Tyson Chen and Apurva Shrivastava were chasing restaurants when they found an HVAC company. The two engineers had first met at MIT poker night and built an AI system to handle missed calls—originally, they thought this made sense for restaurants, specifically. But, as Chen and Shrivastava wandered a Texas restaurant conference, a Dallas heating and air company called Rescue Air found them. “When a restaurant misses a phone call, that’s a $30, $40 order,” said Chen. “When a home service business ...