Sometimes you just need a little help from your friends. Investors are putting $6 million more into CrossLoop, the peer-to-peer IT help desk app. Venrock is leading the round, and previous investor El Dorado Ventures is also participating. El Dorado led the $3 million series A in December, 2007.
CrossLoop is a do-it-yourself tech support app that lets you take over someone else’s computer remotely to fix it or walk them through technical issues. Anyone can use the app (it comes in handy when your parents call and they can’t find the pictures of the kids you loaded on their computer the last time you visited). But it is particularly targeted to IT consultants and professionals whpo are beginning to use CrossLoop to do their jobs remotely. So far the service has 11,800 registered helpers in 130 countries. On average, they are charging $55 an hour and a typical session lasts about 25 minutes. The service has helped one million users total, and has racked up 54 million cumulative minutes in help sessions, up from 300,000 users and 12 million cumulative minutes last December.
Currently, the helpers use PayPal to collect payments, but CrossLoop will eventually offer its own payment system and take a percentage of each fee. And while the company is 100% focused on the P2P tech support market right now, one day the application could be used for other customer support services as well.