Halp

Halp is a conversational ticketing and internal help desk product that operates inside chat platforms, primarily Slack. Employees raise requests directly in a Slack message-based interface (for example by typing a slash command describing a broken printer or a password reset), and support agents can triage, prioritize, assign, route and respond to those requests without leaving the chat tool. IT teams can build workflows, automate routing and change ticket values within Halp, and responses can include informal elements such as emoji and GIFs.

The company began in 2017 as BubbleIQ, an integration tool connecting Zendesk and Slack, and spent its first six to nine months building and iterating on tools on top of the Slack API before settling on internal help-desk ticketing for IT as well as functions such as legal and HR. Halp also built integrations with Jira and Zendesk so it could act as connective tissue across a company's internal workflow. Following a rebrand and seed round in early 2019, the company launched its standalone Slack ticketing application in April 2019.

After Atlassian acquired the company in spring 2020, the Halp brand and technology were folded into Atlassian's service management line; halp.com now presents Jira Service Management, Atlassian's help desk and ticketing product for growing teams, which supports requests from Slack and Microsoft Teams as well as email and portals, with no-code forms and templates, automated workflows, knowledge management, SLA queues, asset and configuration management, and reporting.

Founding story

Fletcher Richman began working on the company in 2017 with co-founders Komran Rashidov and Tristan Rubadeau, initially motivated by the idea of building something on Slack's API and a thesis that Slack represented a new mode of workplace communication. Richman, a CU Boulder computer and electrical engineering graduate who had earlier started the Spark Boulder coworking and incubator space, and his co-founders iterated on Slack-based tools with users before focusing on internal help desk ticketing. The Halp name came from a co-founder's purchase of halpdesk.com as a play on "help desk" and internet memes.

Business model

Halp sold a subscription SaaS ticketing application to companies, licensed per support agent rather than per end user. Under Atlassian, the technology is delivered as part of Jira Service Management, a cloud service management product.

Subscription pricing based on the number of support agents answering tickets rather than the number of employees submitting them; customers paid $25 or more per seat per month for each team member answering tickets with Halp.

Traction

The company reported working with hundreds of customers by March 2019, including Adobe, Home Depot and SeatGeek, and later Strava and GitHub. Its team grew from seven people at the time of the 2019 seed round to 14 by 2020, and the founders described adding at least one new customer per week with month-over-month revenue growth from a small base.

Latest developments

Following the Atlassian acquisition, the Halp brand and its Slack and Microsoft Teams support capabilities have been absorbed into Jira Service Management, which markets chat-based support, 400+ no-code forms and templates, automation, knowledge management, SLA queues, asset and configuration management, and reporting. A Halp status page remains operated on Atlassian Statuspage covering Halp Web, Slack apps, integrations and APIs, and Jira Service Desk web and portal components.