Electric Raises $25 Million to Expand MSP Footprint
The funding is expected to expand automated IT support using chatbots via MSPs.
January 24, 2019
Electric, a startup aiming to disrupt the managed services provider (MSP) business by delivering outsourced remote help-desk support for SaaS apps, desktops and mobile devices aided by AI-enabled chatbots, has received a $25 million round of Series B funding.
Electric’s Ryan Denehy
Ryan Denehy, the founder and CEO of New York City-based Electric, believes that the traditional MSP business is broken, especially with regard to providing help-desk and troubleshooting support for PCs, Macs, mobile devices and SaaS apps. Denehy seeks to fix that and bring other MSPs into his corner.
“Most of the VARs and MSPs in the U.S. just don’t operate with enough scale to provide the kind of services that are going to enable that make the most money and deliver the most complete experience to their customers,” Denehy told Channel Futures.
Small and midsize businesses (SMBs), he said, can get better and lower-cost help-desk support with Electric’s approach of using chatbots to automate routine tasks and use human technicians only when needed. As more SMBs shift to SaaS apps, Denehy says supporting them is becoming easier. Electric supports about 50 of the most popular SaaS apps.
The sizable investment, announced Wednesday, comes from prominent venture capital firm GGV, which has backed such startups as AlienVault, Big Commerce, HashiCorp, Slack,and Zendesk. Existing investor Bessemer Venture Partners also is participating, bringing the total amount raised to $38 million since Electric was founded two-and-a-half years ago.
Electric is the third startup Denehy has founded. He was a co-founder of BNQT Media Group, which was sold to Gannett. The second startup, Swarm Mobile, a retail analytics platform where Denehy said he learned about the IT channel, was sold to Groupon, in 2014.