A $40 restaurant order or a $40,000 HVAC job: how one insight built a $1 billion startup

‘When a restaurant misses a phone call, that’s a $30, $40 order,’ Avoca co-founder Tyson Chen told Fortune. ‘When a home service business misses a phone call, that could be a $30,000–$40,000 HVAC install they’re missing. So, instantly, we thought: wait, this is a completely different order of magnitude.’

That realisation reshaped the company Chen built with fellow MIT graduate Apurva Shrivastava, whom he met during a poker night in 2022. Chen’s mother ran an acupuncture practice in Pennsylvania, and Shrivastava had grown up watching his parents’ small business lose customers to missed calls in Michigan — both had lived versions of the same problem as children answering phones for family businesses that could not afford to lose a single lead.

The pair initially built an AI answering service for restaurants before pivoting to home service businesses. In 2023, they built a product specifically for Rescue Air, which helped them land their first customers. Avoca’s AI voice agents now serve plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians and roofers, picking up calls instantly, booking appointments directly into a company’s calendar, and following up on old unsigned quotes.

According to Fortune, Avoca has raised more than $125 million over the last couple of years, valuing the company at $1 billion.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by Vronmikah2024