糖心视频

For those of you who have only done tech support for relatives during the holidays, imagine the logistical challenge of serving the needs of a whole company, even a small one.

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Enter , an NYC-based company that provides tech support, not in person or by phone, but via a chat interface integrated into Slack.

Fresh Capital

This week, Electric closed led by . Bowery Capital and Primary Venture Partners, two investors from Electric鈥檚 seed round, followed on as participants in the company鈥檚 Series A. Electric鈥檚 founder and CEO, a serial entrepreneur named , said that 鈥済etting a firm like Bessemer onboard is a huge vote of confidence and sets us up to execute on next steps.鈥�

from Bessemer is joining the company鈥檚 board, where he鈥檒l join three others:

1. , the founder and managing partner of Bowery Captial.
2. , co-founder and general partner at Primary Venture Partners.
3. , currently the founder and CEO of .

Davis was Denehy鈥檚 co-founder on two previous startups. One was a media company, BNQT Media Group, to the corporate parent of the USA Today newspaper. The second was a retail analytics platform called later in late 2014, reportedly for north of $30 million.

Building Better Support

Denehy told Crunchbase News that 鈥渂usinesses are buying and using more tech than they ever have before, but IT support hasn鈥檛 changed in twenty years.鈥�

Denehy said that the market for supporting small and medium-sized businesses鈥� IT needs is very decentralized.

鈥淭here are over 100,000 independent IT consultancies鈥� in the US, he said, 鈥渁nd they鈥檙e serving a market of about one million small businesses that don鈥檛 have full-time IT staff.鈥�

Denehy characterized the IT status quo as expensive, slow, and reactive, and he strives to provide the opposite: a fast, proactive support experience that鈥檚 affordable for small businesses.

Currently, and likely for some time into the future, Electric鈥檚 platform, which Denehy described as 鈥淎I-driven鈥� is also assisted by humans. For now, Electric is 鈥渇ocused on automating the most repetitive and most common tasks.鈥� Denehy added that 鈥渁bout 50 percent of support tickets aren鈥檛 about fixing broken things, but doing stuff like setting up an email address, turning on a firewall, or connecting to an enterprise platform.鈥�

Those common, routinized issues are increasingly addressed without human intervention. But Electric also handles more complex issues by escalating to a technician when necessary. Over time, Denehy hopes that even these complicated tasks can be automated away from human support staff to increase the speed to resolution.

A Few Steps Ahead

Denehy credits his company鈥檚 growth to the fact that he tries to think as many steps ahead as possible in order to avoid making reactionary moves. However, Denehy acknowledged to Crunchbase News 鈥渢hat鈥檚 easier said than done.鈥�

In the fourteen months since the company was launched, headcount has grown to dozens of people, and annual revenues are in the low seven-figures. Electric plans to use its new capital to grow its business by at least four-fold this year, both in terms of recurring revenue and customers.

He said that one of the biggest challenges he鈥檒l face is scaling his business up in a sustainable way that doesn鈥檛 compromise on Electric鈥檚 high standard for customer service. Balancing the growth of three teams 鈥� engineering and product, sales and marketing, and the IT experts themselves 鈥� isn鈥檛 going to be easy.

But if Denehy and team are able to do so, he sees smooth sailing ahead. With no clear competitors building human-assisted AI-driven IT solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, Electric鈥檚 only serious competition are 鈥渕om and pop IT shops鈥� in a business it hopes to reinvent.

Correction: BNQT Media was the name of Denehy’s previous startup, not the name of the acquiring entity.