A week in AI is like a year in other industries. I hope these issues become your weekly source of AI information, inspiration, and ideas. If we haven’t met before, I’m Amanda Smith. I write about AI and the fascinating folks who are building in this brave new world.
Good morning. I love a good story of a company focusing on SMBs – the backbone of most economies. This founder is bringing AI features to a timeless utility, rethinking the category in the process.
You’re going to enjoy this read.
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Trending in AI right now:
$100 billion in chip sales by 2027
Chip designer Broadcom made this revenue projection by next year.
Trump’s ‘Rate payer protection pledge’
It will require tech companies to pay increased electricity costs in communities where AI centers are being built.
The Anthropic x Department of Defense saga continues
More on that here. Check out the #QuitGPT movement.
Company info
Founded: May 2018
Team size: Under 200
Funding to date: $105 million total raised
ARR: Not disclosed
Growth metric: Typeform surveys
Mahyar Raissi, Quo
Mahyar Raissi has spent his entire career trying to help small businesses make more money. At 16, he was tinkering and creating websites for local businesses.
He went on to study software engineering and landed in a career where he could build things for a living. But Raissi kept getting pulled toward the customer problem, not just finding the technical fix.
Transitioning into a product role allowed him to straddle the two worlds. He got a gig at Joist, where he spent two years building invoice software for contractors. “I saw first-hand how much money was being left on the table. Contractors who operated professionally by being organized and following up with their customers earned noticeably more money. Dropped calls, miscommunication and missed texts meant thousands of dollars lost,” Raissi explained.
With an entrepreneur father, he also grew up watching how much falls through the cracks. While he loved Joist’s mission, Raissi was always on the lookout for his big business idea.
Quo’s origin story
Raissi was chatting with a friend who suggested he port his number to a virtual phone service. The call quality was great, and it was cheap, but the software was clunky and hard to use.
“I saw an opportunity to build something for small business owners who don’t have the time to learn a whole new app and needed more than just another phone system to stay on top of communication with customers,” Raissi said.
In 2018, Raissi got into Y-Combinator and moved to San Francisco. “I call those first seven years Act 1: building the foundation and getting to 90,000+ SMBs. Act 2 is what we’re doing now. We’re thoughtfully layering in AI where it makes sense – going all in on turning every customer conversation into revenue.”
The build process & business model
They started with getting the fundamentals right, by building a VoIP system that was easy-to-use. “We were at the forefront of VoIP products to introduce the concept of a single screen that contained calls, texts and voicemail from a single number,” he said.
In 2022, Raissi enhanced their offerings to meet a team-based use case. “With Shared Numbers, team members could simultaneously use the same number, allowing them to have real-time visibility of each other’s conversations.”
Quo functions as a whole business AI-powered phone system. It combines phone, CRM and customer hub functionality. A team can collaborate internally and communicate with customers all in one place.
The AI receptionist, Sona, answers calls, qualifies leads, and routes conversations to the right person. Sona is available for free with every plan, up to 10 calls per month and tiered, usage-based pricing. Now at approximately 10 months after launch, Sona has handled over 800,000
calls, with users reporting triple the engagement compared to when they were using a basic voicemail system.
Quo has 1,500+ Sona customers and 5,000 workspaces using it on a weekly basis. All plans operate off a per user/month pricing structure, with a monthly or annual option. There’s a 7-day free trial available.
Go-to-market approach
In September 2025, Quo received a $96 million go-to-market growth investment from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund. This investment goes directly to their sales and marketing customer acquisition costs.
The first focus was getting in front of small business owners. They attended local meetups and conferences, as well as posted on Facebook and Reddit. This is where they 86% were still using their personal phone for business – which is where Quo found early traction.
“Validating product-market fit early on came in the form of a single Typeform question we sent to our customers: “How disappointed would you be if OpenPhone didn’t exist?” That survey told us exactly who needed us most, what features mattered, and which segments to chase.”
They still use this survey method to do a temperature check.
Scaling strategies
“Employee growth is no longer the most common way to proxy for revenue growth. That’s now changing with revenue per-employee becoming the metric du jour for measuring growing companies,” Raissi said.
With companies becoming leaner and more optimized, Raissi said Quo grows with current users through the usage of automation credits (which power Sona pricing today), rather than expanding seats.
A lot of businesses operate with a fragmented phone system.
“Take for example, Pink’s Windows. Challenges differentiating between personal and business calls led them to looking into business phone numbers. Speed was a priority for them – their mission is to flip the script on blue collar work and guarantee quotes within 24 hours – something Quo could provide while maintaining the “mom and pop” touch. After piloting its AI-powered features, they found value and now have expanded it to their 75+ franchise locations,” he said.
Quo is atypical of most start-ups. They focus efforts on things like podcasts and other more narrative-driven channels. At this point, Quo is trying to change the narrative for how people view their business phones, and these types of marketing efforts give the space for that conversation to be had.
Their most effective marketing still involves speaking directly to business owners and operators. A lot of it comes down to helping businesses reimagine what role a phone system can play in driving and retaining business in the AI age.
Takeaways
AI is not meant to replace human interaction or lived experience; it’s meant to clear the path to it. The goal is to increase AI adoption without decreasing the need for people in the process, especially with a SMB customer base.
Deciding what to build is the bottleneck now. Engineers can ship faster than ever, so the constraint is understanding what customers actually need.
The AI space is oversaturated. Everyone will tell you they’re doing something groundbreaking, but the truth is most of us are trying to make existing things “better” with AI.
One of the biggest points of contention around the AI discourse is that it’s all-or-nothing; you either automate everything or you’re left behind. This is dangerous, especially for SMBs.
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