Both Eric Schmidt And Steve Ballmer Love This Guy's Startup That Makes Windows Less Frustrating
We all have friends and loved ones that are endlessly confused by their PCs and constantly asking for help. Israeli startup Soluto offers a software service just for them.
It was the constant calls from his mom that prompted cofounder and CEO Tomer Dvir to create Soluto five years ago.
"For the majority of people, technology doesn't come naturally. The effect is that they don't enjoy it. They don't share as many things with their friends and family. They don't enjoy music and videos as much as they could. It's just too complicated," Dvir told Business Insider.
With Soluto the non-techie simply presses F8 and types in their questions/problems and the personal IT person can fix it later.
The IT person can also add new services to the PC, like Dropbox or Evernote, and Soluto trains the non-techie on how to use the new app.
Soluto is free for up to three PCs with various monthly plans for small businesses, enterprises and, with a new service launched last week, for resellers.
Soluto first gained attention in the U.S. in 2010 when it won the $50,000 best-of-show TechCrunch Disrupt best of show prize.
Schmidt opened his wallet for Soluto. He invested through his Innovation Endeavors fund, which has a Tel Aviv office. Soluto raised $18 million to date from a variety of investors within Israel, the US and Europe.
Ballmer was interested for a different reason. Because Soluto specializes in Windows and supports about about 3 million PCs, it collects a lot of data on Windows crashes and problems.
Microsoft made Soluto into a "BizSpark Elite" partner, giving Soluto free and discounted access to lots of Microsoft software. Soluto runs on Microsoft's cloud, Azure, and Ballmer personally met with Dvir on one of his trips to Israel.