Voiceops
Every technology shift brings about new changes for both consumers and businesses, sometimes in a symbiotic fashion. I saw this first hand in the early days of Gilt Groupe, one of the first mobile commerce companies that scaled of >$1BN of revenue runrate in just a few years following a launch around the iOS store. As retail shifted from offline to online, the role of voice increased even further as traditionally decentralized support and sales moved into centralized call centers. As mobile and website analytics became more sophisticated, the end to end digital funnel continued to improve towards targeted, personalized marketing. Conversely, voice interactions across all categories have remained a black box, with tooling being purchased to meet the bare minimum as opposed to supercharging the business. Everyone knew there was gold hidden in those calls, but we had no way to mine it at scale.
That memory snapped into focus the moment I met Ethan, the founder of Voiceops. He walked me through his vision for a platform that would capture every customer conversation and automatically distill the most important signals — what’s resonating, what’s broken, what’s turning a prospect into a loyal buyer or sending them packing. Instead of guesswork, Voiceops offers precise, real-time insights that any team can act on immediately. One conversation, and I could see he’d been obsessed with this problem for years. He’s not the kind of founder who started an “AI company” just because it was trendy; he’d been gathering data, learning from early experiments, and waiting for AI capabilities to catch up. Now that the technology is finally there, he’s sprinting at full speed.
At Twelve Below, we have a founder archetype that we look for what we call “specialists”: founders who have been honing a single problem for years, often fueled by an unshakable obsession. Ethan fits that description better than almost anyone I’ve met. He started working on AI call analytics back in 2016 — before the big wave of LLMs and “AI for everything.” He kept at it, gathering data on how calls could be transcribed, structured, and turned into insights. He learned the hard way what did and didn’t work in real-life, high-velocity contexts. That combination of endurance and expertise is what we look for in a specialist founder.
Even more striking is how fast Ethan and the Voiceops team move. I’ve always believed you can spot an exceptional founder by their response times — both in email threads and in building product. Before our seed round was even closed, Ethan came to me and said, “I just rearranged the entire approach to create an unexpected moat, and Viji’s already building it.” I remember thinking: We haven’t even signed the docs yet. That combination of breakneck product velocity and strong execution is special. Lots of founders talk about “shipping fast,” but these folks truly live it.
I also love that Voiceops has a deeply rooted Midwestern ethos in its founding DNA. Ethan hails from Illinois, Todd (Voiceops’ founding engineer) works out of St. Louis, and Viji, their VP of Engineering, spent 15 years living just a short drive from Ethan in Illinois. It’s a blend of midwestern values (resilience, humility, kindness) and east coast work ethic (relentless execution). You can feel that in how they operate: they’re friendly, grounded, and laser-focused on results, all at once.
The significance of voice is only growing, especially in a post-LLM world where hybrid human-AI interactions create new questions around trust, compliance, and personalization. Sometimes you can automate low-level support calls, but for products and experiences that involve real dollars or complex products, it’s still humans talking to humans. That’s when you need a tool that can actually understand customer interactions well enough to show you how your messages are landing, what’s causing friction, and which leads are likely to convert.
At Twelve Below, we’re proud to co-lead Voiceops’ seed round and help them scale aggressively — starting with a brand-new office in Union Square in New York City. From day one, Ethan has demonstrated exactly the kind of product obsession and lightning-fast execution we look for. I’ve learned that in startups, a thousand things can go wrong. To push through, founders need a rare mix of product obsession, grit, curiosity, and the ability to move at light speed. Voiceops has all of these.
We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Ethan, Viji, Todd, and the entire Voiceops crew as they reshape how organizations tap into voice data for immediate, actionable insights. A decade ago, I watched Gilt sprint into hypergrowth, wishing we had a clearer lens on what customers were saying. With Voiceops, that lens is now sharper than ever, and I can’t wait to see how far this team runs with it.
