Volca raises $5.5M to bring AI-powered referrals to the $500B home services industry, taking aim at Google and Yelp

Ad budgets are leaking money, and most home service companies don’t even realize it. Contractors are throwing thousands at Google Ads, Yelp listings, and pay-to-play lead-gen platforms that deliver unpredictable results, high fees, and minimal control. For a $500 billion industry powered by plumbers, HVAC techs, painters, and cleaners, the return on investment often doesn’t add up.

That’s the gap Volca is stepping into. The New York-based startup has built an AI-powered referral engine that helps home services businesses grow by doing what they’ve always done best — building trust, delivering good work, and getting customers to spread the word. Only now, it’s automated, measurable, and much more profitable.

With $5.5M in Funding, Volca Aims to Help Contractors Replace Google and Yelp With AI-Powered Referrals

Volca just raised $5.5 million in seed funding to take that vision further. The round was led by Pathlight Ventures with backing from MetaProp, GTMFund, Recall Capital, and a long list of notable founders and early execs from Ramp, Gusto, Scale AI, Plaid, Stripe, Branch.io, and Figma.

Instead of chasing cold leads or gaming review algorithms, Volca helps businesses turn happy customers into active growth engines. Its core product uses AI and SMS to run referral workflows that connect directly into existing CRMs like ServiceTitan. The system reaches out to homeowners via text, nudges them at the right moments, and handles referral rewards — all the way through secure payments and performance tracking.

Brendan Kazanjian, Volca’s co-founder and CEO, knows this space well. His family background in contracting exposed him to how hard it is to grow a home services business while juggling manual work and nonstop phone calls. “The trades power our economy,” he said. “But most operators are drowning in a sea of manual work that prevents them from scaling their businesses efficiently. We want to change that.”

So far, it’s working. Volca has already built millions in homeowner referral pipelines for customers, with some generating more than $70,000 in new monthly revenue. One customer, Nathan Shafer of Shafer Heating and Cooling, said the platform helped them close over $160,000 in new sales in just four months. “Having a strong referral rewards program has been a game-changer for our business,” he said. “Volca’s platform makes it incredibly easy to track, manage, and reward those who refer us — turning word-of-mouth into one of our most powerful growth tools.”

Pathlight Ventures sees an opportunity far beyond referrals. “Volca isn’t just streamlining operations — it’s building a heat-seeking missile revenue engine for home services,” said Mahdi Raza, Co-founder and Managing Partner at Pathlight. “By turning every customer interaction into a growth opportunity, Volca helps contractors generate more revenue, capture more profit, and do it all with less friction.”

The company’s long-term plan is to expand into a full-stack AI platform for the front office — lead gen, communications, post-sale follow-up, and beyond. The team is currently hiring across engineering, product, and customer success in New York.

Volca’s founding team — Kazanjian, Brandon (Don) Rabovsky, and Jack Morton — met early in their tech careers and bonded over shared experiences with small business pain points. Rabovsky brought deep expertise in referral marketing, while Kazanjian brought the perspective of the contractor’s daily grind. That combination gave birth to Volca.

“We’re building Volca to give insanely valuable time and precious resources back to our customers, full stop,” Kazanjian said. “Our hope is that by bringing the magic of AI to an underserved yet important market, home services teams can spend less time and money on figuring out how to survive and grow, and more time on what matters most — their loved ones.”

The message is simple: home service pros don’t need another ad platform. They need tools that actually work for them. Volca is betting that referrals, backed by data and driven by AI, are the answer.