Ignite Startups: The Future of Voice AI for Businesses with Will Bodewes | Ep245

What if the next great AI company isn’t trying to replace people… but simply answering the phone better than anyone else ever has?

That’s the bet Will Bodewes is making.

Will is the co-founder and CEO of Phonely, a YC-backed startup building conversational AI agents that answer business phone calls with natural voice and deep workflow integrations. Before founding Phonely, Will competed at the NCAA level in cross-country skiing, launched early startup experiments that caught the attention of artists like Chance the Rapper, and began a PhD in artificial intelligence before leaving academia to build. Today, Phonely helps companies capture missed revenue by ensuring every customer call gets answered, booked, and converted.

In this episode, Will joins Brian Bell to unpack the real story behind building a voice AI company—from the messy zero-to-one phase to scaling customers from $7/month pilots to $70,000/month deployments.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

00:01 Introduction to Will Bodewes and Phonely

00:32 Will’s Origin Story and Growing Up in Rural Wisconsin

01:01 Cross-Country Skiing and Competing at the NCAA Level

01:30 First Startup: Bluetooth Speakers Inside Artwork

02:46 From Startup Experiments to a PhD in Artificial Intelligence

03:24 The Beginning of Phonely and the Vision for Voice AI

04:03 Early Founder Lessons and the Long-Term Mindset

05:25 Why It Was the Right Time to Build Voice AI

06:25 Why Voice Is a Bigger Opportunity Than Chat

08:23 Finding Product-Market Fit for Phonely

09:36 The Reality of Building Products Customers Actually Want

10:17 Why Customers Don’t Know What They Want

11:53 The Power of White-Glove Onboarding for Startups

13:37 Early Customers and the First $7 Deal

15:19 Vertical vs Horizontal AI Platforms

17:36 AI Replacing Jobs and the Philosophy Behind Automation

19:23 Customer Stories and Impact on Businesses

20:27 Using Phonely Internally and Product QA

21:28 Surprising Insights from Customer Use Cases

23:09 Building the Voice AI Tech Stack

24:25 Phonely’s Onboarding Process and Freemium Model

27:27 Building Team Culture and Hiring Principles

28:12 Product Momentum and What’s Next for Phonely

29:13 Long-Term Vision for Voice AI

30:27 Rapid Fire: Contrarian AI Beliefs

31:58 The Most Important Skill for Founders

33:01 Hard Founder Decisions and Ignoring Investor Advice

34:40 Future Developments in AI and Browser Agents

36:00 Why Phone Calls Are Underrated

37:46 Risks in Voice AI and Regulatory Challenges

38:26 Advice for Researchers Thinking About Becoming Founders

Along the way, Will shares a refreshingly honest founder philosophy: if you’re starting a company for the glamour, you’re doing it wrong.

“Don’t be a founder unless you have no other choice but to be a founder.”

“Customers never tell you what they want. They describe their problems — and you have to figure out how to solve them.”

From endurance athletics to AI infrastructure, Will’s journey reveals a deeper pattern: the founders who win are often the ones willing to run the longest race.

And sometimes that race starts with a simple idea: what if businesses never missed another phone call again?