Quick Pitch: AnswerQi provides on-demand tech help.
Genius Idea: A TaskRabbit for technology problems.
Maybe you need your Google calendar to sync with your Outlook account, or you're trying to to send edited photos from your iPad to your Mac. Or maybe you just want help getting set up on a new device.
At some point, no matter who you are, you're likely to meet a technology problem that stumps you -- and that you can't Google.
A startup called AnswerQi thinks there's potential in online human-based tech help. "There's an idiosyncratic nature to people and their tech problems," AnswerQi co-founder Glenn Nano says.
"'I'm running Snow Leopord with Microsoft 2008 and have this problem' might be different solution than 'I'm running Leopard with Microsoft 2010 and have [the same problem].'"
AnswerQi aims to be a TaskRabbit or Zaarly for tech help. Users submit their questions on the site, and consultants (well, just Nano and his co-founder Jamie Forrest for the time being) answer questions within their knowledge base by email.
An upcoming option will also allow users to chat with a consultant instantly. Eventually, Nano hopes that the site will allow technology students and professional consultants to make money on the side.
AnswerQi charges $5 to $30 per question, depending on difficulty, or a subscription fee of $49 for five answers per month. Searching past questions and answers, however, is free.
The startup launched its first version just two weeks ago, so the archive of answers is sparse. The ones that do exist, however, look like personalized blog posts, complete with screenshots.
Ultimately, Nano hopes to carve out a support niche on the Web -- somewhere between tech companies' own technical support sites, tech forums and the wealth of blog posts about whatever tech problem phrases people tend to search for.
"There’s a specificity to this kind of problem," Nano says. "It's just a question of being able to optimize for time and the quality of information."
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
