While many successful startups are sparked by a problem, this one may have started with a particularly frustrating Slack exchange. CEO and co-founder Tom Bachant recalls witnessing the disorder of providing support through Slack—random tickets, scattered direct messages, and little visibility into the root causes of issues.
“What struck me first was realizing that Slack had become this unruly system that needed better oversight,” Bachant recalls. “Then it became clear that much of the work teams were requesting could be automated without much trouble.”
That insight led to the creation of his latest venture, Unthread. The company develops AI-driven support bots that work natively within Slack, serving major clients such as Intuit, Lemonade, and Automattic. Their aim is to automatically resolve a large share of support requests and escalate the rest as dedicated tickets. But Unthread is more than just a custom Slackbot provider—Bachant and his team believe they’ve found a novel approach to identifying and addressing the bottlenecks that hinder businesses, solving issues before they escalate.
Unthread has been named a Top 20 finalist in Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
Sometimes, this involves integrating with established ticketing platforms like Jira and Zendesk, but just as often, Unthread can serve as a replacement. Thanks to its adaptable AI framework, Unthread can be tailored for HR, legal, or finance teams as well. Once deployed, Unthread tracks where issues originate, enabling the team to automate even more processes and gradually build a dynamic, self-maintaining knowledge base for the entire organization.
Modern AI technologies are central to this process, forming the backbone of Unthread’s technical infrastructure and allowing it to address a broad spectrum of challenges at scale. Yet, a key part of Unthread’s value lies in bringing the structured approach of ticketing systems to contemporary workplace communication tools. “LLMs have transformed how people interact with our platform,” Bachant noted, “but the core issue we’re addressing remains the same.”
Bachant’s journey to this point has been eventful. His first company, launched right after college, was Dashride—a ride-sharing platform designed to help college students get home safely after drinking. After Cruise acquired Dashride in 2018, he started a short-lived HR tech venture before focusing on the challenges of Slack-based support. Today, he leads a nimble team of ten in New York, growing Unthread’s capabilities and supporting its clients.
According to Bachant, the key to lasting success is maintaining a strong focus on users. “We could only achieve this by having constant conversations with our customers,” he explains. “Having a clear understanding of who your users are, what draws them to your product, and what might make them switch to something else has guided many of our choices.”
If you’re interested in hearing directly from Unthread—and want to discover dozens of other startups, watch their presentations, and attend talks across four stages—join us at Disrupt in San Francisco from October 27 to 29. Find out more here.
