.jpg)
In software or for that matter any business - one adage remains true - you can have the slickest product in the world, but if you don’t truly hear your customers, you’re toast. Amazon made an art of that principle—Jeff Bezos insisted on it, day in and day out, until customer obsession became a superpower. Everyone wants that. Few pull it off. As companies grow, they’re forced to rely on scraps: a manager’s hunch, a hastily recalled anecdote, or perhaps a survey that’s out of date the minute it’s tallied. Meanwhile, the single richest source of insight—those everyday, real customer conversations—is treated like background noise.
Voiceops flips that script. They take the calls your reps are already making—millions of them in fast-paced B2C markets—and turn them into a living, breathing playbook for the whole company. Its customers can now pinpoint the exact reasons people buy, why they don’t, what competitors are cropping up, which customers are at risk, and what sales tactics actually work. The results aren’t partial or guess work; they’re grounded in statistically significant data that is refreshed in near-real time. Instead of sales coaching or product updates based on a few random call reviews, teams see a holistic picture that can spark meaningful changes—often overnight.
I remember my first conversation with Ethan Barhydt, Voiceops’ founder. What grabbed me was the quiet confidence of someone who’d gotten it wrong a few times and emerged stronger.
He’s soft-spoken at first, more engineer than salesperson—but five minutes in, you realize he’s been obsessed with this problem long before generative AI became a buzzword.
He built an entire company around it years ago, slept on a mattress in a San Francisco kitchen to make his savings last, and kept collecting data—patiently waiting for the day when transcription quality and AI capabilities would finally catch up. That day has come, and he’s sprinting out of the gate armed with the kind of earned secrets you can’t just replicate overnight.
Bonfire is thrilled to co-lead Voiceops’ seed round alongside Twelve Below. I’ve seen plenty of AI solutions that prioritize shine over substance. Voiceops takes a different approach. Ethan and his VP of Engineering, Viji Vennelakanti, built a platform that captures every subtlety in real conversations and transforms it into real-time insights for multiple stakeholders. During our diligence, I asked how they handle disagreements on what “great” looks like, or how they ensure the data is relevant not only to sales coaching but also to product, marketing, and compliance. They walked me through hundreds of experiments, each designed to account for human blind spots, not just technical ones.
It’s the kind of product craftsmanship that becomes essential when AI alone isn’t enough to guarantee market dominance - i.e. taste truly does matter.
There’s also the question of “so what?”—how you turn insights into actions at scale. Voiceops has demonstrated that companies leveraging its platform can achieve up to 80% improvements in conversion rates and as much as a 50% reduction in cost per lead. As importantly, Voiceops’s customers are also reducing their employee attrition massively (some from 150% to < 8% annually) which fundamentally changes their efficiency and profitability overnight. Those numbers reflect more than a slick UI; they point to alignment across teams. A marketing leader can refine messages based on exact wording customers use, a product manager can spot emerging competitor features from thousands of calls, and a compliance officer can spot potential pitfalls in real time. It’s a single source of truth for each group’s specific questions, which means fewer silos and faster learning loops.
Then there’s the vision. Ethan doesn’t see AI as a glorified note-taker. He wants an AI that learns how people actually behave, and then guides them in the flow of work—proposing next steps, highlighting risks, identifying new opportunities. I’ve always believed that once you harness genuine customer understanding, everything else becomes easier: conversion, retention, product-market fit. Voiceops is the missing piece of the puzzle for organizations that rely on phone or voice channels to drive growth.
I’m always on the lookout for that perfect blend of technical brilliance and go-to-market grit. It’s rare. Voiceops has it. They’re self-aware enough to know there’s more to build but confident enough to execute at a breakneck pace. We’re backing them because of that balance, and because we see customer intelligence as the next frontier of software.
You don’t need a Bezos-like figure to sustain that relentless customer focus as you scale. You need a platform that ensures you never stop listening.
Voiceops provides that platform. We’re proud to join them, and if you’ve been aching to understand what’s really happening in your calls—beyond guesswork—Ethan and team would love to show you. They might just change the way you work.
Read more about Voiceops' mission and their latest fundraise here.
