Building AI for the $650B Home Services Market

1. 0:00 – 1:30

   What Broccoli Does

   1. GAGustaf Alstromer0:00

      [upbeat music] I'm really excited to talk to you guys because this is the first time you're talking publicly about what you're doing, and you're a very, very successful YC company. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. I've known you for over four years, and I've seen what-- all what you've been working on in those four years and how incredibly impressive Broccoli is. The truth is, nobody else knows. [chuckles] You've been very much under the radar compared to other companies. So I'm just, like, really stoked to be part of putting this out, uh, in, in the real world. Maybe we can start with, um... Before we get into all the details and the long story, just tell me about Broccoli. What is Broccoli today, and where is your company today? Where are you?

   2. AJAJ Jain0:42

      So Broccoli today automates their entire front office. So the AI answers all their customer calls, follows up on leads, schedules those appointments, and we do this across voice, text, and SMS. Um, today we serve over 500 customers, and, uh, we just got this stat last week where we are booking at, like, the run rate for our, um, AI-booked jobs is at over a billion dollars for our customers. So Broccoli is booking that much revenue for our existing customers today. And, uh, the growth has been phenomenal. We are gonna end the year at over 60 million of ARR, so we're accelerating. And the last two years, we were at $0 in revenue, and we'll end the year at over 60 million.

   3. GAGustaf Alstromer1:29

      Wow. Yeah.

2. 1:30 – 4:22

   The Long Road to YC

   1. GAGustaf Alstromer1:30

      I, I... Like, basically, we'll talk about sort of like how this all started. You moved to the Bay Area in 2024 and, and there's, like, pretty clear straight line from when you settled on this idea, but there was a, a long journey prior to that. Let's just start from the very beginning. You guys applied to YC three, three, three different times. You interviewed three different times with different ideas. Um, and then you finally got accepted with Telematica. Tell us what Telematica was and, like, how do you guys get started with this?

   2. AKAditya Ketkar1:57

      We met in college. Uh, we had our dorms right next to each other, and we have been working on different ideas right from our second year in college, like sophomore year in college. We started out with a very simple local delivery app inside the college campus itself, just a classic type of idea.

   3. AJAJ Jain2:16

      We, we, we got banned [laughter] for that.

   4. AKAditya Ketkar2:18

      We could not take payments. We could not-

   5. AJAJ Jain2:20

      Yeah

   6. AKAditya Ketkar2:20

      ... like, do a lot of things because they were just deemed illegal-

   7. AJAJ Jain2:23

      Yeah

   8. AKAditya Ketkar2:23

      ... outright. Uh, but that just gave us a quick start. Like, whatever he was trying, I was involved in that. Whatever I was trying, he was kind of involved in that every, every, every time. So right from 2017, we have been working on one or the other ideas.

   9. GAGustaf Alstromer2:39

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AKAditya Ketkar2:40

       Uh-

   11. GAGustaf Alstromer2:40

       Which colle-college did you guys go to?

   12. AKAditya Ketkar2:42

       Uh, we are from BITS Pilani, uh, in India.

   13. GAGustaf Alstromer2:45

       Mm-hmm.

   14. AKAditya Ketkar2:46

       So yeah, we, we worked on s-something for the first three years, and then when COVID struck, I was stuck in Spain for some time because I was there for a research-

   15. GAGustaf Alstromer2:56

       Mm-hmm

   16. AKAditya Ketkar2:56

       ... uh, internship. During that time, we decided to work on this edtech idea together, and we ran that for about three years. That's where we met Gustaf for the first-

   17. GAGustaf Alstromer3:06

       I remember having a f-follow-up phone call from the interview-

   18. AKAditya Ketkar3:09

       Yeah

   19. GAGustaf Alstromer3:09

       ... and just be like, "You guys are great, but, like, are you sure you wanna work on this idea?" [chuckles]

   20. AKAditya Ketkar3:13

       Exactly.

   21. GAGustaf Alstromer3:13

       I was like hin-trying to hint that, like, maybe not.

   22. AKAditya Ketkar3:15

       Yeah. Yeah. We, we, we worked on that for one and a half years, and Gustaf's wor- or article's words came out to be true. Like, we, we could not scale it. It was just very hard to scale. Uh, so we decided to shut that down, spent a good three months taking a break. But we were very determined that we will start something, for sure.

   23. GAGustaf Alstromer3:34

       Mm-hmm.

   24. AKAditya Ketkar3:34

       So we had this amazing framework that there is no losses as such for us. Let's pick an idea, work for-- work on it for three months.

   25. GAGustaf Alstromer3:42

       Yeah.

   26. AKAditya Ketkar3:43

       If it does not work out, perfect. Move on to the next idea. Like, we can keep on doing that for the next 10 years. We don't care.

   27. GAGustaf Alstromer3:48

       Mm-hmm.

   28. AKAditya Ketkar3:49

       So surprisingly, the first, the very first idea that we chose was Telematica-

   29. GAGustaf Alstromer3:55

       Mm-hmm

   30. AKAditya Ketkar3:55

       ... because EVs were just starting to become a thing back in India, uh, and we were just good at software. So what is the intersection of something which is very hardware driven, but we are good at software? It was just APIs for electric vehicles.
3. 4:22 – 7:11

   Building Telematica in the Wrong Market

   1. GAGustaf Alstromer4:22

      Got it. Got it. But EVs were still very small in India.

   2. AKAditya Ketkar4:24

      Yeah.

   3. GAGustaf Alstromer4:25

      Like, EV- in the US, in, it was still kind of... It was growing, but still small.

   4. AKAditya Ketkar4:29

      Yeah.

   5. GAGustaf Alstromer4:30

      Um, was India the right place to build Telematica?

   6. AJAJ Jain4:33

      Like, the short answer is no because as soon as we got into YC, after like four months, we moved out and we moved to London.

   7. GAGustaf Alstromer4:40

      Mm.

   8. AJAJ Jain4:40

      So India was a great starting point, but the market was still not big enough.

   9. GAGustaf Alstromer4:45

      Yeah.

   10. AJAJ Jain4:45

       And, uh, the use cases that we were trying to build just did not exist. So, uh, turned out that India was not the best market for us to start in.

   11. GAGustaf Alstromer4:53

       How did you decide to go to London? It's like that's not-

   12. AJAJ Jain4:56

       Um-

   13. GAGustaf Alstromer4:56

       That's a long, long journey.

   14. AJAJ Jain4:57

       [chuckles] Yeah, and I, I never had, uh, traveled outside the country before we started this company. So what happened was, like, we, we announced that we were part of YC, and then you get out-- like, you get, um, people reaching out to you from across the world.

   15. GAGustaf Alstromer5:12

       Mm-hmm.

   16. AJAJ Jain5:12

       So we had a lot of European energy companies-

   17. GAGustaf Alstromer5:15

       Mm

   18. AJAJ Jain5:15

       ... reaching out to us and telling us that, "Hey, can I use your API to connect to a Tesla or a BMW?" And we're like, "That's pretty interesting. Tell us more about this." So we made our first trip just as soon as Demo Day ended. We raised a seed round.

   19. GAGustaf Alstromer5:29

       Mm-hmm.

   20. AJAJ Jain5:29

       And we traveled to, uh, Norway for two months.

   21. GAGustaf Alstromer5:32

       Wow.

   22. AJAJ Jain5:32

       We met over 20 companies there, and then we were exposed to their use cases, which we thought were, were much more interesting as they were trying to figure out a solution there-

   23. GAGustaf Alstromer5:41

       Yeah

   24. AJAJ Jain5:41

       ... over the last two years versus back in India. Uh, no one was thinking about the use cases that we were trying to build towards. So we then decided, and we came back after two months, and then within a month, we took the call that we are gonna, uh, shut down operations, and operations was basically us staying in an Airbnb in Bangalore. And then we moved to London, and then we were just spending majority of our time traveling. And-

   25. GAGustaf Alstromer6:02

       This seems like a pattern. Moving to, moving to Norway, which is at the time and still is the number one EV country in the world-

   26. AJAJ Jain6:08

       Mm-hmm. Yeah

   27. GAGustaf Alstromer6:08

       ... like highest penetration of EVs. What kind of problems were people describing to you in Norway that they- One that you helped with

   28. AJAJ Jain6:14

       Yeah, several. And the, the biggest problem was basically, um, they were not just using more EVs, or they were not just adopting more EVs, but they were also adopting renewable energy and clean energy sources, and you can't store energy on a grid level. So it was a very challenging problem to manage the energy, um, supply with the energy demand.

   29. GAGustaf Alstromer6:34

       Mm-hmm.

   30. AJAJ Jain6:35

       Uh, so their use case was more around, uh, demand response. So based on how much energy is being produced through wind and solar-
4. 7:11 – 9:27

   Why the First Idea Didn’t Work

   1. GAGustaf Alstromer7:11

      Why did this not work?

   2. AJAJ Jain7:13

      That is a great question, and we-- all of us, like even today, this idea sounds brilliant, like this is world-class. But if you look at the economics, uh, from a consumer point of view, you're saving maybe 50 bucks a year. It's not exciting enough when somebody's gonna remotely control your charging.

   3. GAGustaf Alstromer7:29

      No.

   4. AJAJ Jain7:29

      Then you want to go to office, uh, next day, but then turns out there was not enough wind energy, so your Tesla is not charged.

   5. GAGustaf Alstromer7:36

      Yeah.

   6. AJAJ Jain7:36

      And you need to miss work. That's much more painful than $50 a year.

   7. GAGustaf Alstromer7:40

      Yeah.

   8. AJAJ Jain7:40

      So there was not enough adoption from the consumer level, so none of our customers who were these, uh, energy utilities could get any traction with these programs that they were trying to build, which in turn, um, we never saw the usage for our APIs, uh-

   9. GAGustaf Alstromer7:56

      Yeah

   10. AJAJ Jain7:56

       ... because of the business use case not being there.

   11. GAGustaf Alstromer7:59

       Got it. Got it. Okay. So what happens? What do you guys do when you realize this, this thing is like the p- pain is not severe enough in this market, that we have to do something else?

   12. AJAJ Jain8:08

       Yeah. And I think that's, that's a very interesting, um... Like in hindsight, I can talk about that, like, yeah, it was pretty obvious. But when you're doing that, it's like you feel like maybe the next big deal is gonna solve all of this if I get-

   13. GAGustaf Alstromer8:21

       Yeah

   14. AJAJ Jain8:21

       ... this big utility company.

   15. GAGustaf Alstromer8:23

       Yeah.

   16. AJAJ Jain8:24

       And then also you've raised capital, like we went through YC, so it makes you feel like, oh, the investors have seen something in this space, so it makes you force yourself to pursue that idea.

   17. GAGustaf Alstromer8:34

       Yeah.

   18. AJAJ Jain8:35

       But now we know that investors are giving you the capital to you as founders-

   19. GAGustaf Alstromer8:40

       Mm-hmm

   20. AJAJ Jain8:40

       ... to learn about this market and then figure out the next steps.

   21. GAGustaf Alstromer8:44

       Mm-hmm.

   22. AJAJ Jain8:44

       Instead of trying to make the initial idea work.

   23. GAGustaf Alstromer8:47

       How did it feel to realize the thing you've been pursuing for a year and a half, two years wasn't-

   24. AJAJ Jain8:51

       Two-

   25. GAGustaf Alstromer8:51

       Wasn't gonna-

   26. AJAJ Jain8:51

       I think two and a half years almost

   27. GAGustaf Alstromer8:53

       ... two and a half years wasn't gonna be the thing.

   28. AJAJ Jain8:54

       Uh, it was-- We were quite lean, and one of our learnings was this from Telematica, that you have to see how important the problem that you're solving is to your customers. Of course, it will be the most important problem to you.

   29. GAGustaf Alstromer9:09

       Mm-hmm.

   30. AJAJ Jain9:09

       But is it the topmost priority for your customers?
5. 9:27 – 11:13

   Finding the Right Customer

   1. GAGustaf Alstromer9:27

      So what happened?

   2. AJAJ Jain9:28

      Yeah. Uh, but like the question was also like, how did it make us feel?

   3. GAGustaf Alstromer9:32

      Yeah. Yeah.

   4. AJAJ Jain9:32

      Uh, and the-

   5. GAGustaf Alstromer9:33

      Like-

   6. AJAJ Jain9:33

      I think it was-- It is really challenging.

   7. GAGustaf Alstromer9:35

      Oh, yeah.

   8. AJAJ Jain9:35

      Like we, um... Like I still remember a moment when one of our initial angel investors had called us and said, like during the pivot phase, um, like, "You should just return capital and get real jobs."

   9. GAGustaf Alstromer9:48

      Yeah.

   10. AJAJ Jain9:48

       "And then maybe you should come back and do this." And, and we had to take a break like for two days, where we were like, are we the best people to build a business?

   11. GAGustaf Alstromer9:58

       Yeah.

   12. AJAJ Jain9:58

       Maybe we've never done any real work in our life, so we don't have any personal problems because all our personal problems were college student problems.

   13. GAGustaf Alstromer10:05

       Yeah.

   14. AJAJ Jain10:05

       So I would, I would say it was like really stressful. But then, um, I think perseverance around, like we just thought like, um, we-- it's not us.

   15. GAGustaf Alstromer10:15

       Yeah.

   16. AJAJ Jain10:15

       Like it was the market, and if we focus on solving our customers' most painful problems, uh, maybe, maybe there's light at the end of the tunnel, was the initial mindset. So that helped us go through the pivot phase as well.

   17. GAGustaf Alstromer10:28

       Yeah.

   18. AJAJ Jain10:28

       And as Adi mentioned, we were very focused on the customers we were still serving.

   19. GAGustaf Alstromer10:32

       Yeah.

   20. AJAJ Jain10:32

       So we're not doing like an AI CRM because, like it is not a completely different idea. So during the pivot phase then we, uh, focused on the customers we were serving. So there were like th- three type of customers. One were energy utilities, second were electrical contractors, and the third were fleet operators.

   21. GAGustaf Alstromer10:48

       Mm-hmm.

   22. AJAJ Jain10:49

       So then out of the three customers that we were serving, we chose contractors, uh, as the market we wanted to go after because, uh, I personally loved selling to owners and contractors versus a product manager at a 5,000 person PG&E-

   23. GAGustaf Alstromer11:03

       Yeah

   24. AJAJ Jain11:03

       ... kind of a company.

   25. GAGustaf Alstromer11:04

       Yeah.

   26. AJAJ Jain11:05

       So that was my personal bias that like, hey, I would love to sell to this customer base. And then we had like two criteria-

   27. GAGustaf Alstromer11:12

       Yeah

   28. AJAJ Jain11:12

       ... before we chose the

6. 11:13 – 14:49

   Going Door to Door

   1. AJAJ Jain11:13

      next idea. The first one was-- And all of these were learnings from Telematica. The first was we wanted to go after a massive market from day one, not a market that's potentially gonna grow. Of course, the market should grow, but it should be big enough from day one.

   2. GAGustaf Alstromer11:27

      Yeah.

   3. AJAJ Jain11:27

      And the second thing was we wanted to solve our customers' most painful problem, not the third, not the fourth, the most painful problem. So we chose contractors as that market because it's a massive market.

   4. GAGustaf Alstromer11:39

      Yeah.

   5. AJAJ Jain11:39

      ServiceTitan is a leading CRM company in the space. They do over a billion in revenue and have recently went public. But then the next thing was like, now what's their most painful problem? And then I remember we, we had an office hour, this was May 2024, and then we were just talking about what we are doing next. And then we share like, "Hey, we're thinking about this market," and I'm reaching out to people on LinkedIn to do some customer discovery. And then you had told us that, "Guys, like, what kind of contractor hangs out on LinkedIn?" Like he said-- You told us like, "I would just go door to door and speak with all the contractors in the Bay Area within two weeks, and then you'll figure out if there's something worth pursuing or not."

   6. GAGustaf Alstromer12:18

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AJAJ Jain12:19

      And we're like, "Sounds good." And we did this for the next two weeks, and guess what? We had zero conversations What happened? I mean, like, it was just so crazy where you had told us like, "Hey, within two weeks you should have spoken to everyone." And we were sitting in Oakland, um, we were in a parking lot, Monday 1:00 PM. We're like, "Why are we not getting these conversations?" Yeah. And then I realized that we were acting like salesmen. We were coming in hot saying like- Yeah ... "Hey, we're startup founders in San Francisco. We're going to build AI solutions for you." And this plumber literally had, like, a couple of things in his hand. Yeah. And he literally like, "Get the fuck out of this office right now." And somebody had shut the door on our faces as well. Like, this had just happened that day. Do they get, do they get, like, bothered by salespeople a lot? Oh, yeah, because this industry, like, people are selling insurance- This was also, like, two years ago when in the service industry, AI was like the... You don't, you don't say that word. Yeah. If you, if you bring AI in my business, like, get, get out. Yeah. [laughs] This is a family-run business and all of this. So we were just getting zero conversations. Yeah. And then I realized, we were sitting in this parking lot, and like, even on LinkedIn, I used to never say that I'm selling something. Yeah. I used to say that, "Hey, I'm trying to work on this project. I'd love to get your insights and advice." Yeah, yeah. That was our initial outreach. Yep. We maybe underestimated a contractor, and we thought that they'd love talking to an AI founder. So what we did was, like, we pivoted. We dropped our bags in the car, did not take a laptop, anything, went to the next plumbing shop at around 3:00 PM, and then we shake hands with the owner, and then we introduce ourselves as like, "Hey, we are students, and we are here just to learn a bit more about family-owned plumbing businesses. Do you have a minute to talk to us?" [laughs] And everyone's like, "Welcome." And everyone wants to talk about their lives and how their dad started this business, how they went through the pandemic and everything. And since that conversation, uh, we did... Like, we were getting eight conversations every single day. Wow. And we did that for the next two months. So we went and visited and spoke with 140 contractors- Wow ... uh, throughout the Bay. And we were learning so much. Like, we had zero customers- Yep ... but we were, like, so excited. It was like we're getting so much insight. Yeah. We were sitting with their technicians doing training sessions. We were going on, um, jobs with them. We were sitting in their trucks. They would let you join them on jobs? Wow. Students. Like, everyone trusts a student. Yeah. That was our, like, uh, two-month journey- Yeah ... uh, during the pivot phase to figure out our customers' most painful

7. 14:49 – 17:53

   Discovering the Real Problem

   1. AJAJ Jain14:49

      problem. Tell me about these conversations. What did you guys learn from all these owners that would just, like, come and talk, "I'll show you around"? Yeah. Um, we learned so much. Like, we learned everything about their lives. Like, our first question used to be, "What are, what are you thinking about when you're driving, uh, back home post 5:00 PM? What's going on in your minds in all of this?" And one of the biggest problems was, uh, them not basically losing money after hours. So after hours basically means that they have their, uh, office employees in the office till like 4:00 or 5:00 PM. Yep. Post 5:00 PM, there's no one in the office, but guess what? Emergencies occur 24/7, and customers call them. And they were using, uh, BPOs and third-party answering services that are expensive- Outsourcing someone else to answer the phone ... outsourcing it, yeah. Yeah. And all of us know they are, like, terrible, and they suck. Yeah. But they're super expensive. Yeah. So they would just- You need them. Otherwise, like when someone has a broken water heater, like- Yeah ... you just can't. Yeah. The alternative is voicemail, which is- Yeah. No good. And then if you don't answer the call, the customer is just gonna call the next plumber- Of course ... on Google or Yelp. Of course. So it's basically if you don't answer the call, that lead is gone. Yeah. Like you'll never be able to recover that opportunity. Of course. So our customers were, like, truly trying to solve this problem. Mm-hmm. They were spending an extraordinary amount of money on answering services. Yeah. If they were just using voicemail, maybe it's not a painful enough problem. Mm-hmm. So, um, like 80% of our, like, customers we were talking to- Yeah ... had a option, and they were spending around $5,000 to $10,000 a month- Mm-hmm ... on this service. So even after hearing this, you can't come in and tell them use AI. Like, that's even more crazy to tell them, like- They don't even realize what that means. Yeah. Yeah, and like the... And, uh, all of our customers are in the customer service business. Like, there's nothing more valuable to them than how the customer feels, uh, interacting with them. Mm-hmm. And it starts with the phone call. Yeah. So we did not ever present a solution. Mm-hmm. We did not want to come in because we had learned the lesson. Yeah. Like AI is not- Yep ... welcomed in this office. So we were like, "Okay, cool. Tell me more about the solutions you're trying to build." And everyone's then leads to like, "I don't have a solution." Mm-hmm. And then we used to come up and say like... Uh, so we were getting this conversation. We used to go back home at like 7:00, 8:00 PM, and we're tinkering with voice agents. Yeah. So what we did was, uh, we used to again start with like anything that's going on in their life. It would 60 times, it was 60% of the times that we used to come up to like answering services. Mm-hmm. And then we used to like just like say like, "Hey, by the way, we are engineers, and we love to play with technology." Mm-hmm. And before that as well, we ha- we used to ask a question, "Have you used any AI solutions?" Yeah. "Have you used ChatGPT?" Yeah. And then they're like, "Yeah, I use it to write emails." Like great, they've used some kind of AI. Mm-hmm. So then we used to present, like, "We're engineers, and we actually play with AI all day. And I came across this AI voice which actually blew my mi- blew my mind. Would you want to listen to that?" They're like, "Yeah, yeah, sure." I used to play a recording, and they were like, "That's magical." And I was like, "Do you think you can use this in your business?" And they were like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see there's a use case where the AI can call my customers to confirm an appointment." Mm-hmm. 'Cause that's the lowest priority

8. 17:53 – 19:11

   Getting the First Customers

   1. AJAJ Jain17:53

      use case. Yeah, yeah. Is there the lowest risk from- Lowest risk. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We're like, "That's pretty incredible. Um, do you want us to come in and do something for you?" They were like, "Yeah, that'll be amazing if you can come in and build this for us." Mm-hmm. We're like, "Sure." And that is how we got our first set of like customers- Mm-hmm ... where we never presented this as a potential solution we wanted to sell. Yeah. And, uh, our first customer, uh, was basically a company in Sacramento, uh, where we then embedded ourselves, uh, for the next three months. We used to daily commute from San Francisco to Sacramento, work from her shop. Yeah. And that is where we wrote the first like line of code as well. Mm-hmm. We never wrote a single line of code in San Francisco. It was in a plumber's shop. And she's a, she was owner of that- Yes. She was the owner and CEO of that plumbing company.

   2. GAGustaf Alstromer18:39

      What's the name?

   3. AJAJ Jain18:40

      Uh, Marcel Flowers.

   4. GAGustaf Alstromer18:42

      Marcel. And sh- now she's joined Broccoli.

   5. AJAJ Jain18:43

      Yes.

   6. GAGustaf Alstromer18:44

      What does she do for Broccoli today?

   7. AJAJ Jain18:45

      Hundreds of things. Like, she is basically a great evangelist for the company-

   8. GAGustaf Alstromer18:49

      Mm-hmm

   9. AJAJ Jain18:50

      ... um, helps influence product. She's influenced our brand as well.

   10. GAGustaf Alstromer18:53

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AJAJ Jain18:53

       Um, and, uh, now she's, um, basically, uh, like helping us across the, uh, business.

   12. GAGustaf Alstromer19:00

       This is a really interesting story. So then basically you would go back and forth to her office for a long time to build out this first version. Um, how, how did it work when you launched it? How, how did you launch it?

9. 19:11 – 20:50

   The First Version of Broccoli

   1. AJAJ Jain19:11

      So I remember I used to sit in her office and just talking to her all day.

   2. GAGustaf Alstromer19:14

      Yeah.

   3. AJAJ Jain19:15

      And then Adi used to sit in a- another office, uh, just like building the first version of the product.

   4. GAGustaf Alstromer19:19

      Yeah.

   5. AJAJ Jain19:20

      And we had something ready within two weeks. Uh, we had connected to their CRM service Titan.

   6. GAGustaf Alstromer19:25

      Yeah.

   7. AJAJ Jain19:25

      We understood the scripts, the everything that their actual call center employees were doing.

   8. GAGustaf Alstromer19:30

      Mm-hmm.

   9. AJAJ Jain19:31

      And we launched within two weeks, and we were answering calls, uh, from like 5:00 to 7:00 PM only.

   10. GAGustaf Alstromer19:37

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AJAJ Jain19:38

       Uh, and then we used to monitor every single call. Um, and it worked. Like, the customers did not hang up. Of course there were like edge cases-

   12. GAGustaf Alstromer19:46

       Yeah

   13. AJAJ Jain19:47

       ... but it worked. We kind of booked three appointments that same day.

   14. GAGustaf Alstromer19:50

       Mm-hmm.

   15. AJAJ Jain19:50

       And, uh, the maximum appointments they had booked, uh, throughout the night was I think two.

   16. GAGustaf Alstromer19:56

       Mm-hmm.

   17. AJAJ Jain19:56

       And we had just booked three in two hours. So the next day we-

   18. GAGustaf Alstromer19:59

       So you did better than the humans

   19. AJAJ Jain20:00

       ... the humans that they were paying-

   20. GAGustaf Alstromer20:02

       That's awesome

   21. AJAJ Jain20:03

       ... $5,000 a month.

   22. GAGustaf Alstromer20:04

       Wow.

   23. AJAJ Jain20:04

       So next day, Marcel, she was like, "I'm gonna cancel the answering service."

   24. GAGustaf Alstromer20:10

       [laughs]

   25. AJAJ Jain20:10

       And I was like, "Hmm, that's too soon. Maybe we need to build..." She's like, "No, no, no. Figure it out. Month end, I'm gonna go live with Broccoli." It was not even called Broccoli back then, but-

   26. GAGustaf Alstromer20:19

       Yeah

   27. AJAJ Jain20:19

       ... "I'm just gonna go live with the AI." And then we spend another week, and then we go live for the whole weekend, and we book around 19 appointments, and previously they had maximum five appointments over a weekend.

   28. GAGustaf Alstromer20:32

       Mm-hmm.

   29. AJAJ Jain20:32

       So that truly made us believe, like, AI might actually be a 10X better alternative than what they were using.

   30. GAGustaf Alstromer20:39

       Mm.
10. 20:50 – 23:09

    What Product-Market Fit Felt Like

    1. GAGustaf Alstromer20:50

       So, okay, we're now basically all of these years since the beginning, um, of starting a company, and maybe this is the first time you're getting the real taste of product market fit. Like a lot of founders that are watching this, this channel are thinking about, "Do I have PMF? Do I have PMF?" Um, was there a moment where you thought about, "Okay, this actually is working," and, like, was there a specific moment you felt like, "Okay, I think this is working. I think we're gonna build a really big company here"?

    2. AJAJ Jain21:12

       Yeah. I, I think we never-- Like the day we met Marcel-

    3. GAGustaf Alstromer21:17

       Mm-hmm

    4. AJAJ Jain21:17

       ... like post that till today-

    5. GAGustaf Alstromer21:20

       Mm-hmm

    6. AJAJ Jain21:20

       ... I don't think we've ever taken even like a 10-second pause to-

    7. GAGustaf Alstromer21:23

       Yeah

    8. AJAJ Jain21:23

       ... figure out, like, where is the next set of growth gonna come from-

    9. GAGustaf Alstromer21:27

       Yeah

    10. AJAJ Jain21:27

        ... because we are just being pulled into conversations, like pulled into bigger, more use cases.

    11. GAGustaf Alstromer21:33

        Yeah.

    12. AJAJ Jain21:33

        So I think that is maybe what product market fit feels like. And then again, you need to keep on, um, finding it at every stage of the business.

    13. GAGustaf Alstromer21:42

        And then you were in Sacramento still. Was it still just the two of you? You have one, one more person in the company?

    14. AKAditya Ketkar21:47

        So we had, uh, we had our founding engineer join us during Telematica.

    15. GAGustaf Alstromer21:52

        Yeah.

    16. AKAditya Ketkar21:52

        And he's still with us after four years. He has been through everything with us, the pivots. He would stay awake at night because this was in, uh, Pacific Time. So he would stay awake at nights.

    17. GAGustaf Alstromer22:03

        Mm-hmm.

    18. AKAditya Ketkar22:03

        And we were all, like, anxiously waiting for these calls to go through, and then we'll see what happened on the call-

    19. GAGustaf Alstromer22:08

        Yeah

    20. AKAditya Ketkar22:08

        ... and then fix the thing. So he has been with us since then. Uh, but back then it was just three of us who started up.

    21. AJAJ Jain22:13

        And yeah, we used to work as like Marcel was confused. Like, she was like, "You were here till like 9:00 PM, and then you come back tomorrow, like next day at 9:00 AM, and you fix that problem? Like, do you guys not sleep?"

    22. GAGustaf Alstromer22:24

        [laughs]

    23. AJAJ Jain22:24

        And we don't tell her anything until maybe two months, and then we showed her Samil, like he was working in India-

    24. GAGustaf Alstromer22:29

        Yeah

    25. AJAJ Jain22:29

        ... fixing things the next... We were working as a 24-hour, uh, shift.

    26. GAGustaf Alstromer22:34

        So when you were, when you were at 2 million ARR, like, uh, how many people work at the company then?

    27. AJAJ Jain22:38

        2 million B were around-

    28. AKAditya Ketkar22:41

        15

    29. AJAJ Jain22:41

        ... 15 people-

    30. AKAditya Ketkar22:42

        15, yeah
11. 23:09 – 26:19

    Scaling to $60M ARR

    1. GAGustaf Alstromer23:09

       they use.

    2. AJAJ Jain23:09

       Yeah. So if you look at our customers, like how they run their businesses today, they spend roughly 2% of their top-line revenue on other software systems like ServiceTitan and QuickBooks, and then they spend 15% on office labor, out of which Broccoli today automates 2%, uh, in the front office.

    3. GAGustaf Alstromer23:27

       Wow. So basically you're making each of these companies much more efficient, um, which leads to them themselves growing faster.

    4. AJAJ Jain23:34

       Mm-hmm.

    5. GAGustaf Alstromer23:35

       And how big is this market? Like, how big is the, like, home services, like broadly speaking, like HVAC-

    6. AJAJ Jain23:41

       Yeah

    7. GAGustaf Alstromer23:41

       ... plumbing, electricians?

    8. AJAJ Jain23:42

       Yeah. So the trades as a whole, uh, is a massive-- Like they spend roughly $1.5 trillion a year, and home services is basically a $650B market. Um, HVAC-

    9. GAGustaf Alstromer23:54

       So basically US population spends $650 billion a year on fixing our homes basically.

    10. AJAJ Jain23:59

        Homes, yes.

    11. GAGustaf Alstromer23:59

        I don't know the numbers exactly right here, but like people used to say the enterprise software market is in the couple hundred billion dollars.

    12. AJAJ Jain24:05

        Mm-hmm.

    13. GAGustaf Alstromer24:05

        And just this one is close to $100 billion.

    14. AJAJ Jain24:08

        Yeah.

    15. GAGustaf Alstromer24:08

        What's top of mind for you guys right now? Um, you mentioned in the beginning that you think you'll end the year at $60 million in, in revenue. What are the things that you guys think about as you go into work every day?

    16. AJAJ Jain24:18

        Yeah. So for me, I think the number one thing that I've been thinking about is building the leadership team in the company-

    17. GAGustaf Alstromer24:23

        Yeah

    18. AJAJ Jain24:23

        ... um, as we are scaling. Uh, we are at around 75 people today.

    19. GAGustaf Alstromer24:27

        And for people that join the engineering team, Adi, like what are, what are, what, what are you telling them is gonna be the hardest problems or most exciting things to work on right now?

    20. AKAditya Ketkar24:35

        That's a great point. So from engineering and like product perspective, it's almost- When you are small, you have the superpower of you are able to do anything just by will, right?

    21. GAGustaf Alstromer24:46

        Yeah.

    22. AKAditya Ketkar24:47

        You want it, the next day it should be possible because you have these five people who can move very fast and just-

    23. GAGustaf Alstromer24:53

        Yeah

    24. AKAditya Ketkar24:53

        ... build things out, right?

    25. GAGustaf Alstromer24:54

        Yeah.

    26. AKAditya Ketkar24:54

        But as you grow and you, you have more customers to serve, you have to build structures around it. So the thing that we have been working very actively on is how, how does the engineering culture affect our velocity? Like we, we want to maintain the same engineering velocity and the product velocity while retaining the culture. Like we, we want to be the best product still once we grow to 20 engineers and to 50 engineers and to 100 engineers.

    27. GAGustaf Alstromer25:21

        Mm-hmm.

    28. AKAditya Ketkar25:21

        Uh, Broccoli should be the team that defines what is the future of trades.

    29. GAGustaf Alstromer25:27

        Mm-hmm.

    30. AKAditya Ketkar25:27

        Uh, so that's what we are aiming for. So that, that involves a lot of things like building the team culture.
12. 26:19 – 31:40

    How AI Will Change the Trades

    1. AKAditya Ketkar26:19

       on.

    2. GAGustaf Alstromer26:20

       And I'm assuming that the job of a plumber or electrician is about to change. Um, like you are going after the things that they don't, either don't like to do or that people in the back office or front office are doing. And if you're the owner, maybe you don't want to pick up the phone all the time. But the job of the technician itself, that's like the main thing that they do, is like fix things for us. W- how do you think that job is gonna change? L- like if you were just like be visionaries and/or like take all the, all the technologies that is at hand right now or will be at hand, like how will, how will their job change?

    3. AJAJ Jain26:48

       Today, Broccoli is basically automating the work around the work.

    4. GAGustaf Alstromer26:52

       Yeah.

    5. AJAJ Jain26:52

       The main work is for a technician to show up at your homes and fix the things.

    6. GAGustaf Alstromer26:56

       Yeah.

    7. AJAJ Jain26:56

       But the future technician is not gonna look anything like what they're doing today. Today, they need to basically diagnose the issue, and you need like 10 to 15 years of actual field experience in order to become a trained pro.

    8. GAGustaf Alstromer27:12

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AJAJ Jain27:12

       I think AI is gonna reduce that gap to maybe two years of field experience, because you're gonna have the intelligence of a 40-year-old pro in your ear, in your eyes. Like you're gonna see the things and then the AI is gonna help you, uh, diagnose that issue as well.

    10. GAGustaf Alstromer27:26

        Mm-hmm.

    11. AJAJ Jain27:26

        And we're already seeing a lot of help for at least like maybe 20% of the issues. Even some of the frontier models that are not even trained on actual data, uh, are performing really well. And more young technicians are gonna be able to come into the field without having to spend like 10 years being, uh, assisting-

    12. GAGustaf Alstromer27:43

        'Cause that's what you have to do, do right now, basically. It's like a long process to become a pro.

    13. AJAJ Jain27:47

        Yeah, because it's a pretty skilled trades-

    14. GAGustaf Alstromer27:49

        Yeah

    15. AJAJ Jain27:49

        ... and you need to go through certificates, uh, certifications.

    16. GAGustaf Alstromer27:52

        Just a technical questions. Why, why are the models good at this? Like how, how do you think OpenAI or Anthropic or others are training their data sets of like being good at diagnosing issues with homes, home, home devices, for example?

    17. AKAditya Ketkar28:06

        I would say most of it is just operational work. So whenever one of your appliance fails-

    18. GAGustaf Alstromer28:12

        Mm-hmm

    19. AKAditya Ketkar28:12

        ... uh, there's no s- like magic to it.

    20. GAGustaf Alstromer28:16

        Yeah.

    21. AKAditya Ketkar28:16

        It's literally just knowing what the serial number of that appliance is-

    22. GAGustaf Alstromer28:20

        Mm-hmm

    23. AKAditya Ketkar28:20

        ... looking up the right documentation for that appliance, and then knowing where to look. That's the, that's the most of the knowledge work part.

    24. GAGustaf Alstromer28:27

        Yeah.

    25. AKAditya Ketkar28:28

        Uh, this is where the efficiency gains lie.

    26. GAGustaf Alstromer28:31

        Mm-hmm.

    27. AKAditya Ketkar28:31

        For a technician to do that while they are on field, maybe without internet-

    28. GAGustaf Alstromer28:35

        Yeah

    29. AKAditya Ketkar28:35

        ... uh, it's so hard. Like they have to know where to find the right things.

    30. GAGustaf Alstromer28:39

        Yeah.

Episode duration: 31:40