When Monik Pamecha and Anthony Krivonos launched the AI voice startup Toma in early 2024, they anticipated making an impact in the healthcare and banking sectors. What they never imagined was spending their summer traversing the American Bible Belt, visiting car dealerships and grappling with oil-stained hands. Yet, a series of unexpected phone calls redirected their attention dramatically: dealerships were overwhelmed—literally drowning in inbound calls—and sought an immediate solution.
Recognizing the potential of a less regulated market despite its sharp departure from their initial trajectory, Pamecha and Krivonos responded swiftly. To understand the scale and scope of the dealerships’ problems, the duo dispatched their AI voice agents to systematically call nearly every automotive dealership throughout the country over several weeks. Their research unveiled an alarming statistic: dealerships answered just 45% of phone calls. Clearly, there was an urgent gap to bridge in customer service for these businesses.
Determined to gain firsthand insights, the two founders set off on an immersive tour of dealerships across Oklahoma and Mississippi. The venture proved transformative—not just professionally, but personally. They immersed themselves in dealership culture, engaging with staff and management, accepting random invitations to informal gatherings, sharing home-cooked meals with dealership families—often with some awkward amusement due to Pamecha’s vegetarian diet—and even visiting the Corvette Museum. Their genuine willingness to experience the daily realities of the dealerships earned them a hearty welcome; one dealer even invited them out for a day at the shooting range.
This immersive strategy did not go unnoticed. The authenticity of their fieldwork impressed investors, laying the groundwork for Toma to secure substantial support. Seema Amble, a partner at a16z, who spearheaded a $17 million investment round for Toma, observed that the founders essentially embedded themselves in dealerships, thoroughly absorbing the operational context. She noted this intense customer-centric focus as a hallmark of successful next-generation vertical AI startups.
This diligent groundwork rapidly translated into tangible results. Toma’s AI voice agents now efficiently handle essential customer interactions—including scheduling service appointments, managing parts orders, and responding to sales inquiries—in over 100 dealerships nationwide. Alongside a16z’s notable support, Toma attracted further backing from respected sources such as Y Combinator, Scale Angels Fund, and notable industry influencer Yossi Levi, widely known as the “Car Dealership Guy.”
Levi explained that dealerships typically struggle to maintain consistent and adequate staffing for incoming calls, largely due to the unpredictable ebb and flow of demand. AI solutions like Toma provide a means to standardize and improve the customer interaction process significantly, ensuring customers receive uniform excellent service across the board.
According to Pamecha, onboarding dealerships involves a focused period of AI training tailored specifically to each customer’s unique sales and service patterns. After a brief training phase of around one to two weeks, the AI agents take over primary responsibility for handling calls, escalating only those requiring specialized human intervention. These human-agent handoffs further strengthen the AI’s capabilities, as subsequent analysis and feedback sharpen each dealership’s individual AI model.
The financial arrangement operates on a subscription basis, becoming incrementally more valuable as dealerships deploy enhanced functionalities of Toma’s voice agents.
With recent Series A funding arriving at a pivotal moment, Toma is poised for growth. Up to now, sales and marketing responsibilities had still rested solely with the two founders; the startup only recently hired its first dedicated salesperson. Pamecha attributes much of the growth and learning to the immersive experiences last summer—the grease-stained clothes, barbecue dinners, and personal connections—that initially had seemed far afield from their original plans. Reflecting on this surprising journey, he calls this hands-on period among the dealerships “one of the best experiences” of his life, built upon sharing and ultimately relieving their customers’ pain.
