telli was founded in 2024. We were part of the YC Fall ‘24 batch. In the last couple of months, we’ve grown to 6-figure ARR and raised a $3.6M seed from investors including Cherry Ventures, Y Combinator, and great strategic angels

about us

At telli, we're building the first AI-native phone system.

Since launching last year at Y Combinator (the same investors behind Airbnb, Stripe, Twitch, Coinbase, and others), we've grown >$2M in annualized revenue with a team of only 12 people.

Today, many companies fail in their customer communication not because they don't care, but because they can't keep up. The sheer volume of calls forces to rely on low-quality outsourced call centers or have their internal teams waste hours on repetitive calls.

With telli, our customers now rely on AI voice agents that handle their repetitive calls, freeing human to focus on what matters - talking to customers when it counts. The result: higher efficiency, happier teams, and better customer experiences.

Legacy phone systems weren’t designed for an AI-first world. That is why we are building the first AI-native phone system that lets companies manage both their human and AI teams on one platform.

Our founding team knows this problem inside-out. We ran a 150-person internal call center at Enpal. We know how difficult and expensive it is to scale high-quality customer experience with phone calls.

The opportunity is massive!!! and we're just getting started. We're on a mission to let every company provide a world-class customer experience by ending the era of low-quality call centers.

about the role

This is the perfect role for someone early in their career (e.g. recent grad) who wants to get deep exposure to how startups operate, work directly with customers, and help scale AI products in the real world.

AI is transforming how companies run their customer communication. As a AI Operations Intern , you’ll work closely with the founders and our customers to make sure everything runs smoothly. You’ll help onboard new customers, support and expand existing ones, and improve the internal processes that make telli scale.

If you’re organized, proactive, and love working at the intersection of product, customer, and operations, this role is for you.

what you’ll be responsible for

• own full customer journeys including helping onboard and expand customers using our AI agents

• supporting day-to-day operations and customer communication

• build custom solutions for clients

• managing customer feedback and identifying growth opportunities

• collaborating with product and engineering to improve internal tooling

• building and documenting scalable processes

• diving into data and tools (like n8n & Zapier)

• preparing materials and insights for team and customer meetings

what makes you a great fit

• you’re a strong communicator in both English and German

• you’re tech-savvy (or have a semi-technical background) and curious about how AI agent products work

• you’ve worked on projects or side hustles that show initiative and drive

• you’re organized, hands-on, and not afraid of doing unglamorous work

• you love solving problems and figuring things out on your own

• you’re early in your career and hungry to learn fast

• you’re excited to help build something from the ground up

you may not make a good fit if…

• you only want to do high-level “strategic” work

• you aren’t comfortable juggling multiple tasks at once

• you don’t enjoy working directly with customers or in dynamic environments

• you’re not interested in AI, tech, or startups

• you’re only looking for a typical 9–5 internship

our tech stack includes TypeScript, React, TanStack, Node, Python, Postgres as well as Temporal.io and Pipecat. But more than familiarity with any specific technology, we value a customer-centric approach and ability to ship end-to-end features.