Phonely (YC S24)

Let me blow your mind for a second. The average person will talk to about 378,000 people in their entire lifetime. This month alone, Phonely (YC S24) will answer 1.2 million calls. That’s the equivalent of more than three lifetimes of conversations… every single month. On the other side of those calls are: - Healthcare appointment scheduling for top hospitals - Lead qualification for Medicare, health, and auto insurance companies - Customer support for household-name enterprises - Dentists, real estate agents, veterinarians, landscapers, and hundreds of other small businesses around the world. I still remember the day we celebrated our 100th call answered on Phonely. The crazy thing is, it doesn’t feel that different. We’re still the same people with the same mission: to answer a billion calls for a million businesses. Thank you to everyone who’s supported us, and to the team that has worked day, night, and weekend to make this possible.

📞🤖The Voice AI Revolution: "What If You Could Talk to AI Like in the Movies?"   We’ve all seen sci-fi films where AI conversations feel perfectly human. Turns out, we are getting there—but the journey there is full of hilarious (and unexpected) twists.   At #SuperAI2025, Will Bodewes (founder, Phonely (YC S24)) breaks down the latest in Voice AI: 🎥https://lnkd.in/gwzUCdxQ   🔹 Cracking the Voice AI Challenge  - Voice AI isn’t just chatbots with sound. - The real test? Mastering human quirks— emotion, hesitation, and interrupting—things that make conversations feel real. 🔹 From Booking Calls to Awkward Pauses: - From call centers to appointment scheduling, Voice AI is transforming businesses. - But we also discuss the awkward moments when users realize they’re talking to AI: “Wait… I’m talking to a machine?” 🔹 The Road Ahead - Latency, emotional intelligence, and seamless integration remain hurdles. - As Will puts it: “Voice AI today is like e-commerce in the '90s”—we’re just getting started.   Voice could soon be the default way we interact with tech. But are we ready for the ethical, emotional, and practical implications?   Ack & tks to the #SuperAI2025 team Tim Williamson, John McGuinness, Hayley Parrish, Russell Wong; Liz Asri; Alexander Fiskum Peter Noszek for support and making the conversation happen! #VoiceAI #SuperAI #ConversationalAI #FutureOfWork #CustomerExperience #DigitalTransformation SuperAI #AI

How are we only 2 weeks out 🤯 Who else will be there?!

Two PhD students build a voice agent from scratch—and take on a $350B industry. Enter Groq: the catalyst. Today, Phonely (YC S24) handles 100K+ real calls/month, powered by Groq’s ultra-fast inference and zero-latency LoRA hotswapping. No budget. No excuses. Just speed, accuracy, and a team that dared to build fast. I can’t get enough of real stories like this one. Congrats to the Phonely (YC S24) team on the beginnings of your journey.

🗞️ Specter Weekly Monitor is out! Revenue Signals of the Week 💸 - Arist hit $5M ARR - Spheron Network hit $15M ARR - OGTool hit $252K ARR - Zovo hit $384K ARR 5 Stealth Opportunities 👻 - Roy Ng (1 exit Bond (acquired by FIS), ex-Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Twilio, Mapbox) - Dilip Rajan (1 exit Jumpcut, ex-BuzzFeed, Vyrtex) - Steve Koshansky (2 exits Hashdex + Plex Labs, ex-Nasdaq, Bridgewater Associates, US Army) - Lucas Dickey (1 exit Fernish, ex-KEXP, Amazon, DoubleTwist, Thinknear by Telenav (Acquired by inMarket, August 2019), Azibo, DeepCast) - Kishore Jalleda (ex-Zynga, Yahoo, Microsoft) 5 Startups Drew Major VC Buzz 🔥 - PufferAI (🔥 featured 9x in 90 days) - Shiro (🔥 featured 5x in 90 days) - Ponder (🔥 featured 4x in 90 days) - Smithery (🔥 featured 6x in 90 days) - Ato (aka Eighteen Labs) (🔥 featured 8x in 90 days) 5 Trailblazing Startups Currently Slaying It 🔝 - Digantara (🌟 Specter - Global Rank 6) - Refine (🌟 Specter - Global Rank 9) - Phonely (YC S24) (🌟 Specter - Global Rank 73) - cside (🌟 Specter - Global Rank 187) - Hatchet (🌟 Specter - Global Rank 188) 👀 Want more? Full article link in comments!

These two founders took on the $350B call center industry with a voice agent built using open-source tools. No budget. No headcount. No excuses. What started as a quick fix for a parent’s small business, now handles 100K+ real calls per month. This is the story of Phonely (YC S24), and how Will Bodewes and Nisal Ranasinghe built what every big player said was impossible. Will and Nisal were deep into AI research, each pursuing a PhD in Australia, when Will’s dad called with a real-world problem: “I’m losing customers. I can’t hire enough receptionists. Everyone calls at once, and no one picks up.” So they did what most wouldn’t. They built the solution themselves. They hacked together a prototype using OpenAI, ElevenLabs, and basic call routing. It technically worked. But real users hung up. The lag was too long. The voices felt fake. The system didn’t listen. Voice AI in production was a different beast. Latency was the killer. For years, teams gave up trying to fix it. But Will and Nisal dug deeper, knowing even the smartest AI fails if it feels slow. Speed wasn’t a feature. It was survival. Then came Groq. Groq gave Phonely the fast inference speed they actually needed to run real-time voice AI. ✅ P95 latency dropped ✅ Responses felt instant ✅ Agents finally felt human The magic wasn’t just raw speed. It was zero-latency LoRA hotswapping. Groq could swap between 20+ fine-tuned behaviors instantly thanks to on-chip memory. Phonely hit 99.2% accuracy. No one could tell it wasn’t human. Will and Nisal finally did it. Phonely started booking real appointments. They built a drag-and-drop canvas that let anyone design a custom voice agent. By the end of a sales call, they had built a working agent. Live. In front of the customer. Now Phonely routes thousands of calls through Groq-powered models every day. Each one is fine-tuned for the job. From car dealerships to dental clinics to national chains, AI agents are handling the calls people hate and doing it better than ever. Phonely started with a phone call from a frustrated dad. Will and Nisal listened, built something small, and watched it grow into something real. Not every breakthrough needs a blueprint. Sometimes the biggest ones happen when you just Build Fast.

Some products recently caught me off guard—in the best way. They’re not just “cool tech”—they’re rewiring the fundamental atoms of how businesses operate. I’ve spoken with the founders of each of these(except Equals), and I’m genuinely excited about the direction they’re pushing the world. Here’s what stood out: 1. Tabular Financial Intelligence Runway is rethinking how financial reporting should work—freeing teams from static spreadsheets with a Notion-like UI, live charts, and flexible what-if scenarios. Equals brings real-time data pipelines directly into your spreadsheet, making dashboards feel alive and reactive. → They’re nudging us closer to a post-Excel era 2. Autonomous Office Operations Phonely (YC S24) is putting a highly capable LLM behind your business phone line—handling calls, screening, routing, even handling trivia-level Q&A with personality. ShareCal is aiming for your calendar— assisting/automating coordination and scheduling beyond what any of us alone could do. → The future of human-work interaction channel is managed by a new engine of our time. 3. Evidence gathering for modern compliance Luthor and Delve are tackling the messy, expensive challenge when you deal with global scale, legacy systems, and high-hopes for speedy compliance process. → If “trust” is the new currency, these tools are your accounting system. I’m not affiliated with these companies—I just believe in what they’re building. Let’s push the frontier forward.  What else should be on my radar? If you're building in this space, let’s connect. 💼🚀 #TechTrends #ProductInnovation

𝗜𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗼? Unclear pricing, surprise fees, and staffing issues can leave businesses paying too much for service that doesn’t quite hit the mark. In our newest blog post (link in comments), we dive into why traditional contact center pricing is often complicated and expensive - and what steps you can take to change that. 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘄𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗣𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘆: 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱, 𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁: - Bills only for actual talk time, no paying for downtime - Operates around the clock with no extra charges or staffing headaches - Supports multiple languages with ease - Scales instantly without the hassle of hiring or scheduling Curious how Phonely can save you money and boost your customer support? Check us out at:

June was our biggest month yet at Phonely (YC S24) - thank you for being part of it! Here’s what went down: 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽: We joined forces with TSA Group - Australia to bring AI-powered calling to more businesses. 𝗠𝗮𝗷𝗼𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀: ✔️ Outbound Campaigns: Now you can launch campaigns via CSV, Google Sheets, or Webhooks - complete with smart call controls and number rotation to maximize connect rates. ✔️ Voicemail Detection: Our most advanced engine yet accurately detects voicemails so teams never miss a lead. ✔️ Workflow Upgrades: Features like precall personalization, post-call triggers, scripted responses, and hotkeys empower teams to deliver personalized, efficient customer experiences at scale. 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗧𝗼𝘂𝗿: We visited enterprise customers across London, Spain, Singapore, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney. Hearing their feedback firsthand fuels our mission and drives continuous innovation. 𝗧𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆, 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗵𝗶𝘁 𝟵𝟵% 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝟳𝟬% 𝗿𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀, a huge leap in call center efficiency and customer satisfaction. The feedback and support from our clients have been incredible. A massive thank you to everyone who’s helped make this possible - our team, partners, and customers alike. July is shaping up to be even bigger. Stay tuned for exciting updates!