William Barthell
| William Barthell | |
| Occupation | Co-Founder and CTO of Janet AI |
|---|---|
| Known for | Co-founding Janet AI (Tryjanet) |
William Barthell is an American technology entrepreneur and software engineer. He is the co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Janet AI (operating as Tryjanet), an AI-native ticket management system designed to automate issue tracking for software engineering teams. The company was part of Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch.[1]
Career
Barthell co-founded Janet AI in 2025 alongside Adhit Sankaran, who serves as the company's CEO.[2] The company was accepted into Y Combinator's Summer 2025 cohort and is based in San Francisco, California.
Janet AI positions itself as an "AI-native Jira," aiming to replace or augment traditional manual ticket management platforms used by engineering teams. The platform integrates with a range of communication and development tools — including Slack, Discord, SMS, email, GitHub, meetings, and coding agents — to automatically create, update, and organize work items. Rather than requiring engineers and project managers to manually log and maintain tickets, Janet AI monitors existing workflows and auto-tracks tasks and progress across a team's tool stack.
Key features of the platform include an AI chat assistant accessible through a web dashboard, Slack, or SMS; integration with coding agents that provides real-time, two-way synchronization with engineering workspaces; and GitHub integration that automatically identifies and manages issues based on development activity. The system is designed to reduce the overhead associated with keeping project management tools up to date, particularly for teams operating at high development velocity.
The company has attracted users among YC-affiliated startups. Testimonials on the Janet AI website describe the product as useful for coordinating distributed teams and keeping ticket systems synchronized with rapid code deployment cycles. As of early 2026, the company was actively hiring founding engineers to work on Janet AI's core auto-tracking system at its San Francisco office.
No public information regarding the company's funding amounts or valuation has been disclosed beyond its participation in Y Combinator.
References
- ↑ "Janet AI – Y Combinator". 'Y Combinator}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Janet AI". 'Janet AI}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.