Unthread provides a conversational ticketing and support automation platform that turns messages from Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, Discord, and other channels into tickets while using AI to resolve requests and automate operational workflows. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Unthread Founder Tom Bachant to learn more.
Tom Bachant’s Background
When asked about his background and the experiences that led him to start Unthread, Bachant shared:
I’ve been chronically a startup founder for most of my life. In college, I started a company called Dashride, building ridesharing software for independent taxi and limousine companies. We were acquired by Cruise in 2018, where I worked on self-driving cars for a few years.
I left Cruise in 2021 to return to the startup world and officially started Unthread in 2022. I’ve received some recognition, like being named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and going through Y Combinator, but what I may be most proud of is that when I’m not working on Unthread, I also make crosswords for The New York Times.
How Unthread Started
When discussing how the idea for Unthread came together, Bachant explained:
The idea for the company came out of my experience after leaving Cruise and starting a completely different SaaS company in 2021. We tried to set up email support with our customers, but they kept adding us to shared Slack channels instead.
Nearly every major customer told us they didn’t even check their email anymore. They only used Slack. While in Y Combinator, we interviewed operations teams like IT, HR, and Customer Success and found that they were drowning in Slack threads, trying to use “Mark unread” or “Remind me” to keep track of critical operations work.
We knew there was a better way to provide support internally for teams like IT and externally for Customer Success teams.
Core Products And Features
When describing Unthread’s core products and features, Bachant detailed:
Slack-Native And Microsoft Teams-Native Support
Unthread automatically turns conversations into tickets, whether they originate through Slack channels, direct messages, emails, Microsoft Teams messages, Discord, or anywhere else. People can get help by sending a message rather than filing a ticket.
Agentic AI Built Into The Workflow
Unthread’s AI automatically solves issues, whether by answering a question or triggering actions from natural-language prompts. When it can’t solve an issue, we route it to the right person in our back-office ticketing platform.
Knowledge Base
Customers can create and connect knowledge articles to power AI responses and improve documentation coverage. Unthread can surface documentation gaps and help generate new or updated content based on chat history and resolved tickets.
Analytics And Visibility
Built-in analytics track performance, monitor service-level agreements, analyze trends, and identify recurring issues or documentation gaps, helping teams spot issues early and drive meaningful improvements.
Operational Controls
Service-level agreement and service-level objective tracking, alerts, on-call rotations, and incident and change management are built in to support structured service operations.
Evolving Beyond Slack Support
When asked how Unthread’s mission has evolved over time, Bachant described:
What started as a solution for managing Slack-based support quickly evolved into something bigger. As we worked with more companies, we saw that the issue wasn’t just handling conversations in Slack. It was that traditional ticketing systems were fundamentally misaligned with how modern teams operate.
Work was becoming more conversational, faster, and more collaborative, yet the underlying systems were still built for forms and queues. Employees now expect to send a chat message and have AI take care of the rest, which is where Unthread comes in for these operational workflows.
Becoming Part Of Daily Workflows
When asked about his favorite memory from working at Unthread, Bachant recalled:
For me, it has been seeing teams start to rely on Unthread as part of their normal workflow. It’s no longer something they’re testing, but something they simply use every day.
That shift is always interesting. It’s usually gradual, but you can tell when it happens. That has been the most rewarding part so far.
Major Company Milestones
When discussing Unthread’s most significant milestones, Bachant said:
Some of our biggest milestones have included raising our seed round, which gave us the resources to go all-in on the vision.
Another was landing our first FAANG customer, which was a huge validation that the product could meet the standards of world-class teams.
Lastly, reaching $1 million in annual recurring revenue was a key milestone for any startup founder, and now we’re moving on to the next milestones.
Navigating The AI Market
When asked about challenges in the company’s sector and how Unthread has addressed them, Bachant noted:
One of the ongoing challenges in our space is the amount of noise around AI right now. A lot of products are adding AI features, but the core system underneath doesn’t really change. You’re still working in the same ticket queues. It just drafts replies faster.
For us, the challenge has been staying focused on actually improving how the work gets done, not just making the current system slightly more efficient. We’ve approached that by staying close to customers.
Having a clear picture of who the product is for, why they rely on it, and what would cause them to switch helps guide our decisions. That keeps us focused on rethinking the system itself, not just improving it around the edges.
Unthread’s Differentiators
When asked what differentiates Unthread from its competition, Bachant emphasized:
What differentiates Unthread is that we provide conversational ticketing at the system level, not as a layer on top of legacy software. Our customers do not submit tickets. They talk through Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, or in-app chat the way they always have, and we detect when help is needed, understand the intent behind the request, and automatically route or resolve it.
For agents, everything comes into a single inbox, regardless of where the conversation started.
Beyond that, our workflow builder can trigger real actions across systems. It is not just drafting replies. It safely integrates with tools like Salesforce, Okta, and GitHub and actually completes repetitive operational work inside those systems.
Most competitors are retrofitting AI into old ticketing models. We are rebuilding ticketing around conversations and automation from the ground up.
Future Goals
When discussing Unthread’s future goals, Bachant concluded:
Our value proposition is automation, so we’re always looking at new ways to automate tedious tasks for people. Today, we can automate about 60% of an IT team’s tickets, but we’re hoping to increase that number to more than 95%.
More than that, we want to be the tool that gets work done before people even ask for it. We’re excited to continue growing the company and plan to raise our next funding round soon.
