When Monique Pameka co-founded AI audio startup Toma in early 2024, he didn’t expect to spend the summer months sweating at Bible Belt Car dealers. He and co-founder Anthony Krivonos were still focused on banks and medical clients when dealers knocked.
“They called us and said, ‘We’re drowning on the phone,'” Pameka explained his initial contact in an interview with TechCrunch.
Pamecha and Krivonos set up their tests after seeing the opportunity to pivot into a space that is far less regulated than banks and healthcare. Over the course of a few weeks, they discovered that those calls were only picked up 45% of the time.
The co-founder packed the bag. And like some kind of modern reinterpretation of Tommy Boy in the film, they toured dozens of car dealers in Oklahoma and Mississippi to better understand how these businesses work. They both literally and figuratively dirty their hands. Pameka said when his wife returned home, she was surprised by the grease stains on his clothes.
That commitment paid off. They not only won customers, but attacked the dealer’s complete charm. The founder shared a homemade meal – given the occasional troubling yet obscure events, he said – and was invited to tour the Corvette Museum. At least one dealer even asked Toma founders to tag the shooting range.
A16Z partner Seema Amble, who leads the $17 million Toma has raised so far, and the pair “live effectively with these dealers, go to the family barbecue of these dealers and understand how it actually works.”
“We are investing in many of the next generation of vertical AI companies. Many of the best founders lived and breathed with these customers and understood what was going on under the hood,” she told TechCrunch. “The pun is not intended.”
Insights from that trip helped Pamecha and Krivonos cut Toma Voice agents into tools they already use at over 100 dealers nationwide. AI helps customers schedule service appointments, process parts orders, respond to sales questions, and more.
Along with the A16Z, Pamecha and Krivonos attracted investments from Y Combinator (created Toma in YC in January 2024), Scale Angels Fund and automotive industry influencer Yossi Levi (The Car Dealership Guy).
Levi told TechCrunch that dealers have difficulty predicting volumes, so some are struggling with calls.
“It fades and flows. Sometimes you get overwhelmed by the demand. There’s not enough other demand and it’s not easy for staff to properly train staff for a consistent experience,” Levi said. AI “provided the opportunity for dealers to truly standardize that process and provide a more consistent, richer customer experience.”
According to Pamecha, Toma’s onboarding process involves training dealer customers with one to two weeks of training to provide AI with context. This is important. Because dealers do the same thing widely, but there can be a lot of variation in the details. Some dealers may, for example, serve more diesel engines. Dealers also run many custom promotions for both sales and services.
After that initial training explosion, Toma AI begins to call and hand over to human employees if they are confused. These handoff calls are also analyzed to enhance the AI model to better assist that particular dealer. Business-wise, Toma operates the subscription model. AI agents can handle more parts of the dealer’s operations, so those dealers will have to pay for those additional features.
According to Pamecha, Series A is “at a great time” for Toma. The startup only hired its first true sales employee within the past few weeks. Before that, it was still mostly Pameka and Krivonos hustling, as they did all over the country last summer.
But without that trip, Pamecha doesn’t know if Toma has reached this point.
“It was one of the best experiences of my life,” he said. “We all feel like we’ve become friends. I think we come from places like everyone and we’re feeling the pain. I think they’re feeling the pain too.”
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