YC Root Access (Founder Fireside) · Oct 29, 2026 · 32m · 27m saved
With AJ Jain, Co-founder · Aditya Ketkar, Co-founder, Broccoli (YC W22)
AJ Jain and Aditya Ketkar told Y Combinator's Gustaf Alstromer on Root Access that their AI phone-answering startup Broccoli went from zero to a projected $60 million in annual recurring revenue in two years — after their first idea, an EV-charging telematics business, produced zero usage of its own APIs.
"If you don't answer the call, that lead is gone. You'll never be able to recover that opportunity." — Broccoli founders
AJ and Aditya applied to YC three times before being accepted, relocated their first startup from India to Norway chasing EV demand-response, and shut it down after utility customers never adopted it.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 32 minutes of audio, 5 minutes of reading.
Here are the 5 takeaways that matter.
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Key Takeaways
Their first startup failed because the consumer value was too thin
EV demand-response saved drivers "maybe 50 bucks a year" against the pain of an uncharged car
The pivot rule was a massive market and the customer's single most painful problem
Home services: ServiceTitan alone does over $1 billion in revenue and recently went public
Door-to-door as students, not AI vendors, is what got them in the room
LinkedIn outreach produced zero conversations; posing as students got roughly eight a day
Their product beat a $5,000-a-month answering service on day one
Three appointments on day one versus the humans' previous nightly maximum of two
Broccoli is heading to $60 million ARR, from zero two years ago
More than 500 customers, a recent $30 million Series B, about 75 employees
1. Zero Usage, Hard Reset
AJ and Aditya's first company, Telematica, built EV-charging APIs and relocated from India to Norway after European energy companies wanted to integrate Tesla and BMW charging data for demand-response — shutting down EV charging across a district when wind and solar generation ran low.
The consumer trade-off killed it: "you're saving maybe 50 bucks a year"
"If you look at the economics from a consumer point of view, you're saving maybe 50 bucks a year. It's not exciting enough." — Broccoli founders
An uncharged car and a missed workday the next morning was a far more painful trade-off than the savings offered, so utility customers never adopted it and the founders never saw usage of their own APIs.
