Hello and welcome to another edition of Founder to Founder 👋

Today’s post is a little different from what I usually write.

Up until now, whenever I publish on here, I share with you lessons I’ve learned, mistakes I’ve made or just things I wish someone told me as a founder.

But today, instead of talking about something I’ve already learned, I’m going to share about a journey we at OpenPhone and I, as a founder, are embarking on.

And that “something” is…becoming a multi-product company.

After seven years of building and refining our business phone system, we're officially becoming a two-product company with the launch of Sona, our voice AI agent.

It’s a big day for us 🎉

I don't have all the answers just yet about how to navigate this change. But I wanted to share how we’ve been thinking about this milestone.

Let’s get into it.

📒 DEEP DIVE

Becoming a multi-product company

How we're approaching the launch of Sona and what it means for OpenPhone.

First things first. Let me tell you about what we're launching today.

Sona is our voice AI agent. It picks up your calls when you or your team aren’t around.

Over the years, we’ve done a lot of things in the product to help businesses not miss calls. Here are a few things we've tried:

1. Allowed businesses to have their team share access to their number so multiple people can answer calls

2. Create a smart phone menu that guides callers to the right place

3. Set up missed call auto-replies so any missed call can easily become a text conversation

But it dawned on me over the weekend that a workspace that uses Sona will not have any missed calls. They simply don’t exist anymore.

In the OpenPhone call flow builder, you can set any call that isn't answered within a certain time frame (5 seconds, 10 seconds, whatever you want) to be handled by Sona instead of going to voicemail.

Even if you have a call center with a team taking every call, you're human. Someone's on lunch or people didn't realize they took a step away. You literally can't answer every single call.

But Sona can.

And setting it up is super easy:

1. Determine where in the call flow you want Sona to answer the call. In this example, I set it up to answer any call that’s not answered after 10 seconds.

2. Upload any knowledge base you’d like Sona to use to answer questions. I actually set one up for this newsletter. I uploaded all posts I’ve written and let Sona get trained on that content.

3. That’s it!

All Sona conversations are transcribed, summarized, and stored right in OpenPhone, where your team already collaborates. It's all integrated, so there's no need to forward calls to another system like other AI solutions require.

It’s really an incredible product, and I can’t wait to see how people use it.

Go to openphone.com/sona to learn more and enable it in your workspace.

To test my Sona number, call 434-FOUNDER and ask it questions about this newsletter.

The inevitable second product question

As a founder of a SaaS company, there's a point when you start wondering if you should introduce a second product.

Jason Lemkin talked about this many times, including recently in this LinkedIn post: Every founder of a SaaS company will eventually consider adding a second product. Some do it too early, and it becomes a distraction. Others do it too late, and the growth stalls.

Personally, I feel like we're doing it at the right time. If we did this earlier, we probably wouldn’t have the internal infrastructure to do it right. And if we waited longer, it would feel like we missed the boat.

I guess only time will tell, but I think we've hit that sweet spot.

As a communication platform, we’ve had the opportunity to introduce AI in a meaningful way. Seeing our customers being hungry for AI inside OpenPhone has certainly sped up our timeline.

How a second product changes everything

Starting today, our whole business is changing with the addition of Sona.

It's like dropping a stone in water and watching the ripples spread everywhere.

I've been thinking about all the things we need to figure out as we navigate this transition. Here’s a peek at the biggest ones:

Pricing in the world of AI

We’ve always aimed to offer simple and clear pricing. And while some of our competitors still price per minute, we offer plans that come with US & Canadian calls & messages included.

AI comes with inherently different economics that lend a lot better with a usage-based model.

As we introduce Sona, we’re combining two concepts. Our Sona package starts at $49/mo for 50 calls, and any additional calls that Sona handles are $0.99/each.

We decided to go with something simple as an add-on.

Our go-to-market strategy is flipping

For years, our marketing efforts have been focused on being discovered as a "business phone system." That's been our identity.

I've shared how important it was for us to be able to rank #1 for “business phone system” on Google. But now it’s 2025 and two big shifts are happening:

1. AI search is starting to eat into Google search.

2. We’re expanding beyond what’s considered a “phone system” 🙂

Who knows, maybe new customers will discover us through the route of voice AI first, then realize they need the phone system too.

And honestly, I find that both fascinating and tough.

How do we evolve our story and brand to make sure we are known for Sona (and everything else to come) vs our original phone system offering?

I wish there was an easy answer here, but like with most things 0-1 we need time in market and tight customer feedback to get this (and other) answers.

Support gets more complex

We've been self-serve for years, but this is a new product with AI in the call flow.

The concept of training your AI agent is fairly new to a lot of businesses we serve. So we're investing in content creation and offering more hands-on support.

Our knowledge base is growing exponentially with this launch.

Partnerships become more valuable

We invested in partnerships heavily about a year ago when we hired Juraj Pal to lead this area of our business.

At the time, it wasn't a super obvious move. But looking back, it was a great call.

As OpenPhone gets more configurable (API, Sona, etc), there’s a lot more value an agency or solutions partner can offer.

When OpenPhone was super simple we didn’t have much to offer partners outside of affiliate commission. But now, partners can grow their revenue by offering services like Sona setup or knowledge base management.

Sona adds such an exciting dimension to what they can do on behalf of their clients. Just like we saw automation agencies create Zapier and Make workflows for businesses, we’ll see them creating workflows inside OpenPhone.

Going back to day one

There's something really fun about this moment because it reminds me of the early days of OpenPhone.

I've shared our journey going from zero to a thousand customers, and I hope we get 1,000 customers on Sona a lot faster and a lot easier than we did when we started OpenPhone. ;)

As much as we planned it and thought about it, the truth is we don't know exactly what it's going to be like.

We've been working for over seven years on OpenPhone, gaining product-market fit for the business phone system. And now with this new product, it goes back to zero in some ways. Sona has no revenue as of the time I'm writing this.

We have to gain product-market fit all over again. But our existing customer base gives us an opportunity to get real feedback quickly.

There's a quote from Jack Altman I love about this from a SaaStr talk he gave last year:

Are we 100% ready? Maybe not. But we feel like we have the right value proposition.

What's the alternative? Missed calls and voicemails that no one leaves?

There’s got to be a better way 🙂

The wrap-up

Becoming a multi-product company is new territory for us. We've gotten advice, we've planned carefully, but there's still so much we're figuring out as we go.

Every SaaS founder will face this decision eventually, and I hope sharing our process helps when it's your turn.

If you want to experience Sona for yourself, call 434-FOUNDER.

I've trained it on the content from this newsletter, so you can ask questions about anything we've covered in Founder to Founder (including this post!) and even call to request topics for future.

And if you’re curious to give Sona a try for your company, check out openphone.com/sona

I’d love to hear what you think.

Until next time,

Daryna

ps - massive kudos to the team behind this monumental launch. So many folks across all teams contributed and worked hard to get us here. I want to shout out Andrew Smondulak who led product efforts, Harshal Jethwa and Tris Lahey on Eng and George Williams on GTM 💜

pps - check out Mahyar’s and mine launch announcements to see Sona in action