Drillbit (YC S24)

Of startups worth $5B+ started since 2012, Y Combinator was seed investor 20% of them (I'm also quite proud of Initialized Capital as seed co-lead for 3 of those too!)

Shout out to Kelsey Bishop for helping us grow the team so quickly and efficiently! Before we raised, I naively thought that hiring would be easy - you just need to pay people, right? Nope. After a rocky start, Candor swooped in and took over, and I'm super grateful. As of Monday, we now have 10 FTE with more help coming soon! After working 12+ hours almost every single day since 2023, and with a large part of that time spent working alone, it's an incredible feeling to see this take on a life of its own. Having so many smart, driven, and organized people beginning to take ownership over Drillbit and build on the vision is pretty surreal.

Some of my favorite founders that we’re hiring for right now: - Alexander Seutin at Drillbit (YC S24) - Jackson Bierfeldt at JotPsych - Conner Aldrich at GovSignals Alex, Jackson, and Conner all have the same traits that make them amazing to work with. First, they’re deeply thoughtful about their culture - not in a "we have values written on our wall" way, but they genuinely know what environment works for their team. Nothing's random. When we talk about team fit during interviews, you can tell they've really thought this through. Second, they’ve interviewed enough to develop a sixth sense for talent. When we send great candidates their way, there's immediate recognition. This makes pitching their companies to candidates SUPER easy because I really believe in what they’re building and know that working for them is going to be fun. If anyone’s looking to join one of these teams, DM me!

Our founder Alexander Seutin had a chance to discuss the future of work in the home service industry alongside Christopher Petkas and Alexander Jekowsky a few weeks back. Listen to the full conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gP52PjHd https://lnkd.in/gX-hURcj

This is very well said. As more voice AI startups pop up, I’m often asked what sets us apart. I always like to remind people: you wouldn’t hire an employee just because they can speak. Voice shouldn’t be a company’s differentiator. Voice is simply a bridge connecting the unstructured, messy world humans operate in with the structured world of SaaS products. For the first time, we can build systems that proactively seek out the information needed to unblock themselves—just like humans do. Software systems can now become a truly hands-off service, driving real business value without sitting idle, waiting for human intervention through a dashboard. Like Kojo said, voice is just the trigger. Your startup’s IP isn’t wrapped up in your ElevenLabs integration. Your company’s value lies in what you do with those conversations.

I'm looking forward to speaking at SXSW this year alongside Alexander Jekowsky and Christopher Petkas! If you're going to be in Austin, stop by Lumos House this Sunday. We'll be talking about how AI is shaping the future of "boring businesses". Specifically, I'll be sharing anecdotes from our real world experience operating home service businesses with the help of Drillbit (YC S24)'s AI employees. Working with Codie A. Sanchez's team - especially Steven Montgomery and the awesome folks over at ResiBrands - has been an incredible experience. Their belief in our mission - and our aligned views on the future of this industry - has allowed this team to put theory into practice. It is now clear that anyone overlooking this approach will be left behind. In the first few months of our partnership, we've been able to save Resi approx. $1M in yearly expenses while giving back enormous amounts of time to hundreds of independent businesses. That time is enabling owners to provide significantly higher quality service to homeowners across the country. To make it even sweeter, Drillbit (YC S24) enabled businesses are now achieving higher lead conversion rates than anyone else resulting in huge customer acquisition cost savings. Those savings can be both passed on to homeowners and reinvested into the business. All of this added efficiency is an essentially step in reducing the operational costs involved in living in a home. I'm proud to be working on a team that is pushing the boundaries on such an important issue. RSVP here: https://lu.ma/fm5yd7ah

New Andreessen Horowitz thesis - an update on AI voice agents! 2024 was a huge year for voice agents, with massive model breakthroughs + hundreds of new startups. How has the space evolved, and where do we see opportunity in 2025? To start: we see voice as one of AI's biggest unlocks. In the last six months, we've seen massive steps forward on the model side. Latency and reliability are now largely solved - and interruptibility and emotionality have made major strides, too. Voice AI is now nearly at human standards, allowing tech to replace labor on the phone. As a result, there's been an explosion in startups building applications on these models. Y Combinator alone has seen 90 voice agent cos. Many are targeting specific verticals - by industry (e.g. home services, dental) or function (e.g. recruiting, customer support) - and are scaling fast! In most cases, we see voice is a wedge - not the product. Most companies need to tap into adjacent workflows: pushing call details to a CRM, automating follow-ups, etc. What we're looking for in voice agent startups: - Building in an industry where phone is the preferred or required medium, or has a much higher success rate than other modalities - Calls are constrained — both in length and in format/outcome - Voice agent delivers 50%+ cost reduction with similar success rate as a human - Calls are "life or death" for the customer —they will pay significant $ to get them made or answered...but not for the end consumer - When selling into SMB/mid-market, the agent product has easy integration. When selling into enterprise, complex integration can be a moat! If you're building here, reach out! 👋 We are very actively investing in this space. And read our full thesis here: https://lnkd.in/gQ_psdxJ

Residential contractors are drowning in office work that has nothing to do with their core business. Drillbit (YC S24) automates all of it so that they can get back to the real work. Residential contractors provide a critical service to our economy: building and maintaining the supply of housing. Unfortunately, those businesses are still operated in an incredibly manual way. Across the U.S., we spend about $675B/year on simple home maintenance. Over half of that cost is attributed to the office work involved with finding, coordinating, and managing those small jobs. Business owners need to (and prefer to) remain focused on the real work instead of non-value-driving efforts. Founded by Liam Osler and Alexander Seutin, Drillbit allows contractors to be entirely hands-off, enabling them to focus 100% of their time on their core business. They've built AI receptionists that can coordinate between businesses and homeowners at every stage in the process. The receptionists then work with Drillbit's AI estimators to provide quotes. Together, they then use their CRM, project management, and payment solutions to store updates and take action throughout the process. Congrats on the launch, Liam and Alex! 🚀 https://lnkd.in/gQwdwFgj