Industries with historically low software adoption (like trial law or dentistry) are now viable markets. Instead of selling a tool, AI startups are selling an outcome—the automation of a specific labor role. This shifts the value proposition from a software expense to a direct labor cost replacement.

AI enables "software does labor" business models in industries previously deemed too small for specialized software, like dental offices or trial law. By replacing or augmenting specific labor tasks, startups can justify high-value contracts in markets that historically wouldn't pay for traditional SaaS tools.

Electronic Health Record (EHR) companies have historically used proprietary formats to lock in customers. AI's ability to read and translate unstructured data from any source effectively breaks these data silos, finally making patient data truly portable.

Contrary to expectations, professions that are typically slow to adopt new technology (medicine, law) are showing massive enthusiasm for AI. This is because it directly addresses their core need to reason with and manage large volumes of unstructured data, improving their daily work.

The most significant opportunity for AI in healthcare lies not in optimizing existing software, but in automating 'net new' areas that once required human judgment. Functions like patient engagement, scheduling, and symptom triage are seeing explosive growth as AI steps into roles previously held only by staff.

Contrary to its reputation for slow tech adoption, the legal industry is rapidly embracing advanced AI agents. The sheer volume of work and potential for efficiency gains are driving swift innovation, with firms even hiring lawyers specifically to help with AI product development.

AI tools can be rapidly deployed in areas like regulatory submissions and medical affairs because they augment human work on documents using public data, avoiding the need for massive IT infrastructure projects like data lakes.

AI is transforming business models by enabling companies to sell software bundled with the actual work it performs. This "work-as-a-service" approach is unlocking historically software-resistant markets like legal and construction, where the value proposition is the completed task, not just the tool.

Counterintuitively, industries like finance and healthcare that were slow to adopt the cloud are aggressively adopting AI. This is driven by their high operational complexity, which AI is uniquely suited to solve. In contrast, early cloud adopters like media are now lagging due to fears over content leakage.