Meet cousin, a French startup that recently raised a $3.4 million round of funding to create a software-as-a-service product that addresses the IT needs of small and medium-sized businesses. Primo keeps track of your device fleet and can then help you manage it without a dedicated IT admin.
Headline and Global Founders Capital lead the funding round, with the participation of several business angels, such as Arthur Waller, Romain Niccoli, Ilana Elbaz, Josef Bovet, Mathieu Birach and Romain Libeau.
Small businesses generally don’t have a dedicated IT team. They tend to hire their first IT manager when they reach 200 or 300 employees. Before that, it’s a mess. Some people on the team are “pretty good with computers” and can fix minor problems. For heavy-duty tasks, companies often rely on outsourced IT.
When there’s a new hire, someone from the HR or administration teams will make sure the new hire has everything they need to get started. It often involves ordering a new computer, adding a part number to a spreadsheet, emailing the outsourced IT person so they can grant access to internal tools, etc.
“The complexity of IT has completely changed: it has become operational. When someone joins the team, there are 35 tasks to do,” Primo co-founder and CEO Martin Pannier told me. It’s a time consuming process and the task list may not even be up to date.
an IT partner
Primo wants to be the SaaS companion for small businesses. He currently has four different modules that should streamline and streamline IT tasks.
“Everyone has become an accidental IT administrator. It has many advantages. One, it’s free. Two, it’s super snappy and responsive,” Pannier said.
First, Primo can simplify the way your business manages laptops and other devices. Instead of placing orders from different websites and manually tracking devices in a spreadsheet, Primo users can order new laptops from the Primo dashboard.
Because Primo is connected to multiple HR information systems, it’s easy to see which laptop belongs to which employee. This module is free and acts as the top of the funnel when it comes to customer acquisition for the SaaS platform. Primo customers pay the retail price for new laptops, while the startup takes a cut thanks to the wholesale price.
Second, Primo helps you manage devices remotely. For this module, the company works with hex node, a mobile device management (MDM) company. But instead of showing end customers a ton of options, Primo focuses on the needs of small businesses.
The default settings are already stubborn enough and should cover the vast majority of use cases. Laptop screen locks after five minutes, local storage is encrypted by default, automatic updates are enabled, etc. Customers can also use Primo’s MDM module to deploy applications to employee laptops.
Image Credits: cousin
Third, Primo has a security module with Next Generation Antivirus (NGAV) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions. Once again, the company is partnering with another company to offer these features.
Finally, Primo also offers support features. In that case, if an employee has a problem because they spilled some water or had their laptop stolen, Primo handles all the repairs and replacements with overnight loaner devices and some insurance coverage.
Next, the startup wants to tackle IT software. Large enterprises often rely on an identity and access management product like okta to make sure everyone has access to the right tools and former employees can no longer access Slack.
But it is extremely complex to implement. “Okta is aimed at companies with 250 to 300,000 employees. But 99% of his efforts are directed at the 5,000 to 300,000 segment, ”Pannier said.
Some businesses rely on Google’s single sign-on feature. But that requires some manual development and configuration. Instead, Primo is going to depend on Author0 (a company that was acquired by Okta) for its access management products. But that’s not live yet.
Essentially, Primo is part of this new trend of SaaS startups bundling a large number of products on the same platform. The idea is that things should be easy and simple for small businesses. They don’t want to deal with four different vendors if one company can already cover 95% of their needs.
Image Credits: cousin