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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.

Garry TanhostTyson ChenguestApurva Shrivastavaguest
Jun 29, 202639mWatch on YouTube

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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

Read the available transcript
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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SPEAKERS

  • Garry Tan

    host

    CEO of Y Combinator and the episode host/interviewer.

  • Tyson Chen

    guest

    Co-founder of Avoca, building AI agents that handle inbound calls for home services businesses.

  • Apurva Shrivastava

    guest

    Co-founder of Avoca, focused on AI agent software for home services customer support and booking.

High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.

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