“Revolutionizing the way we help each other solve our computer headaches”

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Soluto makes it easy for anyone, even those with little IT know-how, to take care of their own PC by following crowd sourced recommendations showing what other people did when faced with the same situation on their PC. With Soluto it is also possible to manage PCs for friends, family, colleagues or clients, no matter where in the world they are.

Soluto proactively monitors PCs, alerting the user when a machine needs their attention, so that they can free up their time to do other things. Soluto helps PC users to get more out of their machines by getting their PC starting faster, improving their web browsing experience, running Windows and app updates and remotely installing and setting up useful apps like Skype and Dropbox. Soluto works even if the PC being helped is turned off, and all actions are timed to ensure the person being helped is never disturbed. Soluto is free to download and use with up to 5 PCs.

Soluto won Tech Crunch Disrupt in 2010.

MO: How did you come up with the concept for Soluto?

Tomer:  The idea for Soluto started when I was a teenager helping people in my hometown with their computers. At first I did it just because I enjoyed it and wanted to make people happy, but quickly I realized that this could be something bigger. The same is true for my co-founder Ishay Green. A seed was planted and the idea for Soluto grew, to help anyone, anywhere get more from their technology.

MO: How does Soluto work? What are some of your favorite features?

Tomer:  Soluto helps users get more from their PC. Soluto can be used to manage your own PC and also to help friends and family with their PCs too. A small piece of software, the Soluto agent, is downloaded and installed on to a PC from the Soluto website. Once installed, this agent communicates with our back-end servers and provides the technical insights needed to manage the PC from anywhere and improve it.

Once Soluto is installed on a PC it continuously monitors the PC and provides proactive alerts if problems arise or improvements can be made. If an issue or improvement is found, Soluto provides technical information and crowd-sourced recommendations to help remotely solve the problem, even if the PC being helped is turned off. Soluto times selected actions and remedies to ensure that the people being helped are never disturbed.

You can manage up to 5 PCs for free, and businesses or individuals who want to support more than 5 PCs can do so for a low monthly rate.

As for the features, it’s hard to pick a favorite. I love the features that help people to do more with their PCs – possibly things they didn’t even know they could do such as video calling with Skype. In just one click you can remotely install and set up Skype or Dropbox on, say, your uncle’s PC, even if he lives in another country. Now your uncle can enjoy free video calling, without ever going through the set up process himself. This part of Soluto is great because it helps people to discover exciting new things that they can do with their PCs.

MO: How can Soluto help anyone to get more out of their PC?

Tomer:  In addition to helping you identify ways to make your computer run better, Soluto tells you, simply, what’s happening with your computer and allows you to take action in a quick and easy way by following crowd sourced recommendations showing what other people did when faced with the same situation on their PC.

Soluto can be used to shorten PC boot time, understand the causes of application crashes, remotely install and set up useful apps like Skype and Dropbox, view important hardware data, defrag and clear disk space, configure browser and web settings and silently install important software updates.

Soluto can also be used to remotely manage someone else’s PC to help them make their PC experience more enjoyable too. Our goal is to make everyone happier with the technology they use every day and help anyone to get more out of their PC, and their time too.

MO: You’ve managed to raise an impressive amount of investment so far. Do you have any advice or insights for our readers who are currently seeking funding?

Tomer:  When seeking funding, my advice is to think of an investor as a long-term relationship, not just someone giving you money, and to treat finding the right investor in the same way you would finding the right wife or partner. Make sure you’re compatible with your investor because you’re going to be spending a lot of time with this person as you build your business. Find someone who believes in the same things you do and who shares your vision for the product and company. Lastly, trust your gut – you’ll know when something doesn’t feel right and when it does.

MO: What’s the biggest risk that you’ve ever taken and how did it turn out?

Tomer:  Our biggest risk was taking Soluto from the desktop to the web. Our downloadable desktop application was very popular with users but we knew there was so much more we could do on the web. When you already have users who know and love your service it’s difficult to make a big change and we weren’t sure how they would react to the transition to the web. Overall, of course, it was the best decision for our service and has allowed users to get more from Soluto, adding new features and functionality and making it possible to remotely manage multiple PCs and to help other people with their PCs too.

MO: How does your Quick Question feature revolutionize the way we can help each other solve our computer headaches?

Tomer:  Quick Question allows people to get tech help simply by pressing the F8 key on their keyboard. The techie who is helping the PC user receives the question in an email, equipped with screenshot, technical details and other useful information to help them understand what was happening on the PC so they can answer the question or solve the issue, at their own convenience. Quick Question makes asking for and providing PC help much easier for both sides.

According to a recent survey we carried out, most PC users contact their ‘go-to techie’ a few times a month with PC problems. This means that a tech-savvy individual is likely to receive several support calls every month from each of their friends and family who are having PC troubles. That’s a lot of tech calls.

That’s why we created Quick Question, to revolutionize the way we help each other to solve computer headaches, by making it easy to get tech help at the click of a button.

Now when a computer issue arises or a PC user has a question, Quick Question can be employed simply by pressing the F8 key on the keyboard. An email is then sent to the user’s techie friend providing all of the information they need in order to understand what’s gone wrong and allowing them to respond directly to the query or log in to Soluto to help their friend remotely solve the PC predicament. No more time is wasted explaining problems over the phone or in long email threads.

Plus Quick Question offers users a subtle way to ask simple questions they might otherwise not have asked, not wanting to bother their tech friend with a pesky phone call. Now they can ask their less burning questions, such as ‘How can I turn off this sound?’ or ‘How can I change my background?’, without thinking twice – they simply press F8.