It’s the way of many acquisitions – a startup gets bought, and a couple of years later, after the earnout expires, the founders get an itch to start something new.
AOL acquired Goowy, a creator of Flash widgets, in early 2008. Now, we’ve confirmed, the core team – Alex Bard, Gary Benitt and Jeremy Suriel, have left AOL to start their next company, Assistly. Brad Birnbaum, formerly the CTO of eShare and Talisma, joins them as well.
So what is Assistly? We don’t know much yet. The website says little more than “Coming soon… Customer service done right. Brought to you by Alex Bard, Brad Birnbaum, Jeremy Suriel and Gary Benitt.” But I did manage to get a little bit of information out of Bard. He says of Assistly:
Assistly is a software company focused on customer interaction and customer relationship management (CIM & CRM). There are at least three different types of users of the application, including end customers that send in support questions via the channels; agents that service the interactions and provide support to customers; and administrators that configure the system. The application incorporates support for case management (customer profiles, history, dispositioning, tracking), and interaction management (chat, email, callbacks, self service, knowledge base, twitter, etc.) Generally, the company will deliver its software in a hosted and managed fashion, although it will also be available in a packaged format for on premises usage.
That’s all we have for now.
Congratulations to the Goowy guys! I wish Alex, Gary, and Jeremy, as well as Brad, all the best in this new venture. I can’t wait for the launch!
I can haz first comment?
Apparently not.
Well, best wishes to the assist.ly team!
Congratulations guys!!! Assistly is going to ROCK!!!
Rock on guys! Let us know how the Startup community in San Diego can help.
Congrats Alex!
Welcome back to the beginning of the process.
The idea sounds interesting, but what makes it even more bankable is the solid team of experienced entrepreneurs. I’d place a bet on this one.
Yay! Let’s add LY to the end of everything! That makes it cool, you know?
At least it’s a lot cheaper to get that than assistly.com. So who can blame them? Good luck, guys!
lol – I guess they got it though… so what are we babbling about?
Congrats guys. Are you going to be based in San Diego?
Love it! We’re a local SD company doing something related in our niche market and I’m excited that a team of talented locals are further validating the concept.
Ironic, but your traditional CRM does nothing to build relationships. Adding the Interaction element makes all the difference.
Congrats to the Assistly guys!
Looking forward to seeing you guys build and succeed again!
Always great to see new ideas and companies coming to SD and hopefully generating more faith in the community and all that is waiting to happen down here. Congrats and good luck