Questom

What do they actually do

Questom provides AI agents that answer phone calls, website chat, SMS/WhatsApp, and email for custom-printing and merchandise businesses. The agents qualify inbound leads, collect order details (sizes, quantities, artwork, shipping), give instant order‑status updates, log interactions to the shop’s systems, and automate follow‑ups like proofs and sample‑pack outreach source: Questom site, source: YC company profile.

They sell through demos and guided onboarding rather than self‑serve today, and they report early customers using the agents in production to handle a significant share of routine sales/support work source: Questom site, source: YC company profile, source: YC LinkedIn post.

Who are their target customer(s)

• Small custom-print shop owner (founder or owner-operator): Leads are missed or delayed outside business hours, and staff spend time retyping specs into systems, creating errors and slow fulfillment.
• Operations manager at a merch/print shop: Collecting messy order details and chasing proofs or sample packs is manual and error-prone, causing production slowdowns and rework.
• Sales rep at a promotional-products or apparel supplier: Repetitive qualification and follow‑ups across calls, SMS, and email consume time so reps can’t focus on larger accounts; slow follow‑up lets leads go cold.
• Account manager for e‑commerce brands or bulk‑order clients: They need fast, accurate quotes and real‑time order status, but responses are inconsistent and manual, which hurts trust and delays decisions.
• Customer support lead at a small shop: High volumes of simple status questions and routine outreach tie up human agents because reliable multi‑channel automation (voice, chat, SMS, email) is missing.

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

• First 10: Founder‑led, high‑touch pilots: personalized demos and hands‑on setup to connect shop systems and go live on calls/messages; charge a small pilot fee or short revenue share and capture impact metrics and quotes source, source.
• First 50: Use early case studies and referrals, plus targeted outbound (phone, email, industry forums) to regional print shops and promo distributors, with lightweight custom onboarding per account source, source.
• First 100: Productize onboarding (playbooks, canned workflows, one‑click connectors) and add reseller/tech partnerships with trade software and fulfillment/distribution channels to drive scaled deployments source, source.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

In the U.S., promotional‑product distributor sales were about $26.6B in 2024, and the custom/screen‑printing market is roughly $9.2B; globally, related custom printing and print‑on‑demand categories add further billions source, source, source.

Bottom-up calculation:

A practical bottom‑up view is the 20k–50k U.S. print shops, screen‑printers, and promo distributors that field phone/chat leads; multiplying that base by an assumed annual contract yields software TAM (e.g., 10,000 customers × $5,000/year ≈ $50M) source.

Assumptions:

• Only a subset of shops will adopt AI agents in the near term (early adopters, mid‑size, higher‑volume).
• Annual contract value is illustrative; public pricing is not disclosed.
• Industry revenue figures overlap across categories; use them directionally rather than additively.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Replicant: Autonomous voice and chat agents for contact centers; strong at resolving inbound calls without humans, typically for larger enterprises and deep voice automation rather than niche merch‑shop workflows source.
• Ada: AI customer‑service platform with voice, chat, and email agents and e‑commerce integrations; broader enterprise CX focus versus printing/merch‑specific order flows out of the box source.
• Gorgias: E‑commerce helpdesk for Shopify/BigCommerce with automation and an AI agent for order tasks; strong for tickets and web store actions, not a live inbound phone AI system source.
• Intercom: Messenger and support automation that qualifies leads and runs workflows on web and chat; not positioned as an end‑to‑end phone call automator for order capture source.
• ManyChat: Social and messaging automation (Instagram, WhatsApp, SMS) for lead capture and follow‑ups; geared to marketing funnels rather than multi‑channel voice plus deep order‑management integrations source.