The Scary Task of Helping 350,000: A Tech Startup Story with Oprising

Episode 9 of the Tech Startup Stories Podcast features Michelle Coombs, founder of Oprising, with host Natalie Binns. In this episode, Michelle shares her journey from starting on a help desk in the late 90s to building a platform that helps MSPs optimise their service delivery, why she's setting impossible-sounding goals, and how being a single parent shaped her path to entrepreneurship.

Listen to the Podcast
Available on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Michelle Coombs is on a mission to help 350,000 tech people by 2032, and she's building Oprising to make it happen. Michelle created a platform that brings consultant-level knowledge to service providers who want to improve their operations. This conversation explores the realities of building a tech startup while running a services business, the challenges of being a solo founder, and why sometimes the best products come from solving your own problems first.

One of the OG women in tech

Michelle started on a help desk in the late 1990s when remote access tools didn't exist and everything was log and flog. She'd hound the guys in the workshop for bits of kit to fix whilst answering phones. From there, she worked her way through network engineer, systems admin, and IT manager roles, sitting on both the MSP side managing service desks and heading up IT teams.

The striking part? Michelle didn't meet another woman in tech until around 2005, when she encountered a woman heading up an SAP department in Egypt. Even now, while she sees women in commercial, legal, and marketing roles within tech companies, the technical side remains heavily male-dominated. At the tech tribe meetup she hosts in South Birmingham, there's been exactly one female Windows Server engineer who found them by accident.

The pivot from corporate to consultancy to startup

Michelle's path to entrepreneurship wasn't driven by a burning ambition to be a founder. It was driven by something more immediate: her daughter sending photos saying "please don't forget me again." As a single parent managing 70 people across 24/7 operations and handling 10,000 plus tickets a month, Michelle was paying her childminder more than her electric bill and missing school events because work consumed everything.

She set up her consultancy to create breathing room, working with smaller MSPs to improve their service delivery and operations. But then she set herself what she calls a "really crazy goal" of helping 350,000 tech people by the end of 2032. This was pretty obvious: you can't hit that kind of scale working one-to-one.

When efficiency becomes a product

Oprising came from Michelle trying to make herself more efficient. She was conducting deep-dive audits for MSP clients, filling in massive spreadsheets, and noticing that many of the actions coming out of those audits were repetitive. Things like incident management processes followed predictable patterns: document, define, review, update, continuous cycle.

She thought, what if I could build something that captures all these questions and pre-loads the common actions, while still allowing for context-dependent recommendations? That way, MSPs could audit themselves whenever they wanted and get consultant-level knowledge without paying consultant rates every time.

The platform now includes around 380 questions and 1,400 pre-built actions. It's comprehensive enough that it initially overwhelmed smaller MSPs with teams under 15 people, which helped Michelle refine her target market. That feedback led to plans for a tiered approach, with a lighter version coming for smaller teams.

The reality of building whilst running

Balancing a consultancy with building a tech platform required some creative scheduling. Michelle kept her consultancy client load deliberately light, both for capacity reasons and because she chose not to work every day. She took on clients in the US and Australia, scheduling calls around the edges of her day so she could focus on Oprising during standard hours.

Getting quotes from developers to build the platform ranged from £20K to £80K. Then she met someone at a NatWest accelerator who mentioned the Greater Things program, a West Midlands initiative for people building tech products. With a two-day deadline, Michelle applied and secured £10K in funding, which enabled her to build her MVP.

The product is live, she's working with prospects and customers, and she's running quarterly 90-day accelerators where MSPs get white-glove support in exchange for feedback and testimonials.

Homework: network with more women

Michelle's involvement with other female founders came as homework. She was in a room talking about Oprising, surrounded by the usual middle-aged white men, when the lone woman at the event suggested she should network with more women in tech. That homework led her to the 51% club, where she eventually connected with Natalie for this podcast.

Advice for the next wave

Michelle's advice for founders, particularly those building software platforms, is grounded in what she's learned the hard way. Get a really nailed down SOW - scope of work. Know exactly what you want to achieve out of the build. Keep your MVP tight. Build fast, fail fast, and reiterate. Document everything so developers know exactly what you want them to deliver. Quick and dirty will do.

And then, most importantly: have a go. Enjoy it. Have fun. It's your life, so enjoy it in whichever way you want.

What's next for Oprising

Michelle is clear about her vision: world domination. Not the evil kind, she's quick to clarify, but taking over a good portion of the market share and becoming the enterprise software of choice for people looking to improve their services. There's an educational component too, because continual service improvement is something she wants to keep her hand in.

She knows she'll need additional funding at some point. Running both businesses, trying to grow them, bringing on staff, doing marketing campaigns and events, it's not something she can do indefinitely on her own. But for now, she's early doors. And as she puts it, it can't go worse, it can only get better.

Listen to the Podcast
Available on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

Connect with Michelle Coombs and learn more about Oprising.