Paloma

What do they actually do

Paloma is a live SaaS product that calls itself an “AI‑native CRM” for post‑sales revenue work like billing, renewals, and expansions. It ingests contracts, billing systems, and unstructured sources (PDFs, emails, notes) into a searchable knowledge base and provides automations for revenue teams getpaloma.ai. The product is integrable via public APIs and docs, signaling it’s built to sit on top of customers’ existing systems rather than replace them outright API/docs.

It’s used by revenue operations, customer success, billing, and account teams that need contract, usage, and payment context rather than raw CRM rows. The site exposes demo‑booking and app/login endpoints, indicating a production service with active pilots or customers getpaloma.ai.

Typical workflow: teams connect billing, contract repositories, and other data sources; Paloma parses that material into a searchable base so questions like “Who has 30‑day net payment terms?” return instant answers. The product highlights risk and expansion signals, tracks renewal dates and overdue invoices, generates artifacts (e.g., notes or suggested next steps), and automates routine follow‑ups such as renewal outreach and invoice reminders, with an explicit push toward “autopilot” for repetitive tasks getpaloma.ai usepaloma.com.

Public roadmap items include call ingestion (to capture commitments from meetings), support system integration (to tie ticket volume to account health), and growth playbooks that adapt based on outcomes getpaloma.ai. Earlier public materials showed social‑commerce tooling, but the current site and YC listing emphasize post‑sales revenue operations, indicating a product shift toward RevOps/CS use cases YC listing Instagram demo.

Who are their target customer(s)

• Revenue operations manager (RevOps): Spends hours reconciling inconsistent records across CRM, billing, and contract systems; needs quick, reliable answers about terms, invoices, and renewal timing currently scattered in PDFs and emails getpaloma.ai.
• Customer success manager (CSM): Struggles to find commitments from calls, contract clauses, and recent support issues; risks missing or mistiming renewals and expansions without a single place that surfaces risk and prior promises getpaloma.ai.
• Billing / accounts receivable lead: Runs invoicing and collections with too many manual follow‑ups because payment terms and disputed items live in attachments or disparate tools; needs searchable contract and invoice context to reduce late payments getpaloma.ai.
• Account manager / seller focused on expansions: Expansion signals are buried in usage data and notes; needs timely triggers and repeatable outreach steps instead of one‑off spreadsheets to catch upsell windows getpaloma.ai.
• Head of post‑sales / VP Customer Success: Must scale renewals and reduce churn across many accounts without a trusted system combining contracts, billing, calls, and tickets; needs automation and standard playbooks grounded in unified context getpaloma.ai usepaloma.com.

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

• First 10: Founder‑led concierge pilots via YC network and existing relationships (e.g., RevOps/CS leaders), with the team doing integration work and committing to one measurable outcome like a captured renewal or faster, accurate invoice getpaloma.ai YC listing.
• First 50: Package learnings into an 8–12 week implementation playbook and a sales‑assisted demo‑to‑pilot motion targeting mid‑market SaaS with complex post‑sale billing; standardize a minimal connector set and offer concierge onboarding to ensure predictable outcomes getpaloma.ai API/docs.
• First 100: Productize the top three connector workflows into self‑serve templates, list integrations in partner marketplaces, and co‑sell with billing/CRM consultancies; add a light self‑serve trial and playbook library to scale adoption using early case studies as references getpaloma.ai API/docs.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

Paloma spans adjacent markets: customer success platforms (~$1.8B, 2024), RevOps software (~$4.4B), CLM (~$1.6B), and invoice automation (~$3.37B). A naive sum implies an ~$11B upper bound, noting substantial overlap Customer Success RevOps CLM Invoice automation.

Bottom-up calculation:

A practical core TAM focuses on RevOps + Customer Success + CLM buyers, estimated at ~$5–8B today after discounting overlap from the ~$7.8B combined total of those three markets RevOps Customer Success CLM.

Assumptions:

• Published market sizes refer primarily to software spend and include overlapping budgets; we discount to avoid double counting.
• Initial focus is mid‑market SaaS and revenue/finance teams replacing or augmenting existing tools, not full legal/ERP overhauls.
• Invoice/billing platform spend is treated separately; only invoice automation budgets are included to avoid double counting core billing engines.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Gainsight: Enterprise customer‑success platform used to centralize account data, run renewal playbooks, and forecast renewals; overlaps on renewal automation/playbooks but is a broader CS suite rather than a contract‑and‑billing knowledge layer Gainsight for Revenue Teams.
• ChurnZero: Customer‑success product with health scoring, automated plays, and renewal/forecasting views; competes where teams want automated follow‑ups and renewal forecasts but focuses less on extracting contract/invoice details from documents ChurnZero features.
• Gong: Conversation‑intelligence tool that records and transcribes calls to surface commitments; overlaps with Paloma’s planned call‑ingestion signals, though Gong does not unify contracts/billing context Gong Conversation Intelligence.
• Ironclad: Contract lifecycle management and repository with clause extraction and advanced search; overlaps on contract intelligence but is primarily built for legal workflows, not post‑sales execution tied to billing/renewals Ironclad product.
• Zuora: Subscription‑billing platform that manages invoicing, payments, and usage; overlaps on billing automation but is a billing engine rather than a unifying post‑sales context and playbook layer Zuora Billing.