small-business-ai
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UgenticAI Wants to Clone the Expert - Then Put the Copy to Work
The Maryland venture studio is assembling AI software, compliance tools and a physical cloning studio around one bet: an expert's judgment should be able to work even when the expert does not.
Steijn Pelle
Steijn Pelle is the co-founder and CEO of Lassie, a San Francisco AI company building an autonomous back-office worker that runs the financial admin of independent businesses, starting with dental and medical practices. A Dutch transplant to Silicon Valley with roughly 15 years in startups, he cut his teeth on consumer growth at HealthTap, Coinbase and Robinhood before founding Lassie in 2021. In June 2026 the company raised a $35M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, bringing total funding to $47M, while operating in more than 700 practices across 49 states.
Cogent Labs
Cogent Labs is a full-service software and AI studio that deploys practical, 'boring' AI automation for small and mid-size businesses - the kind that quietly removes repetitive manual work like data entry, status updates, and report generation. Founded by CEO Ehmad Zubair, the team blends web, mobile, and generative-AI engineering (Python, Django, React, React Native) with a fixed-price consulting model that maps a company's operations, prioritizes the highest-ROI automations, and ships production-ready workflows in weeks rather than six-month pilots.