Will names three things: "two and a half years of battle scars of just obsessing over one problem," a PhD background that lets them build, train and optimize their own models, and being opinionated so customers don't have to prompt engineer or pick a model — "it just is gonna work out of the box."
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Will says most competitors tell you to "plug your own model in" — start with a blank canvas and figure it out yourself. Phonely is opinionated instead: "this is how voice agents should behave," solving the downstream problems so customers don't have to prompt engineer. "You don't need to know the model, you don't need to know the infrastructure, you don't need to adjust the VAT parameters." His design principle: "how do we make things as simple as possible but no simpler." They started researching this about two and a half to three years ago, "back before voice AI was even a term."