PitchIT champion, Thread, leveraged the program to propel them to MSP notoriety.

Thread

The way professionals get IT help today hasn’t changed meaningfully since the 1980’s: in support tickets.

Ticket-based support interactions are slow, multi-touch and high effort. It’s a bad experience for users and help desks alike, with major impact to IT managed service provider (MSP) productivity and service profitability.

By enabling IT MSPs to meet their clients where they work—such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and physical or virtual desktops—with meticulously-crafted, conversational service experiences that feel like magic ✨, Thread empowers people to do their best work.

Challenge

Even with MSP industry familiarity, Thread needed the support, resources and education offered through PitchIT competition to help them gain a lift in brand awareness and consideration.

Solution

PitchIT put Thread on a platform that helped them attract new prospects, connect with like-minded industry peers and communicate their value proposition.

Results

As a finalist, and eventual winner of PitchIT, Thread was able to increase its typical demo bookings. After just three days incredible days at IT Nation Connect Orlando, Thread booked 180 demos.

“Our experience has been transformative. PitchIT is an executive MBA for MSP startup vendors. We may have won the competition, but the outcome doesn’t encapsulate the comprehensive journey we had. We met ConnectWise leaders, learned from SMEs and found synergies with the other competitors. Those connections are still alive and thriving --- and we are helping each other navigate the MSP space.”

“The PitchIT journey prepares you and propels you to be successful in the MSP industry. Not only is it an educational journey, but also an unrivaled opportunity to create connections.”

The infectious personality of Bobby Jacobs, Head of Growth, isn’t the only reason Thread won the 2023 PitchIT competition. The approachability of its people, the personality of its website and branding - it’s in the DNA of its co-founders Mark Alayev and Matthew Linn; and embraced by the entire organization.

Given that they worked together at a large MSP, Mark and Matt, had prior experience with ConnectWise. And naturally, they had a solid understanding of the MSP industry and the capabilities of existing ConnectWise solutions. They also had a bigger vision.

It was time to revolutionize the industry with – service magic.

Jacobs communicates Thread’s value proposition in a few words. “We hate tickets.”

Ticketing systems have been around for a while. Logically, on paper anyway, they make sense. Well, at least on paper they do. You can use tickets for tracking, logging and project health statuses. But, times have changed. Thread understands that the customer expectation has shifted. They expect a certain level of service. That includes speed and personalization.

“We believe it keeps you from doing the important work --- building relationships with your customer. We saw an opportunity to supercharge and elevate the customer experience. You can get more done, with less by using the Thread integration within a robust set of ConnectWise solutions. “We aim to automate the ticket. To death.””

Sean Lardo, says it best. “Thread is a perfect case study. They were MSPs that solved an issue for themselves first. They saw an opportunity, engineered a solution; and once they perfected it, they looked to ConnectWise to help scale it and serve others in the space.”

Thread doesn’t subscribe to the conventional ways of doing things. The world is moving too fast to not pivot with it. So, they decided to go all-in on conveying their message and sharing their value proposition with the entire MSP community. But, how? They needed to make an entrance --- and PitchIT seemed like the next natural step.

“The PitchIT journey prepares you and propels you to be successful in the MSP industry. Not only is it an educational journey, but also an unrivaled opportunity to create connections,” Jacobs explains.

And connect they did.

The outcome was sweet, but the journey meant more. After four months of education, hands-on learning, connecting with others; and pitch rehearsals, Thread found the journey to be equally as great and important to the experience.

“We made a lot of deep connections throughout the entire four months. Not only did we meet and present to senior ConnectWise leaders; but also, with our fellow competitors. In fact, we are already engaged in some collaborations like podcasts and webinars. We’ve built some nice synergies with our fellow competitors that will be long-lasting and important as we continue to grow as an organization.”

Finally, we had to ask.

Any advice about PitchIT that you’d pass along to startup vendors?

Jacobs simply said, “our experience has been transformative. PitchIT is an executive MBA for MSP startup vendors. We may have won the competition, but the outcome doesn’t encapsulate the comprehensive journey we had. We met ConnectWise leaders, learned from SMEs and found synergies with the other competitors. Those connections are still alive and thriving --- and we are helping each other navigate the MSP space.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Keep killing it (those annoying tickets, that is).

Curious? Dig into their ticket-killing methodology here:

https://www.getthread.com