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.