If all good startups start with a problem, this one may have started with a bad Slack conversation. CEO and co-founder Tom Bachant remembers seeing the disruption of Slack-based support. Haphazard ticketing, messy DMs, and little opportunity for insight into the underlying problem.
“The first takeaway was understanding that Slack is this kind of chaotic beast that we need to track better,” Bachant recalls. “And we found that the actual work being requested from these teams could easily be automated.”
His new company, Unthread, is the result of that realization. The company builds Slack-native AI-powered support bots for high-profile customers such as Intuit, Lemonade, and Automattic. The goal is to automatically fix the majority of issues and route others to specific support tickets. But more than just a custom Slackbot builder, Bachant and his team believe they’ve discovered a new way to track and fix issues slowing down companies before they become problems.
Unthread is a Startup Battlefield Top 20 finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
That might mean interoperating with ticketing systems like Jira or Zendesk, but it could equally mean replacing them. The flexibility of the AI-based model means Unthread can be built as well as systems for HR, legal, and finance departments. Then, with Unthread in place and the ability to monitor what issues are being reported and where, teams can begin to automate more tasks and ultimately create a self-updating knowledge base for the entire company.
Much of that process is guided by modern AI tools at the core of Unthread’s technology stack, giving it the flexibility to handle a wide variety of problems at scale. However, a significant part of Unthread’s value is simply the basic configuration of ticketing systems applied to modern enterprise communications platforms. “LLMS has changed the way people use our products,” says Bachant. “But ultimately, the problem we are trying to solve hasn’t changed.
It’s been a long road for Bachant. His first startup, founded right out of college, was a ride-sharing system called Dashride that aimed to get drunk college students home safely. After the company was acquired by Cruise in 2018, he founded an ill-fated HR startup before settling on Slack-based support issues. Today, he leads a slim team of 10 people in New York, serving clients and growing Unthread’s remit.
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The secret to longevity, he says, is keeping the focus on the people using the product. “We were able to do this because we had so many conversations with our customers,” says Bachant. “Having a very clear picture of who our customers are, why they are interested in your product, and why they would leave and use another product helped us make a lot of decisions.”
If you want to learn more about Unthread from the company itself, check out dozens of other companies, hear pitches, and hear from guest speakers on four different stages, attend Disrupt in San Francisco from October 27th to 29th. Click here for more information.
