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The AI Agents Helping Home Services Book More Jobs

Avoca (YC W23) is building what it calls the AI workforce for the physical economy, starting with home services. In just a few years, the company has grown to eight figures in revenue and recently raised over $125 million at a $1 billion valuation. In this fireside, Avoca co-founders Apurva Shrivastava and Tyson Chen sit down with YC's Garry Tan to talk about how they found product-market fit by helping businesses turn missed calls into revenue. They explain why AI is expanding what software can do, pushing past the 1% of wallet that traditional software captures, and why they see it as one of the biggest opportunities for founders. https://www.avoca.ai Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs 00:00 - The AI Workforce for the Physical Economy 01:28 - Finding the Right Market 03:25 - Why AI Is Bigger Than SaaS 06:59 - The AI Job Story Nobody Talks About 11:53 - How the Founders Met 16:59 - The Pivot 21:47 - Customer Love Beats Market Size 25:31 - Building an AI Workforce 29:35 - Why Customer Obsession Wins 34:12 - Growing to Eight Figures 37:22 - The Vision Beyond Home Services 38:54 - Building a Generational Company

Garry TanhostTyson ChenguestApurva Shrivastavaguest
Jun 29, 202639mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Avoca builds AI agents to capture missed home-services revenue calls

  1. Avoca started with an AI phone-answering agent for home services because missed or mishandled calls directly translate into lost high-value jobs.
  2. The founders argue AI is “bigger than SaaS” because it can capture labor/operations and marketing spend (moving from ~1% software wallet share toward ~15%+).
  3. They frame the product as augmenting—not simply replacing—CSRs in a high-attrition role, with new jobs emerging around supervising and training AI agents.
  4. Customer obsession and on-site workflow immersion drove product design, with a strict bar that features aren’t “done” until specific customers are happy using them.
  5. Growth to eight figures was fueled by deep love from a few design partners, referrals/influencer networks in contractor communities, and later an enterprise + private-equity consolidation sales motion.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Pick markets where one interaction is financially meaningful.

Avoca chose home services after exploring restaurants because a single call can be worth $20K–$30K and phone calls drive ~85% of revenue, making call-handling automation immediately ROI-positive.

AI enables a shift from “software budget” to “labor and ops budget.”

They contrast ServiceTitan-like spend (~0.5–2% of wallet) with customer care/inside sales (3–5%) and marketing (7–10%), arguing AI agents can expand addressable wallet share toward ~15%+.

Lead with revenue capture, not cost cutting.

Although headcount reductions can happen (e.g., 100 CSRs down to 30 via attrition/promotions), Avoca sells primarily on booking more jobs and converting more marketing leads into revenue.

High-attrition jobs are prime for AI augmentation and role redesign.

With near-100% two-year attrition in CSR roles, taking 60–70% “nuisance calls” off humans can increase retention and enable promotions into dispatch or “AI agent trainer/manager” roles.

Human-in-the-loop is a product design discipline, not a fallback.

Drawing from autonomous-vehicle operations, they emphasize deciding when humans should step in and providing the right context so handoffs are fast and effective.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

At Avoca, we are building the AI workforce for the physical economy, starting with home services.

— Apurva Shrivastava

In a normal, um, home service business, there's almost a close to 100% attrition rate over the course of two years.

— Tyson Chen

If the pain is big enough, the customer will try to find a solution to it even if it's not perfect.

— Tyson Chen

Our job is to go follow where there's customer love, where people are gonna pay us more, and that's gonna be the more exciting opportunity for us.

— Apurva Shrivastava

You never think about it, but in home services there's this influencer network where folks like a Josh Campbell from ResQair, they are like kinda super connectors.

— Tyson Chen

AI workforce for the physical economyHome services as a high-LTV call-driven marketWallet share expansion beyond SaaSHuman-in-the-loop escalation and context handoffCustomer obsession and “do unscalable things” deploymentsReferrals, contractor communities, and trade showsEnterprise/PE channel and consolidation tailwinds

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