Carousel Technologies

What do they actually do

Carousel is an Excel add‑in that lets you build, edit, and explain spreadsheets with natural‑language prompts directly inside Excel. Today it supports four core workflows: a chat sidebar that can create multi‑tab models or make edits; a Quick Fix mode to transform selected ranges with a keyboard shortcut; a Model Walkthrough to explain complex formulas and trace how values flow; and file sourcing to pull structured data from PDFs/CSV/presentations into your workbook with citations. It also offers formatting/charting aids, instruction history, and an auto‑continue mode that keeps working in the background while you stay in Excel (usecarousel.com/features, YC launch).

The product is offered as a beta for individuals and teams via an installer from their site, with a public waitlist and demo flow (usecarousel.com, YC company page). An independent reviewer notes the beta is live, that Carousel is distributed via an installer (not AppSource), supports multiple LLMs, and lists pricing from free up to ~$300+ per seat (The FP&A Guy).

Carousel states it was acquired by AlphaSense, with plans to embed Carousel’s Excel modeling into AlphaSense so analysts can pull premium content and data directly into generated models (AlphaSense press release).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Corporate finance / FP&A analyst: Spends hours copy‑pasting and reshaping tables to update forecasts and monthly reports. Needs faster, reliable ways to ingest source data into models and consistent formatting so reports finish before deadlines.
• Investment banking / private equity analyst: Builds deal models from filings and pitch materials under time pressure. Pain is extracting line items from PDFs/Excel attachments and keeping assumptions traceable during rapid iterations.
• Management consultant: Repeatedly reformats client spreadsheets and translates messy workbooks into clean, slide‑ready outputs. Pain is spending billable hours on cleanup and charting instead of analysis and recommendations.
• Sell‑side / equity research analyst: Combines filings, research, and models to produce forecasts and notes. Pain is reconciling disparate sources, citing evidence for assumptions, and quickly updating models when new filings arrive.
• Audit / model reviewer or new hire onboarding: Must understand and validate complex formulas and assumptions across many sheets. Pain is that models are opaque and require long manual walk‑throughs to verify calculations and provenance.

How would they acquire their first 10, 50, and 100 customers

• First 10: Invite 10 power users from finance/consulting via YC and the waitlist to a free, hands‑on pilot. Personally onboard them, run real workflows (deal model, monthly forecast refresh), and collect permissioned mini case studies to iterate (usecarousel.com/features, YC launch).
• First 50: Turn early advocates into referenceable paying teams; publish short demos/webinars from the first case studies and run targeted outbound to FP&A/IB/consulting lists. Offer time‑boxed paid pilots, referral incentives or concierge onboarding, and reduce install friction (clarify enterprise deployment or add marketplace distribution) to ease security reviews (The FP&A Guy).
• First 100: Hire a small sales/solutions team to target deal teams and research groups. Productize connectors and leverage the AlphaSense integration to surface premium research into live models; add channel partners (consulting boutiques/resellers) and industry events with ROI documentation to speed procurement (AlphaSense press release).

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

In the U.S. alone, there are large pools of Excel‑heavy roles: about 1.58M accountants and auditors, 1.08M management analysts, and 368.5k financial and investment analysts—illustrating a sizable potential buyer base even before considering global markets (BLS Accountants & Auditors, BLS Management Analysts, BLS Financial and Investment Analysts).

Bottom-up calculation:

If 200k–300k U.S. finance/consulting seats adopt an Excel AI add‑in at ~$600–$1,200 per user per year, that implies a $120M–$360M U.S. TAM. International expansion and additional personas (audit/research) would increase this. The price band aligns with observed ranges in public reviews (The FP&A Guy).

Assumptions:

• Adoption initially targets a subset (roughly 10–15%) of U.S. accountants, analysts, and consultants who are frequent Excel users.
• Average paid ARPU of $50–$100 per user per month for professional tiers.
• Procurement and security clearances allow deployment as a desktop installer or via enterprise channels.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Microsoft 365 Copilot (Finance): Built into Microsoft 365, it answers natural‑language questions, analyzes workbooks, and surfaces finance‑specific insights, overlapping with Carousel on in‑app analysis and formula explanations.
• Coefficient: An add‑in for Excel/Sheets that syncs live data from many business systems and automates refreshes/reporting—competitive where Carousel aims to win on enterprise connectors and live model feeds.
• Daloopa: Extracts numbers/KPIs from filings and presentations into auditable time series with one‑click model updates, overlapping with Carousel’s document→model extraction and source‑linked updates.
• DataSnipper: Excel add‑in popular with auditors/finance teams to import PDFs, extract tables, link cells to source evidence, and document review steps—competes on extraction, traceability, and speeding reviews.
• Numerous.ai: ChatGPT‑powered add‑in for Sheets/Excel that generates and explains formulas and bulk‑transforms ranges from plain English, overlapping with Carousel on quick fixes and formula generation.