Company profile · 3 min read
telli gives B2C teams voice agents for sales, support and customer operations
telli combines multilingual voice agents, no-code call workflows, CRM actions, scheduling, support and call analytics for high-volume customer operations.
Cofounder of Lazyweb (a16z Speedrun). Previously grew subscriptions and built native ads at Duolingo. Writes First1000 (90,000+ subscribers).
Published · Updated
telli is for B2C companies whose customer journey still depends on phone conversations—qualification, booking, support, reactivation or payment follow-up—but whose call operation cannot scale with people alone.
What it does
The current platform includes a no-code agent builder, multilingual voice agents, a knowledge base, Salesforce and HubSpot integrations, warm transfers, appointment booking, data collection and post-call workflows. It also advertises model choice, voice cloning, live monitoring, structured call outcomes, transcripts, QA and smart dialing. telli homepage
That breadth is the product decision. telli is not only an outbound dialer: it wants to run customer-facing operations across sales, support and service, with agents able to take actions during and after calls. The docs start with a bounded use case and KPI, then require phone-number, contact-property and dialing-window configuration before building an agent. telli docs
The current site says agents can operate in 30-plus languages and lists GDPR, HIPAA, EU AI Act and SOC 2 compliance claims alongside EU hosting. Those are company statements; no regulatory, security or call-quality test was performed. Buyers still need to confirm consent, recording, calling windows, disclosure, escalation and data residency for the countries and use case involved.
The company publishes customer stories and claims millions of conversations, but no public standard pricing appears in the checked pages. The right comparison is therefore against internal contact-center cost, reachable leads, booked outcomes and the operational burden of reviewing calls—not a guessed per-minute rate.
The YC profile identifies Finn zur Mühlen and Philipp Baumanns as former Enpal heat-pump operators and Seb Hapte-Selassie as a former Pitch software engineer with Stanford computer-science training. That is useful operator context for outbound B2C calls, not independent evidence of conversion lift.
My editorial take
I would shortlist telli for a company with a repeatable phone use case, enough volume to measure reach and outcome quality, and a clear compliance owner. Start with one qualification or appointment flow and keep transfer rules explicit. If the business cannot define who may be called, when, and what a successful handoff means, a larger agent platform will add risk faster than revenue.
Quick facts
| Field | Sourced detail |
|---|---|
| Buyer | B2C sales, support and operations teams |
| Product | AI voice agents, no-code builder, CRM actions and call analytics |
| Channels | Phone with SMS and CRM/workflow integrations |
| Pricing | Demo-led; no standard public price found |
| Main fit question | Is a bounded phone workflow valuable enough to automate and monitor? |
Sources checked
telli’s YC profile, homepage, docs and careers page were checked on 2026-09-19.
Cohort context
telli is listed in Fall 2024. In our 2026-09-18 directory snapshot, 57 of 94 listed companies in that cohort have YC’s primary industry label B2B (60.6%). This is a current-directory comparison, not an original intake count or a performance ranking. Nine-cohort dataset.
Public website snapshot
Observed 2026-09-19T16:14:53.173Z 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 | Observed |
| H1 or H2 heading | Observed |
| Typed structured data | Observed |
| 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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