We chat with Phil Markunas about his wild journey from Army staff sergeant to voice AI founder.
Phil shares how Standard Practice evolved from a healthcare payment startup to building an AI assistant that handles complex insurance calls. Along the way, we learn about Phil's life in Japan, his Oreo obsession, and why he believes natural conversation is as hard as self-driving cars.
I loved Phil’s concept of “success, but doof” — it neatly encapsulates just how hard it is to measure the success of AI voice calls.
Stay tuned next week for our chat with Olivia Moore from a16z.
See you soon—
dave & harish
Follow Phil:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/phil-markunas
https://philm.io/
https://x.com/philmarkunas
Standard Practice:
https://standardpractice.ai
Chapters
0:00 - Introduction to Phil Markunas, CTO of Standard Practice
1:34 - Emotional responses to voice AI
5:17 - How Army service shaped Phil's leadership
8:07 - Living in Japan
13:04 - The Nibble Health origin story and creating a medical bill payment card
17:59 - Facing challenges and developing the SimpleBill medical analysis tool
22:07 - Pivoting to voice AI
26:25 - Why voice conversation is an AGI-level problem
33:21 - Beyond "just prompt it up" to building sophisticated voice architecture
40:45 - "Success, but doof" moments; and the future of Standard Practice
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https://smartspeakers.fm
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