Convos is a conversational AI texting platform designed to help organizations communicate with large audiences through personalized, two-way conversations. Its AI agent is grounded in materials supplied by each organization and supports capabilities including large-scale conversational messaging, polling, inbound engagement, contact personalization, and analysis. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Convos CEO and Co-Founder Tom Carroll to learn more about the company’s origins, its conversational AI technology, and how it is approaching communication at scale.
Tom Carroll’s Background
When asked about his background, Carroll shared:
I’m from North Jersey, about 45 minutes outside of New York. I went to Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, where I double majored in Economics and Finance.
My drive has always been entrepreneurial, the same path my father walked. While I didn’t quite know what it would be, or to be honest, when something would be successful, I felt that put me on the best path to be prepared.
How Convos Started
When asked how the idea for Convos came together, Carroll explained:
Well, it was during a usual conversation with Andrew Missey, my Co-Founder, in late 2024. We probably haven’t gone a week without talking since kindergarten, and he’s certainly been a springboard for a fair few of my ideas.
We both knew his long history of programming paired with his day job as a lead dev at a venture-backed AI startup meant he had an incredibly rare set of traditional and AI programming skills, and wanted to apply that knowledge and my experience of building a company to something of our own.
We then started getting political texts, and realized quickly how incredible it would be if that were a conversation.
From that evening chat, I don’t think I slept more than four hours a night for three months until we had an MVP and our first client demo. Of course, I spilled coffee all over my desk five minutes before, but we got it done, and immediately started building for all the suggestions he made on the call.
Fun fact: that guy is actually a close friend and client to this day.
We then, and continue to, talk to as many people as we can as we learn all the ways we can use our tech.
Favorite Memories
When asked about his favorite memories working for the company so far, Carroll said:
It’s been two things.
First, it has been coming in as an outsider to a few industries and having very respected veterans of their fields, people managing tens of millions of annual donations and running massive presidential campaigns, telling us the technology we created is a game changer for them.
It’s been an incredible level of validation.
The second is honestly all the time I’ve been able to spend with Andrew over the phone and at conferences. He moved down to North Carolina, so it would have been harder to see each other nearly as often.
Convos has been a great excuse.
Core Products And Features
When asked about Convos’ core products and features, Carroll detailed:
Our product at its core is the ability to talk to people via texting at any scale, all simultaneously. And to do so in an emotionally intelligent way, through an AI completely locked to your organization’s supplied material.
We have built this agent up to the point where it absolutely only knows what you tell it, but can somehow string even the smallest bits of information into incredible conversations.
Our features that flow from that are text-based polling with the ability to dive into the “why” on survey questions in a freeform answer, then go right back to traditional structured polling.
We also have inbound numbers set up to bring people into your ecosystem. Then, there is all of the incredible analysis and contact personalization we do to learn and customize messaging to every person in lists of millions of people.
There are a bunch more features as well, and more are being added every week.
Overcoming Adoption Challenges
When asked about challenges in the sector and how Convos has addressed them, Carroll explained:
The biggest challenge has been consistent, and it’s client adoption.
Letting the AI answer can be scary, and I empathize with that.
Our job is to explain every aspect of the process, let them do rigorous testing internally, and answer any question we can.
Once people run a real test and a real list, they start to understand the safety in the messaging, and the power in the product.
How The Technology Has Evolved
When asked how Convos’ technology has evolved since launching, Carroll said:
The technology is, in direction, unchanged from day one. We wanted the absolute best conversational texting AI on the market.
We are constantly updating, benchmarking, testing and adding to that core product, but that core always remains.
We originally launched aimed at just political campaigns, but have since made significant expansions into the nonprofit fundraising and issue advocacy spaces, which has influenced some of the development as of late.
Key Company Milestones
When asked about some of Convos’ most significant milestones, Carroll highlighted:
A big milestone for us was our work with Defend Our Courts in Wisconsin.
Not only were we able to do sends of nearly a million messages at a time and have the system handle the volume, but we had incredible conversations with the people and made a real impact.
Beyond that, it’s a few clients I can’t currently talk about, but am extremely excited for in the coming months to see how heavily investing in our technology can lead to incredible results.
Customer Success Stories
When asked to share specific customer success stories, Carroll said:
That Wisconsin campaign was certainly a success, along with a few of the special elections in 2025 we were a part of.
Another was taking a client, Defend Our Courts, list of 80,000 donors and turning 40% of the people that engaged with Convos texts into recurring donors.
Most of the bigger wins that I’m very excited for are coming in the near future post-November.
Also, sending a cake to Andrew early on when we broke $100,000 in revenue was a pretty special moment.
Competitive Differentiation
When asked what differentiates Convos from its competition, Carroll explained:
Sophistication of our agent.
We had first-mover advantage in this space for well over a year, and you can see it in our replies.
Our platform maintains the client’s voice, completely disengages any and all manipulation attempts, and simply has the best responses.
That, paired with an AI-first platform optimized for scale and “conversation rate,” makes us very different from what people may expect from a texting vendor.
Future Goals
When asked about his and his co-founder’s future goals for Convos, Carroll said:
We would like to become integral parts of major organizations’ supporter contact programs.
We want someone to save a Convos number and be able to go back to it throughout the years for any information or guidance they need from the organization.
Beyond that, we want to normalize the technology and show the industries we’re in how safe, effective and meaningful this tool can be for not only them, but their supporters as well.
Rethinking The Relationship With Supporters
When invited to discuss another topic, Carroll concluded:
I think any industry or organization using texting should seriously think about what that relationship looks like.
Are they truly providing value to supporters, or alienating the majority of the list? It’s a fine line and extremely important as other channels of communication become stifled or swayed by the whims of an algorithm.
Also, can you answer the why for why people donate? Of course you can for larger donors, but really try to examine your small-dollar lists, and look at how tools like ours can help with that.
Everyone has a why, and each why is very powerful to that person.
Traditionally, finding it for each person is difficult. Now there are tools that can make it much more efficient and viable.
