smartQED

SmartQED is an incident response platform designed to help solve technical issues.

The platform combines artificial intelligence, machine learning, and crowdsourcing to quickly diagnose and offer solutions to businesses’ Internet Technology, or “IT” problems.

Each year, IT outages cost companies $700 billion in lost revenue. This means the need to solve issues quickly is critical, and has transformed IT operations management into a $21 billion market.

But IT departments lack the intelligent tools necessary to respond to incidents. For example, there are many tools that can assess or identify an issue, but few that can also recommend a solution.

Most platforms that track issues don’t enable team members to collaborate, meaning operations teams can spend hours trying to fix a problem without proper communication.

SmartQED solves these issues by offering a visual workbench for teams to conduct efficient cause analysis.

Here’s how it works:

When an issue is reported, smartQED analyzes information from both the Internet (crowd-sourced information) and other companies that are using smartQED and have experienced similar problems. With this information, the platform is able to quickly and more accurately recommend likely causes and solutions.

In addition, the platform’s workbench enables IT members to communicate with each other, ensuring the problem is being addressed in an efficient manner.

Finally, smartQED stores all of the information gathered during the incident, which can be used if similar incidents occur down the road.

In short, by serving as what the company calls an “IT doctor,” smartQED provides customers with comprehensive diagnoses, and enables data collection and storage for future solutions.

SmartQED has built and launched a beta version of its platform, which is being used by five companies.

In addition, the company is in the process of filing for multiple patents.

SmartQED offers two business models:

1. It charges an annual licensing fee to companies that use its solution on-site (meaning the software is installed locally on a company's computer system); and

2. It charges a monthly fee per user for customers who use its solution entirely in the “cloud.”

Initially, the company is targeting the $35 billion cloud infrastructure service provider market. Following that, it will expand to other market segments with large IT departments. This would bring smartQED’s potential customer base to 60,000 companies and a $2.4 billion total available market.

SmartQED received support from Founder Friendly Labs, a start-up accelerator program for tech-related companies.

Founder Friendly is headed by former tech leaders at companies including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.

The program has helped more than 100 start-ups, including graduates Digital Staircase (acquired by Facebook), Amiato (acquired by Amazon), and Pixelapse (acquired by Dropbox).

CEO Julie Basu previously served as the Director of Software Development for Oracle (NYSE: ORCL), a computer software company, and holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

COO Rishi Mukhopadhyay previously worked as a venture analyst, where he focused on assessing the financial potential of early-stage tech companies.

Team Background

Rishi Mukhopadhyay - COO & Head of Product

Rishi formerly served as Vice President of Corporate Development for FarmX, a company that developed a comprehensive tracking system for farmers growing crops.

Prior to that, he served as the Developer for the same tech-related start-up headed by Basu.

Rishi formerly founded ClearPeak Capital Management, a financial services company. While there, he served as a venture analyst, focusing on assessing the financial potential of early-stage tech companies.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California.

Julie Basu - CEO & Head of R&D

Prior to starting smartQED, Julie was a co-founder and Head of Engineering for a tech start-up. This company is currently in “stealth mode”; however, the company was involved in the same domain as smartQED.

She previously served more than 16 years at Oracle, a software developer. While there, she held several management positions, including Development Manager, Senior Development Manager, and Director of Software Development.

She earned a Master’s degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, as well as a Master’s and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford.

Co-Investors

Founder Friendly Labs

Start-up accelerator for tech-related companies. Previously guided companies including Digital Staircase (acquired by Facebook) and Amiato (acquired by Amazon) to success.