Building AI for the $650B Home Services Market

Broccoli (YC W22) is building an AI front office for home services businesses, answering calls, following up with leads, and booking appointments across voice and text. Today, they serve more than 500 customers, are booking jobs at a run rate of over $1 billion a year, and expect to end the year at more than $60 million in ARR, up from zero just two years ago, after recently raising a $30 million Series B. In this Founder Fireside, Broccoli’s founders AJ Jain and Aditya Ketkar join YC's Gustaf Alstromer to share the long path to finding that business, from an earlier EV startup that never found product-market fit to visiting 140 contractors across the Bay Area to understand their biggest problems firsthand. They explain how embedding inside a plumbing company led to the first version of Broccoli, why answering missed calls became the wedge, and how AI could eventually reshape the work of technicians themselves. https://www.broccoli.com Chapters: 00:00 — What Broccoli Does 01:30 — The Long Road to YC 04:22 — Building Telematica in the Wrong Market 07:11 — Why the First Idea Didn’t Work 09:27 — Finding the Right Customer 11:13 — Going Door to Door 14:49 — Discovering the Real Problem 17:53 — Getting the First Customers 19:11 — The First Version of Broccoli 20:50 — What Product-Market Fit Felt Like 23:09 — Scaling to $60M ARR 26:19 — How AI Will Change the Trades Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

Gustaf AlstromerhostAJ JainguestAditya Ketkarguest

Oct 29, 202631mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: October 29, 2026
Duration: 31m
Channel: YC Root Access
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Broccoli (YC W22) is building an AI front office for home services businesses, answering calls, following up with leads, and booking appointments across voice and text. Today, they serve more than 500 customers, are booking jobs at a run rate of over $1 billion a year, and expect to end the year at more than $60 million in ARR, up from zero just two years ago, after recently raising a $30 million Series B. In this Founder Fireside, Broccoli’s founders AJ Jain and Aditya Ketkar join YC's Gustaf Alstromer to share the long path to finding that business, from an earlier EV startup that never found product-market fit to visiting 140 contractors across the Bay Area to understand their biggest problems firsthand. They explain how embedding inside a plumbing company led to the first version of Broccoli, why answering missed calls became the wedge, and how AI could eventually reshape the work of technicians themselves. https://www.broccoli.com Chapters: 00:00 — What Broccoli Does 01:30 — The Long Road to YC 04:22 — Building Telematica in the Wrong Market 07:11 — Why the First Idea Didn’t Work 09:27 — Finding the Right Customer 11:13 — Going Door to Door 14:49 — Discovering the Real Problem 17:53 — Getting the First Customers 19:11 — The First Version of Broccoli 20:50 — What Product-Market Fit Felt Like 23:09 — Scaling to $60M ARR 26:19 — How AI Will Change the Trades Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

SPEAKERS

Gustaf Alstromer
host
Y Combinator partner and interviewer/host for YC Root Access.
AJ Jain
guest
Co-founder of Broccoli (AI front office for home services), focused on business/GT-M and scaling.
Aditya Ketkar
guest
Co-founder of Broccoli, focused on engineering/product and building AI systems for home services workflows.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of YC Root Access, featuring Gustaf Alstromer and AJ Jain, Building AI for the $650B Home Services Market explores broccoli’s AI front office for trades, found through door-to-door learning Broccoli automates the front office for trades businesses by using AI to answer calls, follow up on leads, and schedule appointments across voice, text, and SMS.

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