The fax machine still hums in American manufacturing. Purchase orders arrive as blurry scans, handwritten notes, email attachments with cryptic filenames. Someone—usually someone underpaid—sits down to type it all into the ERP system, line by painstaking line.
While SAP and Epicor spent this spring announcing agentic AI retrofits for software architectures built before anyone had heard of a large language model, a two-person outfit called Smartbase emerged from Y Combinator with a different wager: What if you just started over?
Six weeks after launching, the startup claims $171,000 in contracted annual recurring revenue. It's early days, to be sure. But the pitch is clean enough to turn heads in an industry not known for moving fast.
The Tedium Economy
Metal finishing shops—the kinds of operations that chrome your motorcycle parts or anodize aerospace components—operate in a peculiar time warp. Orders arrive via fax. Or email. Sometimes both, for the same order, just to keep things interesting.
Each one needs manual transcription into whatever ERP system the shop runs, with customer-specific pricing rules applied along the way. It's the kind of grunt work that introduces errors, burns hours, and makes you wonder why we invented computers in the first place.
Smartbase claims its software eliminates that workflow entirely. Upload a scanned PO or plug in your inbox. The AI extracts the data—handwriting and all—then applies your business logic. A human reviews it in a dashboard, clicks approve, and the order flows into your ERP. Done.
The company even tacked on an optional feature to auto-generate production travelers, the shop-floor documents that tell workers what to build and how. It's a small touch, but it signals ambition beyond simple data entry.
They've wired up integrations with the usual suspects: Acumatica, Epicor, Infor, Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, QuickBooks, SAP, SYSPRO, Sage X3. In other words, whatever your metal shop is probably already using.
Wedge, Meet Vision
Purchase order automation is the foot in the door. The bigger idea? An AI-native ERP built specifically for manufacturers, with inventory management and quoting tools baked in from the start.
That's a crowded field suddenly. Smartbase isn't just competing with established automation vendors like Conexiom, Esker, or TrueCommerce. Other startups from the same Y Combinator cohort are circling the same territory. Arzana bills itself as an "Arzana ERP" with AI agents for quoting and order entry. Korso pitches an "Intelligence Layer for Manufacturing" that automates quote follow-ups and supplier coordination.
Then there's the incumbents, newly motivated. SAP rolled out agentic AI tools in mid-May. Epicor followed days later with its own agent platform. Priority Software announced an "AI-first ERP" on May 20. Even Zoho got into the game earlier this year with an AI-native product aimed at Indian enterprises.
The difference, Smartbase argues, is architectural. The legacy players are bolting AI onto decades-old systems. Smartbase built the entire stack around it.
Whether that advantage holds up remains to be seen.
Regulated Manufacturing, Future Tense
Smartbase is eyeing defense contractors and other regulated manufacturers—industries where compliance requirements can make or break a deal. The company's website mentions plans for a U.S.-hosted enclave to handle ITAR, CMMC, and DFARS requirements, with FedRAMP compliance on the roadmap.
That language is carefully forward-looking. As of early June, no certifications have been announced, and the phrasing suggests aspiration more than current capability. Still, signaling that intent early could matter in an industry where switching costs are high and compliance gaps are deal-killers.
The Founders
CEO Sam Goldman is listed as a previously successful startup founder. CTO Taira Fujioka came from AWS, where he worked on SageMaker Inference—reportedly as the youngest SDE 2 there—building AI infrastructure for clients like Salesforce, J.P. Morgan, and Qualtrics.
The team is listed as two people on Y Combinator's directory, though LinkedIn shows 2–10 employees. No customer logos are public yet. No case studies either.
The $171,000 ARR figure comes from the company's YC profile, dated June 9, framed as growth over "the past six weeks." The exact measurement window isn't specified, and the company hasn't disclosed how many customers that represents or at what price points.
Smartbase appears to have launched publicly around April with a demo video and an open calendar for sales calls. The website includes an ROI calculator—one of those interactive tools that lets prospects plug in their own numbers and watch theoretical savings pile up. The example scenario suggests $81,000 in annual savings and 1.4 headcount reductions for shops automating 90% of order entry. It's illustrative, not evidence.
The Open Question
Whether two people can execute a full ERP vision while competing against both fast-moving peers and newly energized incumbents is the kind of question that only plays out over years, not months.
But there's something to be said for tackling an unglamorous problem that still exists because no one solved it properly the first time around. Purchase orders by fax. Manual transcription. Hours lost to grunt work.
Perhaps the broader ERP ambitions materialize. Perhaps they don't. In the meantime, there's a straightforward product solving a real problem for shops still operating like it's 1987.
And in manufacturing, that might be enough of a wedge to matter.
