“When you put out a provider directory, frequently you're in the business of publishing the Encyclopedia Britannica. By the time you're able to really put it out there and present it to patients, it's already out of date. … Once you have the transaction, it's much more like Wikipedia. Every incremental transaction actually validates the information you have.”
a16z Podcast · Startups & Venture · October 2026
Julie Yoo had joked that nothing is certain except death, taxes and the provider directory problem: the industry's failure to keep accurate records of which doctors take which insurance. Kharraz, Zocdoc's CEO, claims the problem is largely solved once patients can actually book, because every booking corrects the data.
Transcript
…infrastructure that we have built that enables that marketplace and we make it available to third parties. So whether you are a payer, you're an AI platform, you have a consumer audience, you can now give them the ability to schedule their doctors seamlessly, no matter where they start the journey.
…who takes what insurance, et cetera. What's your view on why this problem has persisted? What is the fundamental incentive that we've failed as an industry to align that you think is the biggest blocker to having a true golden record for every licensed medical practitioner in this country?
Yeah, so I think actually the problem is to a large extent solved. If we look at what we're doing, we have the ability to schedule into the providers that are connected to us. We have data that's more than 99% accurate, which compares quite favorably with your average insurance directory. And the reason in the Gordian not here was actually enabling the transaction. When you put out a provider directory, frequently you're in the business of publishing the Encyclopedia Britannica, right? By the time you're able to really put it out there and present it to patients, it's already out of date. You're constantly chasing the problem. Once you have the transaction, it's much more like Wikipedia, right? Every incremental transaction actually validates the information you have. You make any mistake you make exactly once and then you know what's going in. Now, of course, as you know, the actual transactibility and the ability for a patient to book seamlessly was an extremely hard problem to solve. There are hundreds of different EHRs. There's tens of thousands of insurance plans that need to be mapped. There are many, many different ways to work in…
Okay, that's amazing. So that is a bold claim. And I'm so glad that you are confident that we have solved this problem. Can we actually double click on that a little bit, Oliver? When I think back to the way that we approach this problem at Kairos, we largely, just to abstract out the problem a…
Yeah, so I think problem one is distinct from the others, right? This is information that doesn't change as often. Where did they go to med school? Like, where is their practice located? That seems to be the most tractable problem. And that's why most people focus there. The second two problems are…
We used to joke that 3M was our biggest competitor because of post-it notes. The other kind of unique distinction that ZocDoc has relative to a lot of others in the space is the fact that you've always been consumer aligned. And to the point I made earlier, you guys are now a household brand. I…
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