Building an Autonomous Enterprise for Real-World Services with Netic Founder Melisa Tokmak
Summary
This episode centers on Netic’s vision for an autonomous enterprise that sits between customers and essential service businesses, using AI agents to manage the first layer of interaction and operations. Melisa Tokmak explains how Netic applies to messy, urgent, real-world industries like HVAC, plumbing, hospitality, pet care, and automotive, where demand spikes and human staffing can be unreliable. A key theme is that software-based orchestration can deliver value faster than robotics in these environments, because the physical world is too variable for near-term automation. Tokmak also discusses why she chose to build a scalable product company rather than pursue an AI roll-up strategy, emphasizing product and engineering leverage over acquisition-heavy growth. The conversation broadens into how AI is changing private equity’s expectations around measurable ROI and why she is optimistic about AI’s potential in education.
Key Takeaways
- 1Netic acts as an AI intermediary for essential service businesses, handling the customer-facing and operational workflow before a human ever needs to step in.
- 2Operational complexity in real-world service businesses is driven by unpredictable demand, unreliable staffing, and the need for immediate response.
- 3Netic is already seeing meaningful traction, with over 70% of customers being 'AI first' and over 70% of end-customer first interactions happening through its agents.
- 4Tokmak chose to build a product company rather than acquire businesses through a roll-up strategy because she believes product and engineering can scale more broadly.
- 5Her long-term goal is an autonomous enterprise where Netic handles everything except the actual human labor.
- 6Tokmak believes robotics is not the near-term answer for these industries, and that frontier labs are not the main competitive threat for companies like Netic.
Notable Quotes
""Today, over 70 percent of our customers are AI first. We call it Netic first.""
""What I have seen, there's a lot of successful roll ups and tech enabled roll ups. But at the end of all of the products you're building are for the company you just bought.""
""I do think there's quite a bit of a while for robotics to be closer in our chapter.""
""We have made so far I think over $600 million for our customers that have been really generated from AI handled interactions.""
Episode questions
What exactly does Netic do for an HVAC or other essential services business?
Netic handles the customer interaction layer, understands the need, routes the request, and helps deploy the right service or labor. In practice, that can mean answering calls or texts, collecting context, and matching the customer with the right provider or technician.
Why did Tokmak choose to build a product company instead of buying and optimizing businesses through a roll-up?
She says her strengths are engineering and product, not M&A, and she wanted something that could scale across many businesses rather than only the companies she acquired. She also believes a product can compound and serve a broader market than a roll-up.
Why does Tokmak think robotics is not the right answer for these industries right now?
She points to the wide variation in buildings, tools, screws, and work environments, plus the human urgency involved when a home is flooded or a heater fails. Her view is that software and AI orchestration can handle the complexity much sooner than robotics can.
How has private equity’s approach to AI changed, according to Tokmak?
She says the focus has shifted from buying a business, changing the team, and selling it, toward creating measurable value with AI. She still sees cost-cutting as part of the conversation, but argues the better narrative is revenue generation and lasting ROI.