The AI Voice Advantage: Why Voice Is the Real Wedge
Welcome back to Founder Mode!
There’s a lot of hype around AI right now—most of it focused on text. Chatbots, content generation, email writing or just "thinking". But I believe the best wedge to embed AI deeply into a business isn’t text. It’s voice.
Voice is notoriously hard to get right. So, if you can solve it, you’re not just adding a feature. You need to create an intelligence layer for the whole operation. Now that you have that layer, you can address larger and more valuable problems in the company.
Before we get to that - Last week on the pod, we sat down with Scott Woody, CEO of Metronome, to talk about how to right-price your SaaS. We unpacked why traditional seat-based pricing is breaking down, how AI is shifting software value from “subscriptions” to “agents that do work,” and why modern pricing models need both stability and upside. If you’re building in SaaS, this episode is a masterclass on packaging, incentives, and finding your true customer.
Now, I’ll explain why voice is key for AI adoption. I’ll also highlight common mistakes founders make. Finally, I’ll discuss the gap between demos and production.
Why Voice Is the Wedge
Voice feels messy. Calls come in at all hours. People speak with accents, background noise, slang, or frustration in their tone. But that’s also why it’s so valuable.
If you can master voice, you unlock a window into the entire customer journey. You capture intent in the most natural format humans use—speech. Unlike an email, chatbot, mobile app or web portal, which only works for certain users, everyone can pick up the phone. We know this: if you REALLY want to get something done, you pick up the phone. I hate making calls, but when I need to reach a business or person, I make the call.
When AI handles conversations, it’s more than just answering calls. It becomes the business's nerve center.
Who Actually Feels the Pain
A mistake I see often: founders trying to sell AI automation to small startups. Early-stage companies don’t usually feel the pain. They don’t have enough volume to justify the cost. Their support teams are tiny, and the founders still believe they can “build it themselves.”
The real market? Scaled-up companies. They’re already 50% understaffed—even if they won’t admit it. Their wait times stretch into hours. Their teams are drowning in tickets. They don’t need to be convinced; they already feel the pain every single day.
That’s the moment when AI voice isn’t just “nice to have”—it’s critical.
Don’t Fight User Behavior
Another common mistake is making customers use your favorite channel.
Founders love to build slick apps, portals, or dashboards. But what if your customer base isn’t tech-savvy? Or they simply don’t want to download another app?
The truth: users pick the channel, not you. And for millions of people, that channel is still the phone.
AI voice meets them where they are. It changes the old experience—long waits, dropped calls, and endless transfers—into a faster, smarter, and more personal one. That’s where real adoption happens.
The Demo vs. Reality Gap
It’s easy to build a demo bot that kind of works. A canned conversation. A flashy pitch. But the gap between a working demo and a production system that actually delivers ROI is massive.
95% of these projects fail in production. Why? Because the last 5% is the hardest.
That last 5% requires:
- Deep integration with internal systems.
- Smarter engineering and real error handling.
- A willingness to invest beyond commodity pricing.
If you treat voice AI like a commodity, you’ll get commodity results.
Critical Workflows: Where Failure Isn’t an Option
Not every workflow has the same stakes. A small error in rescheduling a haircut? Annoying, but fixable. A small error in rescheduling a medical procedure that requires sedation? Catastrophic.
The value of your solution is directly tied to the cost of failure.
If the cost of being wrong is low, AI can tolerate a higher error rate. But in high-stakes workflows, there’s no room for error. The best opportunities for durable AI products are here. The business case is clear.
5 Key Takeaways
- Voice is the wedge — solving it forces you to build intelligence across the whole business.
- Sell where the pain is — scaled companies, not tiny startups, feel the weight of staffing gaps and wait times.
- Don’t fight users — meet them on the phone if that’s where they are.
- Beware the demo trap — the last 5% of production readiness is the hardest and most valuable.
- Focus on critical workflows — the higher the cost of failure, the greater the value of your solution.
Final Thoughts
Text-based AI is exciting, but it’s already crowded, since it's 10x easier. Voice, on the other hand, is harder—and because of that, it’s more defensible.
If you solve voice, you don’t just fix a channel. You build the intelligence backbone of an entire company. You earn the right to expand into deeper workflows, higher-value problems, and larger revenue opportunities.
That’s why I believe AI voice is the real wedge. Not because it’s flashy. But because it’s hard. And solving hard problems is where enduring companies are born.
See you on Friday,
-kevin
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