Tesora

What do they actually do

Tesora builds an AI‑first procurement platform for manufacturers. Teams connect email, documents and ERP/spreadsheets, then use an “AI procurement analyst” to find, qualify, onboard and manage suppliers while keeping specs, contracts, orders and invoices organized in one place (Tesora overview, YC profile).

Today, the product includes automated supplier discovery and benchmarking, a document hub, tasks and approvals, order visibility/tracking, and invoice reconciliation/three‑way matching. Tesora also launched a “Supplier Deep Research” capability in Aug 2025 for deeper supplier research and benchmarking (overview, updates).

Procurement, vendor management, finance and operations teams at manufacturers use Tesora to run sourcing programs, collect quotes/compliance documents, and reconcile POs/invoices. The company is in YC’s Summer 2025 batch, offers a live demo/dashboard, and is recruiting beta customers (YC profile, demo, contact).

Who are their target customer(s)

• Procurement manager at a mid‑sized manufacturer: Spends hours manually finding and benchmarking suppliers and organizing specs/contracts, which slows projects and consumes team time.
• Supplier onboarding or vendor management lead: Must qualify and onboard many low‑volume suppliers but struggles to collect compliance documents, contact info and quotes at scale because outreach and paperwork are manual and error‑prone.
• Finance director or accounts payable manager: Faces frequent invoice exceptions and slow three‑way matching, tying up cash flow and requiring significant manual reconciliation.
• Operations or plant manager: Lacks consolidated visibility into incoming parts and vendor performance, causing production interruptions and reactive firefighting.
• Small procurement/finance team inside a manufacturer: Can’t add headcount and gets stuck on repetitive coordination (emails, document chasing, status checks), limiting cost‑savings and long‑tail supplier programs.

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

• First 10: Run 6–12 week, high‑touch paid or discounted pilots sourced via YC/network intros, targeted LinkedIn outreach, and demo requests; a founder/PM plus CS lead connects email/ERP/spreadsheets and delivers one concrete outcome (supplier list, completed onboarding, or invoice matches) to prove value.
• First 50: Turn early wins into short case studies and referrals, then scale targeted outbound to similar verticals; add a presence at 1–2 manufacturing trade shows and run LinkedIn ads to drive demo requests for pilot conversion.
• First 100: Sign channel partnerships with ERP integrators and procurement consultancies, publish integration guides and vertical templates to speed onboarding, hire SDRs for territory plays, and convert pilots to annual contracts with a standardized success playbook and tiered pricing.

What is the rough total addressable market

Top-down context:

The global procurement software market is about $7–8B today, with North America representing a large share; adding conservative adjacent slices from AP automation and S2P brings the relevant pool for Tesora to the low single‑digit billions (Fortune Business Insights, Grand View Research – NA, KBV Research, Market Research Future).

Bottom-up calculation:

Focusing first on North American mid‑market manufacturers (a material slice of global spend), serving a few thousand target accounts at $25k–$75k ARR per account implies an initial SOM of roughly $50–$375M (Grand View Research – NA).

Assumptions:

• Manufacturing accounts for ~15–25% of global procurement software spend (used to apportion TAM).
• AP automation and S2P partially overlap with procurement suites; only a conservative portion is additive.
• Early GTM targets 2,000–5,000 mid‑market manufacturers in North America with $25k–$75k ARR per account.

Who are some of their notable competitors

• Scoutbee: AI‑driven supplier discovery and matching to help buyers find and pre‑qualify suppliers; overlaps on supplier discovery but focuses less on downstream onboarding and invoice/PO reconciliation.
• Fairmarkit: Automates RFQs and tail‑spend sourcing at scale with AI recommendations; overlaps on automating long‑tail sourcing but centers on RFQ workflows rather than document hubs, invoice matching, and order tracking.
• SourceDay: PO collaboration and inbound order visibility for manufacturers; overlaps on order tracking and supplier communication but is specialized on PO lifecycle management.
• Coupa: Enterprise procure‑to‑pay suite with sourcing, supplier management, invoicing and AP automation; broader enterprise platform that competes on supplier and AP workflows.
• SAP Ariba (SAP Business Network): Widely used supplier network and onboarding system tied to large ERP landscapes; competes on supplier onboarding and networked supplier data.