Tech
Surfboard wants to kill off the spreadsheet for customer support teams. We got an exclusive look at the 13-slide deck it used to raise $5 million.
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- London-based Surfboard has raised $5 million in seed funding from Speedinvest.
- The startup has designed a collaborative planning tool for customer support teams.
- Check out the 13-slide deck used to raise the capital.
A startup that has designed a collaborative planning platform for customer support teams just raised $5 million from Speedinvest.
London-based Surfboard launched in 2021 with the aim of making work more human, and efficient, for customer support teams.
Typically in support teams, there are three main actors; the agents who do the customer support work, their managers, and the end customers — who usually have to wait a long time for services.
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Surfboard’s tool aims to expedite this process by moving companies away from outdated workflow systems, such as spreadsheets and legacy software tools.
“As you start outgrowing spreadsheets, the alternatives are pretty bad,” said founder and CEO Natasha Ratanshi-Stein. “They don’t factor in that you’re organizing humans who have personal lives, and they don’t offer much flexibility or collaboration.”
The startup’s software platform, which can be sold to companies for a monthly rate of £15 (around $18) per user, enables collaboration within teams, so they can better manage scheduling, time off, meetings, and working across different time zones.
“We use a word, ‘disruptor’, which causes friction in scheduling,” Ratanshi-Stein told Insider. “An example is when someone has to swap shifts; the manager has to find someone with a similar skillset whose schedule matches up.”
“The fundamental mission of Surfboard is to eliminate these disruptors, by providing this software which makes this frictionless,” she added.
In turn, Surfboard hopes that support teams save time otherwise spent manually altering spreadsheets, and curb lost revenue and employee churn. It counts the likes of Bloom & Wild, Wolf & Badger, and Hypervolt among its clients.
Like many of its early-stage counterparts, Surfboard found the fundraising process to be “a lot less pre-emptive compared to last year” with increased due diligence from investors, Ratanshi-Stein added.
The seed round was led by Austria-based venture capital firm Speedinvest, which has backed the likes of Wefox and Bitpanda, with participation from Fly Ventures, Seedcamp, and the founders of Tessian, Sennder, Zencargo and McMakler.
With the cash injection, it will develop its product and focus on customer acquisitions by investing in its marketing efforts.
Check out the 13-slide deck used to secure the funds.