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.
Person to Person support is a great idea and a lot of money too
Unless they have a patent or something proprietary this app will duplicated and free for all in a few years.
If it’s good, no patent can save them. Someone will put out an open-source clone, and then it’s game over. This is the kind of thing that would really work in an open-source model, and work well for Linux distributions due to the learning curve. In fact, this could be in the “in-OS” support system that distros like Ubuntu are looking for.
WAY TO GO MRINAL!
(linkback) Thrive or Fail? Crossloop: Peer to Peer tech support [VOTE] - http://www.thriveorfail.com/6af25
Thanks a ton from all at CrossLoop, Erick!!
This sounds like a winner. There is a clear need, and add money making potential to users, and a payment system too…one nice business idea!
“Person to Person support is a great idea and a lot of money too”
I totally agree!
I’ve used Crossloop several times to help relatives with computer problems…it’s dead simple to walk through the installation process and the program runs fairly fast. I hope it continues to be free to non-commercial users - and I would also be doing some Competitive Intelligence now to be prepared for an inevitably intense competitive landscape within the next two quarters.
This is pretty awesome. They’ve already got me on board. Seems to be one of the first to let anyone request help instead of making support technicians go out and actively seek clients. If you are interested in trying it out, search for me. Ryan H in Arlington, VA
The built in payment system is a great tool, but for remote support there are much better services out there. Given the fact that Crossloop is free reflects its limitations in terms of functionality, and therefore it is not a great service for commercial use. At the same point in time, most of the other services such as LogMeIn and Teamviewer are very high-priced for most small businesses such as mine.
I’m currently using Techinline (www.techinline.com) which is probably the cheapest remote support tool on the market and is the easiest to use since nobody has to install anything on either end. All your client has to do is open a page in their browser, get a number and once you type in the number on your end, that’s the remote connection. From what I’ve seen, that’s as easy as it gets and is a steal price-wise
what is this ?
I mean come on. Logmein is in this business from a long time they millions (not sure of exact no) of users. Everyone i know uses it. Even Dell people i spoke to know about it. It is free of cost, basic stuff. I control my parents desktop with it. Now, techcrunch should either officially assign this post as marketing post for this company or mention competitors.
Very good concept similar to GeekSqad but for computers. Though it addresses a very niche market, they should work on creating widgets or apps to integrate with other social networking sites.
One establish competitor in this space is CoPilot created be Fog Creek Software.
The company is privately held and has been around since 2000.
https://www.copilot.com/
Fantastic service! I have used this quite a few times in the past.
Not to help others fix problems, but to collaborate on work being done in powerpoint, word, excel and others.
This sounds like the real down and a winner. It will make fixing problems a lot easier and haggle free than staying on line with a customer service rep for hours or trying to set a time for someone to come in and fix the issue. Could there be some potential privacy issues with someone else going on your computer?
Craig
http://www.budgetpulse.com
How is this different then the built-in RDP clients, or logmein, or vnc, or… ?
I have used Crossloop and I like it. They have done a good job and the user experience is much better than logmein. Another cool service which I stumbled upon (pun intended) last weekend is Zolved …
Thanks Mark!
THIS IS SHIT, WINDOWS ALREADY PROVIDES IN-BUILT VNC FUNCTIONALITY.
Tech crunch seems to be only interested in reviewing multi-million dollar venture capital-backed companies. My company has recently launched a revolutionary p2p product, we have sent numerous requests to tech crunch in order to have the product reviewed ALL EMAILS HAVE BEEN IGNORED. Yet every day I visit tech crunch and read another lame story about another multi million dollar aquisition.
Umm, thats strange, only huge companies are given any kind of coverage. Could this be to do with the fact that tech crunch ARE PROBABLY BEING PAID TO REVIEW SITES OF THIS NATURE.
WHEN ARE PEOPLE GOING TO WAKE UP AND REALISE THAT TECH CRUNCH INTERESTS LAY NOT IN HIGHLIGHTING NEW INNOVATIONS IN THE TECHNOLOGY MARKET PLACE, BUT RATHER IN LINING THEIR OWN POCKETS!!
Look dipshit, why don’t you spam your link so that we can all crush your venture. Did it ever occur that maybe your site is just crap and they don’t want to review it. Try doing something unique or news worthy.
Oh and btw, YOUR CAPS LOCK KEY IS BROKEN.
@AnotherDater
“Did it ever occur that maybe your site is just crap and they don’t want to review it”
Actually it did, but since a number of TRUE tech blogs have gave it postive reviews then I think its more a case of what I previously said. TECH CRUNCH ARE ONLY INTERESTED IN FEATURING HUGE COMPANIES THAT IRONICALLY DONT REALLY NEED THE EXPOSURE. But what about the small companies doing amazing things in the software space, dont they deserve a break?
Ultimately tech crunch is marketed (rarther misleadingly) as a blog for tech start ups. However what they neglect to mention is that they are only interested in you if there is perhaps some gain for them; the type of gain that perhaps big companies are able to offer.
Congrats Mrinal and team!
Indus
Angry Reader, if they are TRUE tech blogs, why don’t you run along there. You sound a bit obsessed with getting some time on Techcrunch. If those other tech blogs love you so much you should be happy.
@ AnotherDater
“if they are TRUE tech blogs, why don’t you run along there”
I intend to, I just wanted readers to know the score. Many readers look to tech crunch as tech blog leader and they EXPECT an honest summary of new tech start ups not just what tech crunch have allowed to be shown in order to make a quick buck.
Don’t take my word it, have a glance at the tech crunch front page today. You will find that there are just more articles about Google, Yahoo and other huge companies. Yet when I speak to smaller software houses, they have had the same expirience I have had: ALL EMAILS ARE IGNORED.
I think MIKE should get his head out of his own arse and start publishing an honest and balanced view of the tech industry both large and small.
CrossLoop is a good product, but it still has issues with the remote control software such as the inability to maintain a reboot session across reboots and a lack of support tools.
I have used LogMeIn Rescue for the last month or two and it’s in a league of it’s own. The only problem is the monthly licence fee which is prohibitive for an individual.
Perhaps a competitor for CrossLoop is PCMagical.com - they have combined LogMeIn rescue with PayPal payments in a very similar way.
I’ll keep my eye on both companies over the next few months.