how that changes commerce and software, and why Jean-Denis believes the next big opportunity is helping people discover what AI can already do for them.

Alex Rampell (1:52)

Hi, everyone. I'm Alex Rampell, partner here at Andreessen Horowitz, and I'm here with Jean-Denis, the CEO and founder of Towne.

Jean-Denis Greze (1:58)

Thanks for having me.

Alex Rampell (1:59)

So what I find cool is that we worked together when you were the CTO of Plaid, and I had led our investment in Plaid here.

Jean-Denis Greze (2:05)

Yes.

Alex Rampell (2:06)

And I heard you were leaving and going to start a company. And then I remember you told me you're working on SMB tax tool.

Jean-Denis Greze (2:12)

Yes, we had coffee. We had coffee here in Manlo or Palo Alto.

Alex Rampell (2:17)

And I got a little not happy about it. I was like, oh, like I was so excited. Then it's like SMB tax tool. That's rough. All cards on the table, right?

SPEAKER_3 (2:27)

You didn't tell me that at the moment.

Alex Rampell (2:28)

I know, I know, but I want to, you know, I have to maintain a very happy face at all times. You never know. And then this is what I find so funny about this is, you know, this whole story. I get pinged by Ben Horowitz about, like, I found this amazing tool. It's called Town. It changed my life. It's so great. And I'm like, that's good, right? It's like an app, so therefore, it falls under my fund.

And I was like, wait, that's Jean-Denis' company, but he does SMB tax. That doesn't make any sense. I'm so confused. And that's what I texted you. And then next thing, you know, week later, we became partners, which I'm extremely excited about. But maybe tell us what Town does. And I think it's going to be incredibly interesting for everybody how you got to this point from the origination story. It's like you left Plaid, you started doing SMB tax, kind of walk us through the founder's journey from there to here.

Jean-Denis Greze (3:16)

I left Plaid, I took a few months off with family, because I knew that if I was going to be a founder, I was going to have no more time off for a while. Yeah, and then started exploring in the very B2B way, what would be interesting markets where AI could really change the product experience. And for a variety of reasons, tax made a lot of sense. There's a lot of text in tax, and LLMs are very good at text.

You deal with a lot of structured formats as inputs, like financials and lease documents. And it just felt like a medium where we could take this process of putting together a business tax return, pretty different from a personal tax return, and automate it. And I did what engineers do, which is we did technical due diligence to prove to ourselves that it could be done. And the feeling was like, yes, within the next two years, the process for a small to medium sized business of going from your financials and a bunch of documents about your business and a finished tax return, that could be automated with AI. And we spent a year building that. And I think there's a knife day in it, but it worked from a product perspective, but not from a go-to-market perspective. Meaning even though I have no doubt that tax prep will be automated, how do you reach millions of businesses efficiently and sell that product?