The a16z Show From Copilots to Agents: Rebuilding the Company Around AI
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Feb 18, 2026 
Carlos García Ottati, founder and CEO of Kavak, built Latin America’s largest online used-car marketplace. He talks about constructing multiple businesses under one product, replacing copilots with AI agents to handle most customer interactions, and enduring a year of flat growth while rebuilding operations, culture, and infrastructure to scale across markets.
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Defrauded Twice, Company Born
- Carlos García Ottati describes being defrauded twice when buying and selling cars in Latin America, which directly inspired Kavak's founding.
- That experience revealed systemic fraud, forged documents, and theft that made him build a safer, end-to-end car marketplace.
Build Four Businesses Under One Product
- Building in Latin America required creating multiple underlying businesses (e-commerce, reconditioning, financing, logistics) to make a single consumer product work.
- Carlos argues vertical integration and infrastructure are necessary where third-party services don't exist.
Build The Ontology Before Scale
- Carlos predicted the need for a company-wide 'ontology' and information highway to scale decisions and edge-case handling.
- He saw AI as the mechanism to connect knowledge across functions and maintain fast, high-quality service at scale.