customer-support
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Varun Vummadi and the year the idea kept changing
He turned down a Stanford PhD offer to build with his college friend. Finding something worth building took longer: a tutor, a model business, and a year of uncomfortable revisions before Giga found its way into customer support.
Taylor Sloane and the art of closing the chat window
The HelpDocs co-founder likes getting the details right, down to the dissolved solids in a cup of coffee. Building a software company has also taught them when to stop, listen, and change the recipe.
Aakrit Prasad and the morning of 5,000 tickets
A product change at AppDynamics brought a flood of support requests. Aakrit Prasad carried that lesson into AptEdge, where the work is making a company’s knowledge useful before the next escalation.
Kiral Desai and the Business After the Sale
Kiral Desai built DynaNet around the work that begins when a customer needs help. From arcade-cabinet instructions to AI ventures, his business interests keep returning to a practical question: who has the information needed to act?
Stealth Agents sells the art of letting go
A dedicated assistant can take work off your desk. Stealth Agents builds a business around the harder part: deciding what to hand over, and how much responsibility goes with it.
Unity Communications and the art of handing work over
The Arizona outsourcing company pairs global teams with automation. Its most interesting product is the judgment to know who should handle what.
Marybeth Alexander and the company she wants to share
She helped turn an abandoned help-desk project into KnowledgeOwl. Now Marybeth Alexander is working on a harder question: how much of a company’s success should belong to the people who do the work?
Jon O'Bryan and the value of a question
Before Atlas, Jon O'Bryan studied the early universe and helped build a housing marketplace. His next problem was closer to home: why companies know so little about the customers asking them for help.
Doc Shufelt and the Small Question Behind a Long Queue
At Republic Wireless, a troublesome SIM card offered Doc Shufelt a lesson in paying attention. With ArenaCX, he helped turn the everyday problem of customer support into a marketplace.
Martin Malych and the business of picking up
A customer asked for a simpler phone system. Martin Malych helped turn the request into CloudTalk - and has spent the years since learning how much work sits on either side of a conversation.
Spencer Fry and the trouble with looking successful
A $4,000 suit. Four startups. A growing suspicion that bigger can get in the way. The Podia founder has spent his career helping people work for themselves - and learning what he wants from the job.
Shalin Jain and the distance he chose not to travel
A ten-mile commute helped send Shalin Jain into business. A quarter-century later, the HappyFox founder is still finding opportunity in the work other people would rather hand off.
Sylvain Perron and the trouble with being understood
A programmer tired of answering the same questions built Botpress to make software understand people. Years later, Sylvain Perron is still working on the conversation that started it all.
vCustomer made distance disappear.
The offshore support company put internet calls, trained agents and close supervision to work together. Its most useful lesson sits behind the headset.
FHG and the art of getting the next conversation
A prospect list is only the beginning. FHG connects data, outreach, marketing and CRM work around the harder question: what happens next?
SupportZebra sells the luxury of focus
A declined card. A ringing phone. Another interrupted engineer. SupportZebra builds the teams and workflows that stop everyday customer problems from swallowing the whole company.
Ankit Saxena and the trouble with a simple hello
A customer message should be the start of a conversation. After years building software and running teams at Branch, Ankit Saxena built Thena around what happens next.
Cliede Castañeda and the art of being counted on
Before he founded OBI Services, Cliede Castañeda spent years managing support and sales operations. His business now rests on a deceptively ordinary promise: a team that stays with the work.
Daria Leshchenko learned to answer everyone. Then she learned to let go.
A student’s support job became a global business. Along the way, the SupportYourApp co-founder had to learn when to step in, when to step back, and when to leave the walls to the artists.
Sameer Bhatia and the customers who wanted to pay
A free quiz tool brought teachers to Sameer Bhatia’s door. The companies that followed helped turn his interest in sharing knowledge into ProProfs - and a plan to build a business that lasts a century.
Robert C. Johnson and the trouble with a closed ticket
Television software taught the TeamSupport co-founder that a small problem could put an entire customer relationship at risk. He built a company around that lesson, then carried his appetite for teamwork into the cockpit.
Md. Nizam Uddin’s 300-taka opening to the world
A schoolboy in Pabna paid 300 taka to look up NASA. Years later, the weDevs co-founder would help turn a WordPress plugin into a business reaching across borders - and learn why growth sometimes calls for a smaller to-do list.
Yaakov Karda and the business hiding in the help desk
His custom-jeans company closed. The customer-service experience survived. With Chatra, Yaakov Karda turned an everyday skill into a business people already knew they needed.
Alexis Fogel and the trouble with knowing too much
After nearly a decade building Dashlane, Alexis Fogel started again with Stonly. His next problem was hiding in plain sight: experts write the instructions, but beginners have to follow them.
Nooshin Alibhai put a house on the help desk
She and Eric Klimuk sold their home to help fund Supportbench. Her wager: the people answering customer problems have something the rest of the business needs to hear.
Pavel Pavlenko’s business begins after the sale
Before he co-founded HelpCrunch, Pavel Pavlenko worked in customer support. His career has become an argument for paying attention to what happens after someone buys - and, sometimes, after someone says no.
Alex Turnbull put his homework on the internet
Groove’s founder made a business out of sharing the work most companies keep to themselves. Years of public numbers, awkward mistakes and revised convictions have brought him to another beginning: Helply.
Mark Gavalda and the business of having fewer answers
Kinsta began with a question its founders could not answer: where should a client host a website? Mark Gavalda helped turn that gap into a global business, then handed the CEO role to someone who had worked the support queue.
Deon Nicholas and the art of getting homework out of the way
A Toronto teenager built software to quiz him on history. Years later, after Forethought’s sale to Zendesk, Deon Nicholas is still working on the same practical question: how much of the busywork can a computer take off your hands?
Hana Mohan and the Business Hidden in the Inbox
A music community needed better customer support. Its help desk needed better notifications. Hana Mohan kept finding her next company inside the one she was already building.