Vida is a company that builds AI phone agents for businesses. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Vida CEO and founder Lyle Pratt to learn more about the company.
Lyle Pratt’s Background
What is Lyle Pratt’s background? Pratt said:
“I’ve been building software startups since high school. One of my current co-founders, Noah Hayes, was my college roommate, and together we built and sold a small company during our college years. After graduation, Noah moved to the Bay Area to pursue more startup ventures, while I relocated to the Austin area to do the same.”
“My last company, BetterVoice.com, was sold to Inteliquent, the largest wholesale telecom operator by volume in the world at the time and a publicly-traded company on Nasdaq. Inteliquent is now part of Sinch, Twilio’s largest competitor in the CPaaS space. During my time at Inteliquent, I hired and scaled Machine Learning teams, ran product for one of their $100 million per year UCaaS businesses, and ultimately reported directly to the President to assist with enterprise sales to key clients.”
Formation Of Vida
How did the idea for the company come together? Pratt shared:
“During my time at Sinch/Inteliquent, while LLM capabilities were exploding, it became clear that digital payments and LLMs were going to completely change the telecom industry. The call center software, CPaaS platforms, and IVR systems that I had been a part of building over the past 10 years were all going to be forced to change by the explosive growth in AI capabilities. I left Sinch and recruited a couple of close partners as co-founders: Noah Hayes, experienced multi-startup founder previously at Google’s AI venture firm Gradient Ventures, and Brandon Robinson, also experienced startup founder whom I met and worked with at Sinch.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Pratt’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Pratt reflected:
“There is something addicting about the constant tangible progress you make while building a startup. People who are used to corporate life simply don’t realize how quickly things can get done by a small driven team. Every day is a new favorite as we continue to knock down new milestones in this massive market.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Pratt explained:
“Vida offers carrier-grade AI voice agents for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). By integrating with telecom carriers that serve large numbers of SMBs, Vida makes it easy for companies to implement AI voice agents to boost operational efficiency, drive productivity and enhance customer experience. Businesses can harness and customize Vida’s voice agents to automate and scale key business functions including customer service calls and texts, lead qualification, scheduling, sales, and more.”
“Key features include real-time call handoff, comprehensive business inbox management, and support for various payment methods including Bitcoin transactions via the Lightning Network. Designed with small and medium-sized businesses in mind, Vida requires minimal technical expertise to set up and connects with over 7,000 apps and platforms such as Salesforce, FreshDesk, Athenahealth, Cox Automotive and more, ensuring versatility and ease of integration into existing business processes.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Pratt and the team faced in building the company? Pratt acknowledged:
“While building a startup, one should simply expect to face new challenges every day that seem insurmountable. The only option is to roll with the punches and chip away at problems. One challenge in the AI space is that things are moving ever so quickly. The tool you use today will be surpassed by something better tomorrow. This can make it challenging to build solid software foundations, but my team and I have leveraged our experience in building carrier-grade systems to help us weather the storms.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Pratt cited:
“We just announced our first go-to-market telecom partner Digerati Technologies, (DTGI), a San Antonio-based provider of UCaaS services to SMBs. It’s incorporating Vida AI agents into its subsidiary Verve Cloud, a communications platform that serves a base of over 50,000 business users. Users are already seeing tangible benefits, including improved customer satisfaction and revenue growth.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Pratt about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“I could name car dealerships, health clinics, and large law offices, but I think the best examples are of small business owners finally having the time and resources to simply answer customer calls and book more business. One example that comes to mind is a mobile mechanic who recently signed up. He’s constantly with customers or driving to their locations all day long, leaving little time for him to personally follow up with customer inquiries or even answer customer calls. His Vida AI phone agent now answers his calls and schedules appointments for him so he can focus on his daily work.”
Funding
When asking Pratt about the company’s funding, he revealed:
“We raised a $3 million seed round led by Stillmark with participation from Trammell Venture Partners, Ten31, Timechain, and Lightning Ventures.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Pratt assessed:
“Given the fact that AI is going to disrupt the UCaaS, CPaaS, and Call Center markets, a conservative near term estimate is $50 billion annually.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Pratt affirmed:
“We have a proprietary voice stack that seamlessly integrates with existing telecom networks and business phone systems using native SIP support. This ensures an easy deployment process, making our agents more accessible. Also, businesses can forward their existing phone number or use a Vida-provided number without having to sign up for additional services.”
“The Vida conversation experience is built on the most advanced AI tech, powered by a combination of leading LLMs from OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic and Mistral. Premium text-to-speech and powerful LLMs enable real-time conversations with low latency. Our AI voice agents are lifelike and can be customized based on a user’s own voice for a more personalized touch.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Pratt pointed out:
“We believe that AI phone agents are going to become ubiquitous across the telecom industry. Why purchase a business communications system that has an old school “press one for this, two for that” IVR system anymore? Why buy call center software using voice response systems built on completely outdated tech? Vida is painting a new vision for how AI will be integrated into business communication and telecom systems and with our focus on channel partnerships, we will bring our technology to a variety of existing telecom systems quickly.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics to discuss? Pratt concluded:
“Vida’s mission is to make advanced AI voice technology accessible to all businesses, helping them to provide top-tier customer service that was once the domain of large corporations. Previously exclusive to large enterprises due to high costs and complexities, virtual AI agents are now affordable and easy to implement for smaller entities, offering significant benefits in cost efficiency and time savings.”
“We believe the rise of accessible AI agents represents a major shift in the business landscape, leveling the playing field for small businesses and enabling them to compete more effectively.”
