Khosla and Madrona back a Seattle startup reimagining internal help desk support

Seattle startup Ravenna has raised $15 million from top-tier venture capital firms and notable angel investors to streamline how companies handle internal help desk requests. Khosla Ventures, Madrona, and Founders’ Co-op are among the investors backing Ravenna, founded last year by former engineering leaders at Zapier and Amazon Web Services. Ravenna is capitalizing on the rise of AI automation and the widespread adoption of team chat tools like Slack to rethink how internal support works. While incumbents such as ServiceNow and Atlassian already serve the IT Service Management sector (ITSM), Ravenna founders Taylor Halliday and Kevin Coleman believe their product is easier… Read More

Apr 23, 2025 - 14:16

Khosla and Madrona back a Seattle startup reimagining internal help desk support

Seattle startup Ravenna has raised $15 million from top-tier venture capital firms and notable angel investors to streamline how companies handle internal help desk requests.

Khosla Ventures, Madrona, and Founders’ Co-op are among the investors backing Ravenna, founded last year by former engineering leaders at Zapier and Amazon Web Services.

Ravenna is capitalizing on the rise of AI automation and the widespread adoption of team chat tools like Slack to rethink how internal support works.

While incumbents such as ServiceNow and Atlassian already serve the IT Service Management sector (ITSM), Ravenna founders Taylor Halliday and Kevin Coleman believe their product is easier to use, faster to deploy, and better aligned with how modern teams operate.

“We want to help get issues resolved or questions answered as fast as possible — whether that’s AI or automation taking care of it, or a human taking care of it, Ravenna is going to facilitate that in the most efficient way possible,” Coleman said.

Ravenna’s software allows employees to submit support tickets directly within Slack, then uses AI to handle the requests — particularly repetitive ones. Over time, the system learns and improves through feedback and usage.

The idea is to meet employees where they already work rather than pushing them to another portal or form, and to resolve issues quickly — with human support layered in when necessary.

“The repetitive question-answering is just taking away time from the real work that [customers] want to do and that is value-add to the organization,” Coleman said.

Ravenna is focused on IT-related questions — such as password resets or security access — but also sees opportunity to help HR and revenue operations teams.

The software also provides analytics that detail internal support metrics.

The company declined to share revenue metrics. It is working with design partners including Zapier, Homebase, and Futureverse.

Tim Porter, managing director at Madrona, said his firm has looked at other startups building software for help desk support. But he said Ravenna stood out with its deep Slack integration and natural language capabilities fueled by the latest AI tools.

“It’s the right time to create a really effective version of this, born in AI,” Porter said.

Ravenna is targeting mid-market companies, with an early focus on enterprise software customers. The startup has 14 employees.

GeekWire previously included Ravenna in a startup radar spotlight in October.

Coleman spent four years leading go-to-market teams at AWS. Halladay was most recently director of engineering and AI at Zapier.

The duo previously launched Seattle-based software consultancy Mesh Studio and went through Y Combinator in 2016.

“Taylor and Kevin embody everything that we look for at Founders’ Co-op: technical founders who are obsessed with building the best product possible and unafraid of gnarly challenges,” Aviel Ginzburg, general partner at Founders’ Co-op, told GeekWire.

Other investors backing Ravenna include Zapier founders Wade Foster, Mike Knoop, and Brian Helmig; Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch; Homebase CEO John Waldman; OpenAI CCO Giancarlo Lionetti; Common Room CEO Linda Lian; PitchBook CCO Brett Kaluza; and serial entrepreneur Chris Bakke.