If you’ve ever been locked out of your work pc, the pressing want to achieve IT assist. Unfortunately, helpdesk employees are sometimes busy aiding others, which may imply a major delay earlier than you regain entry.
Andrei Serban realized the essential significance of IT’s handbook work when he was a product lead on Rippling’s apps and integrations staff. Serban, who joined Rippling after it acquired his coding safety startup Fuzzbuzz in 2023, noticed a possibility to automate most of the helpdesk’s fundamental duties with AI, from resetting passwords to granting entry to apps like Figma and Miro, and routine troubleshooting.
Sereban couldn’t wait to get began on his imaginative and prescient. He left Rippling final yr to discovered Console, a startup on a mission to assist IT groups scale back mundane, repetitive duties, thereby releasing up time for helpdesk professionals to work on extra strategic and complex tasks.
While making an attempt to automate helpdesk capabilities isn’t new, Console differentiates itself from current opponents, together with Moveworks, which was acquired by ServiceNow in March for $2.85 billion, by forgoing lengthy, complicated set up processes. Thanks to its simple integration with Slack, Console’s AI assistant will be made obtainable to everybody within the firm in only a few weeks.
“We’re in a position to get there so quick since you don’t require you to exchange your assist desk,” he mentioned.
Console sees itself as an AI co-worker that uplevels current helpdesk professionals. Serban even recommended that as corporations digitize extra of their operations, the IT operate will grow to be more and more very important.
Employees message Console on Slack and the startup’s AI agent shortly responds to requests as a result of it is aware of all the things in regards to the person, from their particular laptop computer mannequin to the functions they’ve permission to make use of. Console’s AI can resolve over 50% of the duties by itself, and it’ll loop in somebody from IT for extra complicated points, Serban mentioned.
The quick set up time attracted clients, together with Scale AI, Flock Safety, and Calendly.
These buyer wins have led Console to safe $6.2 million in seed funding from Thrive Capital.
Vince Hankes, a associate at Thrive, mentioned that the agency, which has backed most of the main AI corporations, together with OpenAI, Cursor, and ElevenLabs, has had a thesis about synthetic intelligence’s potential to help with IT duties since ChatGPT was first launched within the fall of 2022.
While Hankes acknowledged that Console’s quick integration would possibly make it appear simply replaceable, he believes its AI expertise will enhance so shortly with person adoption that it’ll grow to be an indispensable, deeply built-in system important to everybody on the buyer’s firm.
Console’s aim is to ultimately begin supporting different capabilities, together with answering worker requests about HR, finance, and authorized.
“We need Console to be an worker’s first name for assist,” Serban mentioned.
