Ex-DeepMind Eng Lead's AI Calling Agent Fo Cut Hang-Up Rate from 80% to 20-30%
julianweisser · x · 2026-10-16
Shivani Poddar, who built Facebook's first assistant and led engineering on DeepMind's coding agent Jules, is solo-founding Fo, a personal AI agent that makes phone calls for users. She says about 80% of people used to hang up on Fo's calls; that's now down to 20-30%.
Her insight: if the person answering has no idea why they're on the call, they have zero incentive to stay on the line — so the product had to go much deeper than plugging in the next voice model. Fo's philosophy is that AI can't always finish the job, so it hires humans for the last mile without resorting to a gig economy.
The podcast episode also covers her decade building personal agents, seeding the AI in Ohio instead of the Valley, and the case for and against solo founding.
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