Hestus, Inc.

What do they actually do

Hestus makes Sketch Helper, an add‑in for Autodesk Fusion 360 that watches you sketch and proposes concrete fixes like constraints, missing dimensions, mirrored copies, centerlines, and connecting dangling points. Suggestions preview directly on the sketch; you accept with a keystroke or click, and everything is undoable like standard CAD edits (Hestus examples, Autodesk App Store listing, App Store help doc).

The tool is delivered as a Fusion 360 add‑in available free in early access from the Autodesk App Store and Hestus’ site, with visible release notes and version updates. The company reports time/click savings during sketching and says over 1,000 engineers tried the early tool during their YC launch (download page, release notes, YC page).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Mechanical CAD engineer using Fusion 360 for part sketches: Spends significant time on repetitive sketch cleanup (connecting loose geometry, adding constraints/dimensions, mirroring/centerlines), which slows iteration and leads to errors (examples, Autodesk App Store).
• CAD technician/drafter preparing models for others: Repeats the same small fixes across many parts; this is tedious, time‑consuming, and crowds out higher‑value work (release notes, examples).
• Product/hardware engineer at a small team or startup: Needs fast design cycles but loses time to CAD housekeeping, risking slower iterations and missed deadlines (YC page, Hestus home).
• Assembly or manufacturing engineer: Receives parts with missing/incorrect mating features or unclear tolerances, causing assembly issues and rework; wants earlier manufacturability guidance (YC page).
• Engineering manager or team lead: Struggles to maintain consistent modeling practices across a team; junior engineers’ inconsistent sketches create low‑value cleanup work for seniors/managers (Hestus site, release notes).

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

• First 10: Convert existing early users and warm contacts from the ~1,000 engineers who tried the tool; offer quick onboarding calls to reduce install friction and capture short testimonials to secure paid conversions (YC page, download page).
• First 50: Leverage product‑led channels in Fusion 360 communities: promote the App Store listing, publish short example videos/demos in Fusion forums, Reddit, and YouTube creator channels; run targeted outreach to small hardware teams and maker spaces for group installs (App Store, examples).
• First 100: Shift to small team pilots and partnerships using early case studies and referral credits; run paid pilots with startups/CAD service shops and partner with Autodesk resellers/training programs to include the plugin in new Fusion seat onboarding.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Today’s practical reach is Fusion 360’s user base: Autodesk cites up to ~1.2M Fusion users (including free/education), with commercial paying subscribers in the low hundreds of thousands (Autodesk Fusion page, Autodesk investor filing). Longer term, a cross‑platform product can tap the broader 3D CAD market estimated around $11.7B in 2024 (Fortune BI).

Bottom-up calculation:

Fusion‑only illustrative TAM: assume 200k commercial Fusion seats are in‑reach; at $180/user/year, the Fusion‑only ceiling is ~$36M/year. A more conservative serviceable slice at 20% adoption would be ~40k seats, or ~$7.2M ARR. Expanding to other CADs scales this proportionally across their commercial bases.

Assumptions:

• Commercial Fusion seats in‑reach: ~200k (subset of total users) (Autodesk investor filing).
• Price assumption: $180 per user per year (typical for productivity add‑ins).
• Illustrative adoption for serviceable share: ~20% of in‑reach seats.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Autodesk Fusion 360 (native sketch tools): Fusion already provides sketch constraints and some automated assistance (e.g., horizontal/vertical, tangent, equal). These built‑ins are the default alternative inside Fusion (Autodesk help).
• SOLIDWORKS (Automatic Relations, Fully Define Sketch): SOLIDWORKS suggests and applies sketch relations and can auto‑dimension to fully define sketches, reducing manual cleanup in that ecosystem (SOLIDWORKS help).
• Onshape (Sketch constraints and Constraint manager): Onshape provides robust constraint tools and a constraint manager to control and diagnose sketch relationships, addressing many housekeeping tasks natively (Onshape help).
• PTC Creo (Sketcher constraints/Intent Manager): Creo’s Sketcher includes constraint assumptions, weak dimensions, and configurable constraint behavior, covering many repetitive sketching tasks in‑product (PTC support).
• Autodesk Inventor (GD&T features and Tolerance Advisor): Inventor provides GD&T annotation workflows and a Tolerance Advisor, indicating that higher‑level manufacturability/tolerancing guidance exists natively in Autodesk’s portfolio (Inventor help).