START pod: Manav Modi, CEO & Cofounder, AgentPhone “Phone numbers for AI Agents”

START pod: Manav Modi, CEO & Cofounder, AgentPhone “Phone numbers for AI Agents”

From START by Fondo

June 1, 2026 · 13 min · Episode 116

About this episode

Manav Modi discusses how phone numbers are essential for AI agents to interact with the real world.

AI agents can write code, analyze data, and pass the bar exam They can't order you a pizza because they don't have a phone number Think about how much of the real world still runs on phone numbers SMS verification Delivery coordination Account creation Calling a business... Without one, an agent is stuck behind glass Manav Modi & cofounder Meet Modi built AgentPhone to fix that Give your agent a phone number and it can suddenly act He told his agent to order DoorDash It created an account, talked to the delivery driver, made the payment Pizza showed up at his door. Y Combinator is a customer. After An engineer tried Twilio and got buried in compliance, AgentPhone had him live in a day Every person will soon have hundreds, maybe thousands of agents working for them The hard part isn't making them smart It's giving them the tools to touch the real world ‍ 🎙️ Manav Modi, CEO & Co-Founder, AgentPhone on Fondo START pod ‍ 00:57 Why AI agents need phone numbers to interact with the real world 01:24 The tools that move agents closer to human-level autonomy 01:50 The emerging infrastructure stack powering AI agents 02:18 Why payments may become a critical layer for autonomous…

People in this episode

Host: Fondo

Guest: Manav Modi

Topics covered

  • AI agents
  • phone numbers
  • autonomous agents
  • delivery coordination
  • infrastructure stack

Keywords

  • AI agents
  • phone numbers
  • AgentPhone
  • autonomy
  • delivery

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: AgentPhone, Y Combinator

Products: DoorDash, Twilio

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