This AI Startup Is Taking Over Phone Sales

In this episode of Founder Firesides, YC Managing Partner Jared Friedman talks to the founders of Simple AI (S24), Catheryn Li & Zach Kamran, who just raised a seed round of $14M. Simple AI gives businesses an AI sales agent that handles inbound calls end-to-end and outperforms their human reps. Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

Jared FriedmanhostZach KamranguestCatheryn Liguest

Feb 18, 202637mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: February 18, 2026
Duration: 37m
Channel: YC Root Access
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

In this episode of Founder Firesides, YC Managing Partner Jared Friedman talks to the founders of Simple AI (S24), Catheryn Li & Zach Kamran, who just raised a seed round of $14M. Simple AI gives businesses an AI sales agent that handles inbound calls end-to-end and outperforms their human reps. Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

SPEAKERS

Jared Friedman
host
Host on YC Root Access who interviews startup founders and discusses YC/startup building.
Zach Kamran
guest
Co-founder of Simple AI focused on engineering production-grade AI voice agents (latency, orchestration, model tuning).
Catheryn Li
guest
Co-founder of Simple AI with prior experience leading product/engineering at YC internal software teams and previously at Meta.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of YC Root Access, featuring Jared Friedman and Zach Kamran, This AI Startup Is Taking Over Phone Sales explores simple AI builds voice agents that sell and outperform call centers. Simple AI started as a consumer “better Siri,” then pivoted to an outbound calling assistant, and ultimately became an inbound AI sales agent after businesses asked to use the voice technology.

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