It started by getting locked out of my apartment. After 25 hours of business travel, I arrived home to find that my apartment locks had been changed while I was away (smart move there, landlord). It was 9 PM. The landlord office was closed. Exhausted and desperate, I just needed one thing: maintenance with my new keys.

Instead, I got: "Press 1 for Front Office. Press 2 for Billing. Press 3 for..." Three hours later, I finally cracked the code: 1-2-4-3 for emergency maintenance. Way too much hassle.

Standing there at midnight, I thought there had to be a better way. The next week, I began building an AI voice agent that could understand "I'm locked out" or "emergency" and route directly to the right person. I pitched it to my landlord. She bought it. That was my last month at my corporate job.

Now Untethered builds voice agents for service businesses. The mission is simple: get your time back and keep callers from throwing their phones in frustration.