Fixify Secures $25M Series A for AI-Powered IT Help Desk Solution

Fixify nabs $25M for its AI-supported help desk service - SiliconANGLE

Fixify Inc., a startup helping companies process employees' technical support requests more efficiently, today announced that it has raised $25 million in funding. Costanoa Ventures, Decibel Partners and Paladin Capital Group jointly led the Series A investment. Scale Venture Partners chipped in as well. Fixify's total outside capital now stands at $32 million. Assembling a help desk team that can field technical support questions from a company's employees is a costly and time-consuming endeavor. Arlington-based Fixify offers a managed help desk service that spares organizations the hassle. Companies can reroute their workers' support requests to the startup's support professionals, who use artificial intelligence software to identify the root cause of each issue and find a fix. Fixify also uses AI to power an internal sentiment analysis tool. According to the company, the software measures how an employee's mood changes from the moment a support ticket is filed until the help desk team fixes the issue. It analyzes the collected data to find areas where the user experience can be improved. "Our new take on the IT help desk keeps humans in the loop by investing in tech to do what tech is good for - gathering data, providing context and automating the fix," Fixify co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Matt Peters wrote in a blog post. The company's service covers several use cases. According to Fixify, its help desk teams can fix technical issues that affect employee devices and other hardware assets. The company also takes on software-related tasks such as creating accounts for new employees in business applications and recovering accidentally deleted data. The service can integrate with a company's existing help desk software. As a result, employees don't have to familiarize themselves with a new application in order to submit support tickets to Fixify. That streamlines the onboarding process: the company says its service can be deployed in weeks instead of the months usually required for the task. Fixify also integrates with other applications besides a company's ticketing software. One of those applications is Jira, which developers use to track bugs in their code. When users submit support tickets about a technical issue that is caused by a software bug, Fixify can send technical information about the incident to Jira. The company's service has so far been adopted by 15 organizations. According to TechCrunch, Fixify will use its newly raised funding to grow its customer base and hire more employees.

Fixify Secures $25 Million in Series A Funding to Modernize IT Help Desks by Keeping Humans in the Loop

ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 23, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fixify, an innovative AI-powered IT help desk solution provider, announced today that it has closed a $25 million Series A funding round co-led by Costanoa Ventures, Decibel Partners and Paladin Capital Group with participation from Scale Venture Partners. Fixify blends AI together with human experts to empower IT teams to quickly diagnose and resolve issues to enhance the overall help desk experience. The funds will be used to scale its workforce and accelerate product development. More than 50% of employees avoid using IT help desks due to inefficiencies and poor service, according to findings in Fixify's IT Help Desk Benchmark Report. The report also revealed that almost half of IT tickets are related to software and application issues, followed by password reset requests. Fixify's AI-powered solution tackles the most common IT problems and guides Fixify's human analysts to resolve problems with a personal touch. Fixify also offers real-time sentiment analysis to monitor emotional tone, detect mood shifts and offer suggestions for improving the overall employee experience. By combining AI with human oversight, IT teams can provide faster, more reliable support while helping employees avoid the frustrations and limitations of purely tech-driven support, like chatbots. "We want people to feel cared for, not handled or 'resolved' when reaching out to IT for support," said Matt Peters, CEO and co-founder of Fixify. "We understand IT teams are overwhelmed and inundated with tickets. Delays in support slow down staff and are frustrating. Our solution centers around humans - both IT teams and employees - to improve the overall experience for both." Key Features of Fixify Include: Keeps Humans in the Loop: It's always a Fixify analyst - backed up by AI and automation - that's talking to every end user to ensure they get the care they deserve.Set the Dial Anywhere - Adjust Any Time: Internal IT teams control which tickets go to Fixify by toggling individual use cases such as access requests and account recovery on or off so they can focus on more complex priorities.Fits Into Existing Process & Playbooks: Fixify uses existing help desk processes and ticketing systems so there's no need to re-train end users on where to go.Root-Cause Analysis: Utilizes machine learning and AI to identify the root cause, diagnose the problem and work toward a resolution more quickly.Integration with Existing Systems: Seamless integration into the leading existing IT ticketing, access management and productivity apps including JIRA, Freshservice, ServiceNow, Okta, Microsoft, Google and Slack.Metrics & Insights: Fixify automatically categorizes tickets by use case so IT teams have more visibility into their organizations' top issues. Efficiency metrics, user sentiment and strategic recommendations help IT teams anticipate problems and proactively resolve them. In addition to the raise, Fixify also announced that Mourad Yesayan, Managing Director at Paladin Capital Group, will be joining Fixify's board to provide strategic counsel on AI and cybersecurity. Mourad joins existing board members Dan Nguyen-Huu, Partner at Decibel Partners and Fixify's three founders. Fixify was co-founded by CEO Matt Peters, COO Mase Issa and CTO Peter Silberman. Together, they hold 95 years of combined experience in the cybersecurity industry. Prior to launching Fixify, all three co-founders were early employees (pre-revenue) at Expel, a leading Managed Detection and Response (MDR) provider that works with top brands to minimize risk and build security resilience. Learn more about Fixify's mission to scale IT teams with care by visiting https://www.fixify.com/. Supporting quotes: Tony Liu, Partner at Costanoa Ventures said, "How AI is used to solve real, everyday problems determines how compelling it is for a business. We liked that Fixify is using AI to unblock not just the productivity of IT teams, but also for the employees that need IT problems resolved more quickly." Dan Nguyen-Huu, Partner at Decibel Partners said, "Most IT help desk solutions have focused on automating humans out of the process and pushing work back on end users. That creates frustration. Fixify is flipping the script by keeping humans in the loop and supporting them with tech that solves problems fast and includes a personal touch." Mourad Yesayan, Managing Director at Paladin Capital Group said, "Fixify's approach is refreshing and entirely new. They're delivering high-quality, high-touch IT help desk services at scale by using technology - including AI - to optimize how their own IT experts diagnose and solve customers' issues." About Fixify: Fixify is a new take on the IT help desk that takes on the work that's bogging internal IT teams down using a combination of tech and talented analysts that deliver an IT help desk experience tailored to each company's environment, workflows and people. The company was founded in 2023 by tech and cybersecurity experts CEO Matt Peters, COO Mase Issa and CTO Peter Silberman. Learn more about Fixify's mission to scale IT teams with care by visiting www.fixify.com. About Costanoa Ventures: Founded in 2012, Costanoa Ventures partners with technical and product founders as early as company formation, with a focus on apps and infrastructure in data, dev and fintech. Costanoa is a long-term partner to entrepreneurs who want hands-on help in their earliest company stages on all things go-to-market and talent. For more information, please visit www.costanoavc.com. About Decibel: Decibel is a venture capital firm, based in Silicon Valley that backs technical founders and helps them find product-market fit. Decibel invests in early-stage enterprise software companies, with a special focus on developer platforms and tools, data and AI engineering products, cybersecurity, and autonomous software and services. For more information visit www.decibel.vc. About Paladin Capital Group: Paladin Capital Group was founded in 2001 and has offices in Washington DC, New York, London, Luxembourg, and Silicon Valley. As a multi-stage investor, Paladin's core strength is identifying, supporting and investing in innovative companies that develop promising, early-stage technologies to address the critical cyber and advanced technological needs of both commercial and government customers. Combining proven investment experience with deep expertise in global security, cyber technology and cutting-edge research, Paladin has invested in more than 80 companies since 2008 and has been a trusted partner to investors, entrepreneurs and governments for over two decades. For more information, visit www.paladincapgroup.com. Media Contact: Angela Petersen SamsonPR [email protected] Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Fixify blends automation and human analysts to tackle IT problems

Matt Peters has spent more than a decade working for cybersecurity vendors. He was a team lead at Check Point, climbed the corporate ladder to VP of worldwide operations at FireEye, and spent over four years at Expel, a managed detection and response firm, as chief product officer. Peters says a surprising common thread ran through all these experiences: IT teams were frustrated because expectations around technology rarely matched up with reality. Organizations demand a lot of their IT departments. According to one poll, nearly a third of staff at the average company bank on a response from IT within an hour. Roughly the same percentage expect help with any new tool that their employer requires they learn. In these challenges, Peters perceived opportunity. Along with Peter Silberman and Mase Issa, both ex-Expel colleagues, Peters founded Fixify, an IT help desk platform with an automation twist. Fixify connects to existing IT ticketing systems, like Jira and ServiceNow, to automatically categorize tickets and identify problem "hotspots." Using AI, Fixify tries to identify the root causes of problems, then recruits IT analysts that it employs to diagnose and resolve the problems. "Fixify is designed for tech-centric organizations between 100 and 2,000 employees that care about providing a high-quality IT help desk experience, but aren't able to invest in the staff and tech stack required," Peters said. "We charge an annual subscription based on the number of employees a customer has. For a company with 750 employees the cost would be $9,000 per month, or about the cost of one full-time help desk analyst." Peters says that Fixify uses a sentiment analysis tool to gauge the tone and urgency of incoming requests. This not only helps with triage, he says, but gives analysts an idea of what to expect and how to respond. "By tracking sentiment from the start to the close of a ticket, we can monitor the user experience and quickly spot when extra attention is needed," Peters added. As analysts work through tickets, Fixify customers -- and their own IT workers -- can lend a hand if they choose. Fixify automatically updates ticket statuses to ensure stakeholders remain on the same page. From Fixify's admin dashboard, customers can specify which categories of tickets they want analysts to prioritize. They can also view performance metrics (e.g. time to resolution) and suggestions to proactively address issues, as well as file requests to delete sensitive info from Fixify's platform. (By default, Fixify retains data for 12 months subject to "customer needs and contractual obligations.") "Our goal is to manage around three-quarters of the customer's ticket volume from start to finish - not just re-route them," he continued. "Our AI assists IT analysts by suggesting next steps based on each customer's specific processes. They also identify relevant tools for each task by analyzing the ticket context and playbook instructions." IT teams have shown a willingness to embrace automation as they find themselves stretched thinner and thinner. In a December 2023 Digitate survey, 90% of IT decision-makers said they plan to deploy more automation, particularly in functions like finance and customer support, in the next 12 months. The idea of high-tech IT outsourcing isn't new. Several startups are trying the idea, including Primo (which focuses specifically on hardware), Fleet (which also has a hardware bent), and Wizeline. But there's lots of money in the segment. Avasant Research's 2023 IT Outsourcing Statistics survey found organizations increased their annual IT outsourcing budgets by 8.1% last year. Deloitte projected total spending on IT outsourcing to reach $519 billion by 2023 -- a 22% tick up from 2019. Investors seem taken with Fixify's automation angle -- perhaps because of automation's potential to boost productivity while lowering overhead. This month, Fixify closed a $25 million Series A round co-led by Costanoa Ventures, Decibel Partners, and Paladin Capital Group with participation from Scale Venture Partners. Mourad Yesayan, managing director at Paladin, plans to join Fixify's board as part of the deal. "The broader tech slowdown has actually created a couple of opportunities for us," Peters said. "This series A investment provides funding for the foreseeable future - and certainly through the expected uptick in the economy that many economists are predicting." Arlington, Virginia-based Fixify, which launched in 2023, has raised $32 million to date. The firm's near-term focus is growing its 41-person workforce and customer base, which currently stands at 15 companies.