Surfboard, a London-based collaborative planning tool for support teams, has raised $5M in a Seed round led by Speedinvest (invested in Solvo.ai and cylib) with participation from existing investors Fly Ventures and Seedcamp.
Notable angels, including Tim Sadler and Edward Bishop of Tessian, Felix Jahn from McMakler, Alex Hersham from Zencargo, the Founders of Sennder, Stan Masseuras from Intercom, Nomad Capital, Foreword VC, Tokyo Black, and Jag Singh, also participated in the round.
The UK company will use the funds to accelerate product development, grow its team, deepen integrations and build more functionality.
Natasha Ratanshi-Stein, CEO and founder of Surfboard, says, “Poorly managed scheduling kicks off a vicious cycle of long wait times, lost revenue, employee churn, and increased costs. Support teams should always be treated as profit centers, and it’s impossible to do that without orchestrating your team efficiently and fairly”.
“I’ve seen first-hand the demoralising effect that the existing set of workforce management platforms, including spreadsheets, has on support teams at a human level. For support teams to thrive, individual team members should be empowered to work collaboratively alongside management and their teammates. That’s our vision for Surfboard,” she adds.
Collaborative planning software
Founded by Natasha Ratanshi-Stein (previously Chief of Staff at Bulb) in 2021, Surfboard‘s collaborative planning software will allow support teams to make scheduling more flexible and better connect existing tooling.
The company’s solution can be integrated into ticketing, chat, and telephony systems such as Aircall, Dixa, Intercom, Salesforce, and Zendesk.
It helps organisations build forecasts to determine how many people are required online and when they are needed based on various factors, including availability, skills, and fairness, to easily build optimal support team schedules.
As per the company’s claims, customers have seen an 80% reduction in the time spent on scheduling and significant improvement in service levels.
Currently, the company works with clients, including Bloom & Wild, Cuckoo Internet, Lick, Wolf & Badger, KatKin, and Hypervolt. As of now, the company employs around 13 people, out of which 6 are female, and their board is 66% BAME female, Ratanshi-Stein confirms TFN.
Deepali Nangia, Partner at Speedinvest, who led the round, said, “Across our portfolio, we see many companies scaling customer support. Support is even more complex now with the shift towards remote and even more critical now, given the emphasis on customer retention. We are excited to back a strong founder and team and are strong believers in Surfboard’s mission to ensure better collaboration and productivity across support teams.
Reshma Sohoni, the Managing Partner at Seedcamp, said “We are impressed with Surfboard’s traction since we wrote their first cheque in early 2021. Their timely solution, relentless focus on their ‘surfers” well-being and customer satisfaction, as well as their long-term vision, will supercharge Customer Support and Success in a more collaborative and efficient way to the benefit of all parties involved. Natasha has lived through the problem and is well equipped to tackle it successfully.”
