#131: How To Ensure Your Team Doesn’t Chase Rabbits, Toma: Vertical AI for Car Dealerships
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Alright, let’s get to it…
How To Ensure Your Team Doesn’t Chase Rabbits (or at least does so responsibly)
I think one of the biggest problems Founder/CEO’s have is chasing rabbits (to be clear I had this problem as well).
How often have you been in meetings where everyone was focused, things were humming, and then the CEO showed up with some big/crazy idea that through everything into a complete spiral.
This happens far too often.
Chasing rabbits = Trying to do too many things
Another phrase that describes this is “shiny object syndrome”. It’s typically OK/necessary for a CEO to do this every once in a while, but when it spreads throughout the org, nothing seems to get done.
It’s so easy to get excited about something and just drop everything and start pursuing it. I have a lot of founder friends that do this to the extreme — they spend like ~12 months on a company before moving to the next one. These folks never achieve a lot because company building takes 10+ years.
You also have to balance chasing rabbits a bit, overcorrecting and being incredibly rigid can lead to lack of innovation. So it’s definetly a bit of a balancing act.
I had to create a framework that allowed folks to FOCUS but also gave them some creative room to “chase rabbits”, and to be honest, gave me some creative room as well.
So the first thing I believe in doing is setting a singular objective. The thing that you are going to spend the next decade achieving. It should be big/audacious.
Here’s an example:
If you ask anyone in the organization they should be able to answer what the companies long term objective.
From there you need to create <5 steps to achieving this objective. For example, a classic vSaaS route would be something like this:
Build / launch our wedge product and achieve X logos (IE. Time Clock, AI Agent, whatever you’re starting with).
Expand into a suite of products
Launch an ERP
You also don’t need to share it externally, IE externally you’re probably just your wedge product, but the org needs to understand where we’re going over the next decade. Sharing it externally could freak out partners, IE you may integrate with a bunch of other ERP’s so probably best if they don’t know this is where you’re headed.
I think build all of our employee milestones based on the achievement of the current step we are in. We LOCK IN on exactly what every department and every person is going to do this Quarter and this Year to achieve Step #1.
Once we make that list, and agree/align on it as a management team. I think it’s important to allow for some room for creativity. Call it 10% of our bandwidth to “chase rabbits”.
So if we are in Step #2, we can get creative and chase rabbits but it’s only in the 10% of our bandwidth, and it’s only within THAT BUCKET. We’re fenced in. So if you’re talking about launching a space ship — IE it has nothing to do with becoming the OS of our industry, and has nothing to do with expanding beyond our wedge product into a suite of products (assuming again that we are in step #2) than you are out of bounds.
Everyone needs to call each other out on this. My CFO and VP of Customer Success would call me (the CEO) out on this when I found my self dreaming outside of our box. It was great. I needed it.
A focused percentage of chasing rabbits, as long as it falls into our objective and our overall plan/them from the year is healthy.
But what most folks do is NOT healthy, and there are personas that seem to dream in an incredibly disorganized way frequently. You have to rein these people in, and ensure that they are changing their behavior. If not, you have to cut them loose.
Focus is everything in company building, and leadership that doesn’t focus, or create guard-rails to dream a bit, typically end up in a bad spot. I’ve seen it time and time again.
While it’s not a negative cancer, and folks that do this absolutely mean well, it can spread, and you can’t let that happen…
One vSaaS Breakdown:
2 Days Left To Get Early Bird Pricing !!!
(PLUS WE ARE ALMOST SOLD OUT)
You have two weeks left to get your tickets cheap. They go up substantially shortly, so if your thinking about grabbing one do so before June wraps up.
I think we will sell out in the next ~60-90 days!
(vSaaS founders/operators/investors only).
One Biz Story:
Toma: Vertical AI For Car Dealerships
Toma AI, a startup founded in early 2024, has emerged as a significant player in the automotive industry by leveraging AI voice agents to transform how car dealerships operate.
Company Overview and Business Model
Toma AI specializes in building personalized AI voice agents that automate customer communications and operational tasks for automotive dealerships.
The company addresses a critical pain point: the overwhelming volume of inbound calls, with research indicating that dealerships answer only 45% of calls.
Toma was co-founded by Monik Pamecha (CEO) and Anthony Krivonos. The two have held roles at some great transportation tech companies — Lyft, Uber, Scale AI, and AWS.
Product:
The AI agents handle a range of functions, here’s an overview of what they offer:
Full-Store Receptionist: Automates scheduling, upselling, booking test drives, and answering inquiries.
Recall Detect: Automates recall appointments and notifies customers of open recalls.
Parts Orders: Handles inquiries, updates availability, and tracks parts orders.
Service Appointments: Books, reschedules, and confirms appointments 24/7.
Appointment Reminders: Sends automated reminders to reduce no-show rates.
Build-Your-Own: Enables custom workflows, task automation, and customer interaction optimization.
These products integrate with existing dealership software and can navigate any vendor’s website like a human, enhancing their utility and flexibility.
The onboarding process, as described by Pamecha, involves training the AI on a dealer’s customer calls for one to two weeks to provide context, with handoffs to humans for complex queries to improve the model over time.
And the customers seem to love it which I love to see!
Go-to-Market Strategy
The founders have taken a hands-on approach, touring dealerships in regions like Oklahoma and Mississippi to immerse themselves in the business.
This direct engagement approach helped them achieve 100+ dealerships as customers, which is AMAZING in only ~1.5 years.
But this approach won’t scale, and they will face challenges here as they refine their GTM motion. Selling into Car Dealerships is no small feat.
Financing
Toma has raised $17 million to date, with the Series A round announced on June 5, 2025, led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Other investors include Y Combinator, where Toma was part of the January 2024 batch, Scale Angels Fund, and Yossi Levi, known as Car Dealership Guy, an influential figure in the auto industry. This funding, particularly from a16z, underscores investor confidence in Toma’s potential to take over the industry.
Vision for the Future
I love this vertical because I just don’t see existing car dealership software companies winning the AI arms race. I’d bet on the upstarts here. If they can trule build AI co-workers and can automate multiple jobs within the space they can build something very big here.
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