Parahelp: The End-to-End AI Support Agent

Parahelp is building an end-to-end AI support agent. One that doesn’t just reply, but actually resolves tickets by taking real actions inside a company’s tools. The team recently raised an $18M Series A to scale this vision as their agent now closes thousands of tickets every day. In this conversation with YC's Jared Friedman, founders Anker Ryhl and Mads Liechti share how they went from cold-emailing 700 prospects during YC to powering support at companies like Perplexity, ElevenLabs, and Replit. They talk about the mid-batch pivot that changed everything and how their new agentic architecture lets them onboard customers in hours instead of weeks. Learn more about Parahelp at https://parahelp.com. 00:00 – Intro: What Parahelp Is Building 00:46 – The First Version (and Why It Didn’t Work) 03:12 – YC, Cold Emailing 700 Prospects, and Finding the Problem 06:05 – The Mid-Batch Pivot That Changed Everything 08:40 – Landing Perplexity as Customer #2 11:28 – What “End-to-End Resolution” Actually Means 14:20 – How the Agent Takes Real Actions (Refunds, Fixes, Workflows) 18:05 – Building the Agentic Architecture 22:18 – Scaling to Thousands of Tickets Closed Every Day 29:04 – Onboarding Customers in Hours, Not Weeks 34:40 – Raising the $18M Series A 40:52 – Advice for Founders

Anker RyhlguestMads LiechtiguestJared Friedmanhost

Dec 2, 202547mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: December 2, 2025
Duration: 47m
Channel: YC Root Access
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Parahelp is building an end-to-end AI support agent. One that doesn’t just reply, but actually resolves tickets by taking real actions inside a company’s tools. The team recently raised an $18M Series A to scale this vision as their agent now closes thousands of tickets every day. In this conversation with YC's Jared Friedman, founders Anker Ryhl and Mads Liechti share how they went from cold-emailing 700 prospects during YC to powering support at companies like Perplexity, ElevenLabs, and Replit. They talk about the mid-batch pivot that changed everything and how their new agentic architecture lets them onboard customers in hours instead of weeks. Learn more about Parahelp at https://parahelp.com. 00:00 – Intro: What Parahelp Is Building 00:46 – The First Version (and Why It Didn’t Work) 03:12 – YC, Cold Emailing 700 Prospects, and Finding the Problem 06:05 – The Mid-Batch Pivot That Changed Everything 08:40 – Landing Perplexity as Customer #2 11:28 – What “End-to-End Resolution” Actually Means 14:20 – How the Agent Takes Real Actions (Refunds, Fixes, Workflows) 18:05 – Building the Agentic Architecture 22:18 – Scaling to Thousands of Tickets Closed Every Day 29:04 – Onboarding Customers in Hours, Not Weeks 34:40 – Raising the $18M Series A 40:52 – Advice for Founders

SPEAKERS

Anker Ryhl
guest
Co-founder of Parahelp (Danish technical founder) building end-to-end AI customer support agents with tool integrations and evaluation/guardrail systems.
Mads Liechti
guest
Co-founder of Parahelp focused on product/design and customer-facing positioning for an end-to-end AI support agent.
Jared Friedman
host
Y Combinator partner and host/interviewer on YC Root Access.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of YC Root Access, featuring Anker Ryhl and Mads Liechti, Parahelp: The End-to-End AI Support Agent explores parahelp builds end-to-end AI support agents that take real actions Parahelp pivoted from an NFT investment app to B2B support automation after discovering that software companies needed not just AI replies but end-to-end ticket resolution with actions.

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