Atlanta Startup: SherpaDesk Wants To Be Your Support Desk INTERVIEW

Jon Vickers and Patrick Clements, the guys behind Atlanta based BigWebApps have designed a help/support desk product aimed at small businesses. While BigWebApps has been around since 2001, Sherpadesk is just now launching.

BigWebApps is part of Vickers and Clements company called Micajah ITS which is a network integration and development firm. Their BigWebApps application is aimed at government and large enterprise. Sherpadesk is aimed at smaller businesses and startups that need to bring customer support online early on.

We got a chance to interview Sherpadesk

SherpaDesk is a client support solution designed to assist small to  medium size businesses and independent contractors with managing client service requests, projects estimations and billable time in one easy to use interface.

Jon Vickers – CTO – Started Micajah ITS a network integration and application development firm while attending the University of Georgia.  Later sold the managed service side of the Micajah  to concentrate on custom web development with concentration of .NET technologies.  Launched bigWebApps in 2001 as a way to license some of their multitenant solutions.

Patrick Clements – CEO – Joined Micajah ITS post-graduation after spending a year and half getting a Colorado education in skiing.  Launched bigWebApps in the Spring of 2001 to be the marketing and application solution of Micajah ITS solutions.  It’s first solution was a web based help desk application called bigWebApps HelpDesk

bigWebApps launched its first support solution bigWebApps HelpDesk in 2001.  It was focused on government and mid-market support teams providing internal support to their employees.  SherpaDesk is a repurpose of the bigWebApps HelpDesk solution targeting small (1-2 man shops) to medium size businesses needing an integrated help desk system with a time and billing solution.

Allow small businesses to easily support and track client issues professionally and  affordably.    Business will now be able to provide a custom designed support portal for each of their clients and effectively track any associated time and billing issues.

We really have three main ingredients that makes our sauce spicy.

1.       Email Parser – The ability to perform most functions of the app over email (Ticket Creation, Closure, updates, responses, etc.).  We use a form of communication everyone is familiar with (email) to support and augment the SherpaDesk solution.  Lowering the barrier of adoption.

2.       Time and Billing – We have an extensive and flexible time and billing platform which will allow businesses to create unique billing plans for services.  We track and compute any form of billing needs and then export this data nice and neatly into a third party accounting package via APIs.  Right now we are supporting Freshbooks and QuickBooks

3.       Utility Priced Model – We will be offering SherpaDesk to all on a freemium model.  The first tech will be free along with limits on additional usage of the application.  Once you reach the limit threshold then you will only be billed for what you use.  This will allow the system to scale economically from a single user to organizations with multiple usage and demands.

Small (1-2 man independent contractors) to Medium size business.  Our initial focus will be on network integrators and IT support professional who need to track and manage their client’s support requests and projects.

Less is More.  Do Less.

Yes, to a degree.  The major downside is the esprit de corp and energy which is limited among early startups in the Atlanta market.  Not only do we lack financial capital flow to help seed ideas, but there is heavy heavy competition for the intellectual capital.  If there is a good designer or good programmer then EVERYONE is going to know.  You have to make more out of less.  However, the ability to survive with a decent standard of living is a whole lot easier in Atlanta.

Atlanta does have quite a few great startups (sometimes 10yr old startups) that are emerging as really great players in the market. (i.e. MailChimp, ScoutMob, Pardot, CloudSherpa, etc).  There are some good programs which also cater to startups like Startup Riot,  Startup Lounge, and ATDC.  However, there doesn’t seem like this overwhelming vibrant community where there is deal flow, access to mentorship, big ideas crashing only to rise again,  idea exchanges, etc.  I feel this town really understands data security, telecommunications, and real estate.  It’s very conservative.   Social Media, Freemium model apps, and crowdsourcing style solutions are still unknown and foreign concepts it seems.

SherpaDesk will provide an accessible way for small business and independent contractors to provide responsive support and flexible billing plans.  The biggest frustration this market has it having to operate in several platforms to preform service.  We have an integrated solution which will allow both the business and their customer to be constantly updated on all services.  It is our goal to make a typically left brain style solution right brained.  We want to introduce creativity, simplicity and design into the application. SherpaDesk’s motto is ‘We will not be on the web, but a part of the web’