The gap is hiding in plain sight.
Over 100 million Americans work on the frontlines of the real economy: real estate agents, contractors, truck dispatchers, service providers, and small business owners. For them, the phone isn’t just a tool—it is the interface of work. Every deal, booking, and relationship begins with a conversation.
Yet these conversations—the heart of how business actually happens—have been invisible to AI. Silicon Valley has spent the past decade optimizing for knowledge workers behind screens, not the people who power the economy every day.
The gap is massive and measurable:
- Typical small businesses answer fewer than 40% of inbound calls.
- 4 out of 5 callers who reach voicemail never try again.
- In home services, responding within the first minute can triple or quadruple conversion rates.
- And most consumers now prefer SMS for time-sensitive updates, yet few businesses manage texts effectively.
This is the reality Beside is built to change.
Beside brings AI to where real business happens: conversations.
The company rebuilt the phone for the AI age—giving every small business the full power of AI inside every call and text.
Beside captures every call and message, then acts on them automatically. It answers missed calls like a receptionist, takes notes and books meetings like a secretary, and strategizes and responds like an executive assistant—all while capturing business intelligence in one unified system.
Conversations are where contractors win jobs, clinics reassure patients, retailers build loyalty, and founders close deals. Until now, those moments have been invisible to AI.
Beside changes that. It’s the first cross-platform AI that turns calls, texts, and meetings into action: scheduling follow-ups, updating calendars, drafting replies, booking clients, and tracking commitments automatically.
Unlike chatbots that try to personify AI or notetakers that stop at transcripts, Beside fades into the background and does the work. It offers a premium experience for customers—making them feel seen, understood, and taken care of without being asked.
What started as M1 quietly became a movement.
For 18 months, Beside operated in stealth as M1, an AI receptionist for calls and texts.
M1 quietly reached $4 million in ARR, with 20,000 paying customers and a 4.8 out of 5 rating across 4,500 reviews.
Half of users engage with M1 14 times a day, six days a week—because it prevents missed calls, forgotten details, and lost revenue.
“Not being stressed about forgetting anything a customer wants is invaluable,” one customer said. “M1 keeps everything on track and changes the experience completely.”
The receptionist was just the beginning.
The AI Receptionist is where it starts.
It answers calls and texts like a concierge—booking appointments, remembering personal details, and following up automatically. It knows you prefer Tuesdays over Wednesdays for your haircut, that your technician is Ryan, and that you chose red polish last time.
After the appointment, it checks in with something specific to you—not a generic promotion.
On macOS, Beside extends this intelligence from the field to the desktop. Professionals who switch between calls and meetings—like real estate agents, contractors, and consultants—get prep before meetings, context from past conversations, and follow-ups written automatically.
What began in trades and services now extends to anyone who works through conversations—not just email or chat.
From receptionist to business partner.
- Receptionist – Answers calls and texts, books accurately, remembers details, and handles volume.
- Chief of Staff (macOS) – Prepares you before meetings, recalls past context, drafts follow-ups with attachments, and keeps next steps moving.
- Business Partner (roadmap) – Surfaces operational insights, completes actions autonomously, improves customer satisfaction, and helps grow revenue.
It all starts with the telephony stack.
To make this possible, Beside rebuilt the telephony stack from the ground up.
By integrating directly with the telephone network and partnering with industry leaders, Beside can reliably power and capture millions of calls per month, provision and verify numbers, meet regulatory requirements, and support call forwarding and porting—so businesses keep the numbers their customers already know.
Delivering high-quality calls anywhere—in a truck, on a job site, or across a city—is a complex challenge Beside engineered around. By mastering the U.S. regulatory and carrier ecosystem, the company built a blueprint it can replicate globally, adapting to local requirements while maintaining the same reliability and performance.
This telephony foundation is Beside’s moat—an infrastructure layer that makes AI useful where it matters: in live, real-world conversations.
The idea was born from the real world.
CEO Maxime Germain grew up in a small town with parents in real estate and started working construction at 15. He now owns properties himself. Beside was born from that world—the people who live on their phones, not behind dashboards.
“AI should not be for tech tourists. It should be for the millions of businesses across America who are too busy working the phones to switch tools.”
When Beside runs your phone, everything compounds.
Businesses that run on Beside reach levels of efficiency, revenue, and customer trust they couldn’t achieve otherwise.
Leaving Beside feels like losing part of the team that quietly keeps everything running—fewer follow-ups, more missed calls, slower responses, and customers who feel less cared for.
With Beside, every interaction compounds into growth and loyalty. A local shop can become a regional business with a 5-star experience. A solo contractor can scale to a 20-person crew. When they grow, Beside grows with them.
Closer to Square, Toast, and Shopify than Slack or Notion.
Beside isn’t productivity SaaS—it’s infrastructure for the real economy.
By capturing the context of every customer interaction, Beside lays the foundation for higher-value products in payments, satisfaction tracking, and growth analytics—giving small businesses enterprise-grade leverage without the complexity.
Available today, built to scale.
Beside is available in the U.S. on iOS, macOS, and Android, with Windows coming soon.
The team behind it.
Beside was founded by Maxime Germain (CEO), Bobby Giangeruso (Product), Aymeric Beaumet (CTO), Justin Bureau (Product), and Helene Blonz (Growth).
The founding team previously built Jour, a mental health app acquired by Alan for $20 million.
The company has raised $32 million in Seed and Series A funding, led by EQT Ventures, with participation from Index Ventures and others.
Notable investors include:
Stewart Butterfield (Slack), Clement Delangue (Hugging Face), NextView Ventures, ISAI, Volo Ventures, Factorial Capital, Mathilde Colin (Front), Pierre Valade (Sunrise), and Jean-Charles Samuelian (Alan).
At last, AI for the real world.
With Beside, the real economy gets what Silicon Valley never built for it:
a phone that listens, remembers, and acts.
AI that doesn’t replace human connection—but multiplies it.
And a platform where every call, every text, and every customer moment finally matters.