# FastQuery

Aiolum story: https://aiolum.com/story/fastquery/ · added 2026-11-01 · updated 2026-11-01

**In short.** FastQuery (AI assistant for staff of independent hardware stores, United States): Past US$100K ARR self-reported, November 2025. Evidence grade D: reported, not verified. Team: 1 founder alone until November 2025, then a co-founder; a business development lead joined by December 2025 and became CEO in June 2026; later headcount not published. Launched March 2025; still running.

AI assistant for staff of independent hardware stores · United States · AI-native · solo founder · still running · group: Documents, data and slides

- Outcome: Past US$100K ARR self-reported, November 2025 (evidence grade of the headline number: D; headline in US dollars: 100000)
- Launch: March 2025; months from launch to the outcome: 8
- Team: 1 founder alone until November 2025, then a co-founder; a business development lead joined by December 2025 and became CEO in June 2026; later headcount not published
- Outside funding: None reported; the founder wrote "bootstrapped" in November 2025
- Main factor: Niche
- Meters, 1 to 4: evidence strength 1, copyable pattern 2, capital needed 1
- Tags: AI-native, Solo founder, Bootstrapped, Running, B2B, Retail

Links:

- Visit fastquery.ai: https://fastquery.ai/
- App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6737073294

**The product.** A phone and web app for the staff of independent hardware and home improvement stores. It connects to the store's point-of-sale and inventory system, so an associate can ask by voice, text or photo whether the store has an item, where it is, what it costs and how many are on hand. It also assigns tasks, runs cycle counts with the barcode scanner and posts store news. The company lists its price per store per month on its home page.

**Why it worked.** The founder said in November 2025 that he passed US$100,000 in annual recurring revenue alone, without outside money. The trade press reported how he got there: he found one Bay Area retailer with seven stores, watched how its associates used the app, and built what they asked for. Each new feature tied the product deeper into the store's own data, such as the stock in the Ace Hardware warehouses.

Evidence grades: A = disclosed by a public company, a filing or a payment processor, or verified by one; B = two or more independent reports agree, or a journalist confirmed it; C = a founder claim that no one else verified; D = reported, not verified: one founder claim or a third-party estimate with no second source; calc = computed on this page from graded facts.

## Summary

FastQuery is an AI assistant for people who work on the floor of independent hardware stores. It reads the store's point-of-sale system, the cash-register software that also keeps the item list, prices and stock counts, and lets an associate ask in plain words: "Do we have that curved tube that goes under the sink?" The answer names the item, the shelf, the price and the quantity on hand. The product also runs cycle counts, the counting of a small part of the stock each day instead of the whole store once a year, and assigns tasks to staff. It works with point-of-sale systems that hardware stores use, among them Epicor Eagle, Epicor BisTrack and Paladin.

Anton Kulikalov, a software engineer in San Francisco, built it alone. Hardware Retailing reported in March 2025 that Hassett Hardware, a retailer with seven stores in the Bay Area, had put it on the communication devices of its associates. On 10 November 2025 he wrote in a Hacker News comment that the company had passed US$100,000 in ARR (annual recurring revenue: the yearly value of the subscriptions active at that moment), bootstrapped and on his own, and that he had just brought in a co-founder. The home page lists prices of US$150 to US$450 a month per store in November 2026.

The revenue figure rests on one founder comment with one date. No payment processor, investor or journalist has confirmed it, and we found no second dated figure. Trade magazines confirm that real retail chains use the product, that the founder hired a business development lead, and that this person became chief executive in June 2026. The page also shows earlier companies that tried to sell software to frontline retail workers and failed.

## Pricing

FastQuery prices on the company's home page, read on 1 November 2026 (grade C)

| Plan | Per month, billed yearly (US$) | Per month, billed monthly (US$) | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small |  | 150 | per store; 15,000 SKUs on hand; 8 team members |
| Medium |  | 250 | per store; 25,000 SKUs on hand; 20 team members |
| Large |  | 450 | per store; 35,000 SKUs on hand; 40 team members |

Prices are per store per month. The home page shows no yearly billing option, so the yearly column is empty. Each plan is limited by the number of items (SKUs) on hand and the number of staff accounts. The page offers a free 30-day trial with no setup fee. The prices in force in November 2025, when the founder gave his revenue figure, are not known.

## How much revenue does FastQuery make? The numbers, graded

One founder-stated revenue figure from November 2025, plus trade press reports on customers and the team, and the prices on the company's home page

| Fact | Value | Grade | Note | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Annual recurring revenue, November 2025 | past US$100,000 | D | The founder, Hacker News user kulikalov, in a comment in the thread "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)", 10 November 2025: "Bootstrapped past $100k ARR on my own, just onboarded a co-founder." One statement, one date, not checked by anyone else. | [1] |
| The same figure per month | about US$8,333 a month or more | calc | Calculated: US$100,000 divided by 12. | [1] |
| Stores that the figure would need at today's prices | about 19 stores on the Large plan to about 56 stores on the Small plan | calc | Calculated: US$8,333 a month divided by US$450 and by US$150. Only an illustration: the November 2025 prices and the plan mix are not known. | [1, 7] |
| Usage claimed with the revenue figure | store staff use it 35 hours a week, no churn | D | Same comment: "Store staff spends 35hr per week using my software in a ~7 employee per shift setting. No churn." The 7 employees are the customer's staff on a shift, not FastQuery's team. | [1] |
| Founder | Anton Kulikalov | C | Named as "Fast Query founder" by Hardware Retailing (25 March 2025) and as "Company founder" by Paint & Decorating Retailer (10 December 2025). The Hacker News profile of the account that posted the revenue comment gives the name Anton Kulikalov, software engineer, San Francisco. | [3, 4, 2] |
| First reported customer | Hassett Hardware, seven stores in the Bay Area | C | Hardware Retailing, 25 March 2025: the retailer "recently implemented Fast Query" and installed the app on the Zebra communication devices that its stores use. The founder's first idea was "more consumer-focused". | [3] |
| Warehouse data | direct connection to Ace Hardware distribution centers | C | The founder in Hardware Retailing, March 2025: an API provided by Ace Hardware gives authorized retailers prices and warehouse stock. FastQuery could not place special orders because of that API's limits. | [3] |
| Another chain using it in all its stores | Busy Beaver Building Centers | C | Interview with the chain's vice president of business intelligence in Hardware Retailing, 17 February 2026: "FastQuery is currently being used in all of our stores." | [5] |
| Team, November 2025 | 1 founder, then a co-founder | D | Founder's comment of 10 November 2025: "on my own, just onboarded a co-founder". The co-founder is not named in any source we read. | [1] |
| Team, December 2025 | the founder writes code; a business development lead joined full time | C | Paint & Decorating Retailer, 10 December 2025: Kulikalov "recently brought on Joe Bullock to oversee business development". Bullock did advisory work from mid-2025, when "Anton had a few customers at the time". | [4] |
| New chief executive, June 2026 | Joe Bullock, formerly head of customer success | C | Hardware Retailing, 1 June 2026. The same report says users "log on to the platform over 15,000 times a week" and names Nation's Best Holdings among the retail groups with programs. No headcount is given. | [6] |
| Outside funding | none reported | D | Only the founder's word "Bootstrapped" in November 2025. We did not find a funding announcement. | [1] |
| Company | Fast Query, Inc., San Francisco; terms under Delaware law | C | Press kit, terms of service and privacy policy (both effective 16 April 2026). The App Store lists Fast Query, Inc. as developer and seller. | [8, 9, 10] |
| App Store rating, November 2026 | 4.7 out of 5 from 107 ratings | C | Apple's page for the iPhone app, read 1 November 2026. Versions 1.4.0 (30 May 2025) to 1.10.0 (27 December 2025) are listed in the version history. | [10] |
| Time from the first press report to the revenue figure | 8 months | calc | Calculated: March 2025 to November 2025. The exact launch date is not published; March 2025 is the first dated report of a store using the product. | [1, 3] |

How to read this table: grade D is a single founder statement with one date that no one else has checked. Grade C is a company page, an app store page or a trade magazine report that repeats what the founder, the company or a customer said. A "calc" value (grade X) was computed on this page. No value is grade A or B.

## When did FastQuery launch, and how did it grow? Timeline

From one hardware chain in the Bay Area to a self-reported US$100,000 in annual recurring revenue in about eight months, then a new chief executive. Each entry carries its grade.

- **December 2024** (grade C [11]): The domain fastquery.ai first appears in the Internet Archive, as a redirect.
- **25 March 2025** (grade C [3]): Hardware Retailing reports that Hassett Hardware, with seven Bay Area stores, uses Fast Query on its associates' devices, with voice questions and a link to Ace Hardware warehouse stock.
- **May 2025** (grade C [11]): The archived home page calls it an "AI copilot for brick-and-mortar retail" that searches 100,000 SKUs, with apps on the App Store and Google Play.
- **Mid-2025** (grade C [4]): Joe Bullock starts advisory work for FastQuery. The founder has "a few customers", in Bullock's words.
- **10 November 2025** (grade D [1]): The founder writes on Hacker News that FastQuery is past US$100,000 in annual recurring revenue, bootstrapped, built on his own, and that a co-founder has just joined.
- **10 December 2025** (grade C [4]): Paint & Decorating Retailer reports that Bullock has joined full time to lead business development, while the founder writes code.
- **17 February 2026** (grade C [5]): Busy Beaver Building Centers says it uses FastQuery in all its stores. FastQuery and the North American Hardware and Paint Association announce a webinar with a free 30-day pilot.
- **16 April 2026** (grade C [9]): New terms of service and privacy policy for Fast Query, Inc. take effect.
- **1 June 2026** (grade C [6]): Bullock becomes chief executive. The company says users log on more than 15,000 times a week.
- **1 November 2026** (grade C [7]): The home page lists three plans per store, from US$150 to US$450 a month, with a free 30-day trial.

## Why did FastQuery work?

### One narrow trade

The product speaks the language of one kind of store: hardware and home improvement, with tens of thousands of SKUs, questions about parts whose names customers do not know, and point-of-sale systems made for that trade. The pricing page counts SKUs and staff, the two numbers that size such a store.

### Built beside the first customer

Hardware Retailing reported that the founder studied the usage data of Hassett Hardware's first weeks and pointed out further uses: upselling, more accurate inventory counts and restocking. The retailer's president said in the same article that the founder added a feedback feature and quickly adjusted answers that were not right.

### The data is the moat

General chat assistants do not know what is on shelf 14 of a particular store. FastQuery reads the store's own inventory system and, for Ace dealers, the warehouse stock, and the home page says it does not train models on that data. The value is the connection, not the model.

### Per-store pricing

The home page lists a price per store per month, so a chain pays for each location it adds. The trade press shows chains rolling it out to all their stores after a pilot.

## How it was built

These details come from the company's own pages, the App Store page and trade press interviews. They are grade C. No source names the AI model provider or the code stack.

- An iPhone app (and Android and web versions, per the press kit) used on store communication devices and on staff phones.
- Connections to hardware-trade point-of-sale and back-office systems: Epicor Eagle, Epicor BisTrack, Paladin and Acceo, per the press kit.
- An API link to Ace Hardware distribution centers for warehouse prices and stock, per the founder in March 2025.
- "Inference-only" use of AI per the home page: store data is read to answer a question, with no fine-tuning or training step.
- Records behind a private network, AES-256 encryption at rest and TLS in transit, per the home page.
- Integrations with electronic shelf labels and shelf-scanning robots, per the App Store description and a customer interview.

Sources: [7, 8, 3, 10, 5]

## Who tried this before FastQuery, and why did they fail?

Five companies in our database of failed startups tried to sell software to small stores or to frontline workers, and failed. The values below are from that database and are not independently verified.

The failed startups come from our database of dead startups, retold here in our own words; Its entries are AI-assisted summaries of public sources, so they carry no evidence grade.

### Flip (2019 to 2025; funding US$200M; cause: No Market Need)

- Promise: An employee app for deskless workers in retail, hospitality and logistics.
- Why it died: No product-market fit in a crowded market; the database says it spent US$200 million without proving its unit economics.
- Record: 

### Shift Messenger (2015 to 2018; funding US$1.2M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Messaging and schedules for shift workers in retail and hospitality.
- Why it died: Low adoption after trials; businesses went back to text messages, and the money ran out.
- Record: 

### Daqri (2010 to 2019; funding US$275M; cause: Product/Tech Failure)

- Promise: A smart helmet that shows instructions and data to industrial frontline workers.
- Why it died: Expensive, heavy hardware and customers without the IT systems or the will to change their work.
- Record: 

### LocalOn (2013 to 2016; funding US$500K; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Digital tools that let small local shops compete online.
- Why it died: Not different enough from Shopify and Wix, and too little money to keep building.
- Record: 

### TradeGecko (2012 to 2021; funding US$10.4M; cause: Competition)

- Promise: Inventory and order management for small sellers.
- Why it died: Bought by Intuit, folded into QuickBooks, and squeezed by all-in-one platforms such as Shopify.
- Record: 

## What changed

The five predecessors asked frontline staff or small shops to adopt a new tool that added work: a new messaging app, a new helmet, a new website builder. Most were funded on a large scale and had to win whole markets before the money ran out. Flip and Shift Messenger found that store staff went back to what they already used.

FastQuery answers questions that associates already ask all day, from data the store already has. Language models made that possible for a single engineer: a few years ago, answering "brown dots on roses" from an item list would have needed a search team. It also started with one owner who wanted it, and kept costs low enough that, as the founder said in November 2025, it passed US$100,000 a year without outside money.

## Can one person copy FastQuery now?

**Verdict: Yes, if you can get into one trade's data.**

The method is plain: pick one kind of store with old software and many SKUs, connect to its point-of-sale system, and sell per location. The hard part is the integrations and the trust of the first owner, not the AI. The founder said in November 2025 that this reached US$100,000 a year alone, but no one has checked that figure.

1. Choose a trade where staff answer product questions all day and the data sits in an old point-of-sale system.
2. Find one multi-store owner who wants to try it, and watch how the staff use it in the first weeks.
3. Build the integrations with the trade's common systems and suppliers, one by one.
4. Price per store, so a chain's rollout grows the revenue.

**What is still open.** Other trades with large catalogs and expert staff: auto parts, farm supply, lumber yards, pool and garden stores, plumbing and electrical wholesalers.

## What could go wrong for FastQuery?

- **What is not verified.** The headline figure, past US$100,000 in annual recurring revenue, rests on one Hacker News comment by the founder, Anton Kulikalov, posted on 10 November 2025. No payment processor, investor or journalist has confirmed it, and no second dated revenue figure was found in the founder's other Hacker News comments, the company's pages or the trade press. A reader could look for a revenue figure in a later interview, a payment-processor profile or a funding announcement.
- **The team grew and the founder stepped back from the top job.** The founder built the product alone, then added a co-founder in November 2025 (not named in any source we read). Joe Bullock joined to lead business development by December 2025 and became chief executive on 1 June 2026. No source states the headcount after that.
- **Few customers, large weight.** The trade press names a small number of retail chains: Hassett Hardware, Busy Beaver Building Centers and Nation's Best Holdings. In mid-2025 Bullock said the founder had "a few customers". Losing one chain could change the revenue a great deal.
- **Dependence on other companies' systems.** The product needs access to point-of-sale systems and supplier APIs that FastQuery does not control. In March 2025 the founder said FastQuery could not place special orders because of limits in Ace Hardware's API.
- **Usage numbers are the company's own.** The 35 hours a week of use and "no churn" (November 2025) and the 15,000 log-ons a week (June 2026) are company statements, not measured by anyone else.

## Sources

1. Hacker News comment by kulikalov, 10 November 2025, in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)", read through the Algolia API — https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/items/45871523 (grade D). Read in full through the Algolia HN API (news.ycombinator.com not fetched). Founder's own statement. Source for the revenue figure, the usage claim and the co-founder.
2. Hacker News user profile of kulikalov, read through the Algolia API — https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/users/kulikalov (grade C). Read in full. Ties the account that posted the revenue comment to the name Anton Kulikalov, software engineer in San Francisco. We also read the account's 78 indexed items: none gives another revenue figure.
3. Hardware Retailing, 25 March 2025: Retailer Implements Cutting-Edge AI Technology to Improve Customer Service, by Lindsey Thompson — https://hardwareretailing.com/cutting-edge-ai-tech/ (grade C). Read in full. Trade magazine interview with the founder and the first customer. Source for the founder's name, Hassett Hardware and the Ace Hardware API.
4. Paint & Decorating Retailer, 10 December 2025: FastQuery Brings On Business Development Expert, by Lindsey Thompson — https://pdrmag.com/fastquery-brings-on-business-development-expert/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the founder's role, Bullock's arrival and the mid-2025 customer count.
5. Hardware Retailing, 17 February 2026: Retailer Levels Up In-Aisle Customer Service With FastQuery, by Lindsey Thompson — https://hardwareretailing.com/retailer-levels-up-in-aisle-customer-service-with-fastquery/ (grade C). Read in full. Customer interview with Busy Beaver Building Centers and the webinar notice.
6. Hardware Retailing, 1 June 2026: FastQuery AI Names New CEO to Lead AI-Native Transformation for Independent Retailers, by Lindsey Thompson — https://hardwareretailing.com/fastquery-ai-names-new-ceo-to-lead-ai-native-transformation-for-independent-retailers/ (grade C). Read in full. Company announcement as reported. Source for the new chief executive and the weekly log-ons.
7. FastQuery home page with pricing, read 1 November 2026 — https://fastquery.ai/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the prices, plan limits, trial and the data security claims.
8. FastQuery press kit, read 1 November 2026 — https://fastquery.ai/press/ (grade C). Read in full. Source for the legal name, headquarters, platforms and point-of-sale integrations.
9. Fast Query, Inc. terms of service and privacy policy, effective 16 April 2026 — https://fastquery.ai/terms/ (grade C). Read both in full (the privacy policy at /privacy/). Source for the company name, address and Delaware law. No person is named.
10. App Store page: FastQuery, by Fast Query, Inc., read 1 November 2026 — https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6737073294 (grade C). Read in full. Source for the developer and seller name, rating, version history and feature list.
11. Internet Archive copies of fastquery.ai, December 2024 to October 2026, with the 17 May 2025 home page — https://web.archive.org/web/20250517183013/https://fastquery.ai/ (grade C). Read the capture list and the 17 May 2025 home page in full. Source for the early product description.
12. Database of failed startups, local export — /method/#dead (grade C). Local export. AI-written summaries, not independently verified. Source for the failed predecessors.