Company profile · 3 min read
Cohesive: Prospecting and follow-up for local service businesses
Cohesive finds local prospects, runs email/SMS/phone outreach, follows up and manages the pipeline for blue-collar service businesses.
Cofounder of Lazyweb (a16z Speedrun). Previously grew subscriptions and built native ads at Duolingo. Writes First1000 (90,000+ subscribers).
Published · Updated
Cohesive is an agentic CRM for blue-collar service businesses selling into local markets. It fits a cleaning, landscaping, HVAC, pest-control, roofing or similar company whose owners are in the field and need prospecting, outreach and follow-up to keep running without a full sales team.
What it does
Cohesive’s current homepage organizes the product around four growth motions: find local businesses and property owners, reach them across email/phone/SMS, follow up on replies and missed calls, and manage interested leads, booked calls and performance in one command center. The platform is designed around messy local markets that are poorly represented in traditional B2B databases.
The important buyer decision is whether the service business needs a system for finding demand, not simply a CRM for tracking leads it already has. Cohesive’s API docs expose campaign, inbox, conversation, reply and forward endpoints, which makes the product more usable as an operating layer or white-label workflow. The company also publishes a DNC-list control in the current interface and compliance-focused content in its blog; outbound permission and local law remain the customer’s responsibility.
The homepage reports 1,000-plus service businesses, 220K-plus conversations and three channels. The YC launch described more than 350 commercial cleaning, landscaping and pest-control owners. These are company-published operating claims, not independent measurements of revenue or deliverability.
Founder context and tradeoffs
The YC profile identifies Kevin Zhang and Nam Nguyen as founders. Kevin’s public background includes a prior service business, Charthop and McKinsey work with service franchises; Nam’s includes Microsoft ML engineering and founding engineering at Starlight. That is unusually direct experience with both the operator and software sides of the problem.
Pricing is not public. A buyer should ask how lists are sourced and refreshed, how opt-outs and DNC rules are enforced, how messages are approved and what happens when the agent receives a sensitive or ambiguous reply. The system can create more conversations; the owner still needs the capacity to serve the work it generates.
Editorial take
I would shortlist Cohesive for a local service company with a clear service area, a repeatable offer and an owner who cannot spend every day prospecting. Start with one vertical and one campaign, then judge qualified conversations and booked work—not send volume.
Quick facts
| Field | Sourced detail |
|---|---|
| Product | Agentic prospecting, outreach, follow-up and CRM for local services |
| Buyers | Commercial cleaning, HVAC, landscaping, pest-control and adjacent businesses |
| Channels | Email, SMS and phone; API endpoints publicly documented |
| Public claims | 1,000-plus businesses and 220K-plus conversations, company-reported |
| Pricing | Not publicly listed |
Sources checked
| Source | Checked |
|---|---|
| YC profile | 2026-09-19 |
| Cohesive homepage | 2026-09-19 |
| Cohesive API docs | 2026-09-19 |
| Cohesive launch | 2026-09-19 |
Cohort context
Cohesive is listed in Spring 2025. In our 2026-09-18 directory snapshot, 97 of 143 listed companies in that cohort have YC’s primary industry label B2B (67.8%). This is a current-directory comparison, not an original intake count or a performance ranking. Nine-cohort dataset.
Public website snapshot
Observed 2026-09-19T16:15:35.171Z in raw homepage HTML. This records visible metadata and advertised links, not agent execution or product quality.
| Signal | Homepage observation |
|---|---|
| Product description metadata | Observed |
| Canonical link | Not observed in this response |
| H1 or H2 heading | Observed |
| Typed structured data | Not observed in this response |
| Docs/developer link | Observed |
| Pricing link | Not observed in this response |
| llms.txt link | Not observed in this response |
| Markdown alternate | Not observed in this response |
Public observations · Collection method. Missing links here do not establish that a capability or file is absent elsewhere.
About the author
Cofounder of Lazyweb (a16z Speedrun). Previously grew subscriptions and built native ads at Duolingo. Writes First1000 (90,000+ subscribers).
I cofound Lazyweb and publish Mudpie. This is an owner-written publication, not an independent testing organization. Research notes distinguish observations, sourced reporting and editorial judgment.
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