Introducing Flamingo

I'm Michael, founder and CEO of Flamingo, and I spent a decade building a cybersecurity startup that worked hand-in-hand with Managed Service Providers. These are the small IT and security firms keeping millions of businesses running, the ones doing the unglamorous but essential work of keeping systems secure and operational.

And everywhere I looked, I saw the same story: MSPs were working incredibly hard but barely staying profitable.

Every piece of software they needed came from a different vendor. Antivirus software, monitoring tools, backup solutions, ticketing systems, and automation platforms. Each one costs more every year. The typical MSP? Maybe a dozen employees, revenue under $3M, and profit margins that made it hard to breathe.

They weren't really running software companies. They were middlemen. Most of the money flowed straight back to the vendors.

When Everything Changed

Then something caught my attention.

A few of the sharpest MSPs I knew were doing something different. Quietly, almost under the radar, they'd started replacing expensive commercial tools with open-source alternatives. They were hosting their own authentication systems, running their own monitoring infrastructure, and automating workflows with free tools.

The result? Their margins more than doubled.

That's when the question hit: What if any MSP could do this, without needing a team of engineers? What if someone built a platform that made open source actually usable, something that felt professional, unified, and powerful?

Not a collection of random GitHub projects. Not something held together with duct tape, but a real alternative to the vendor ecosystem.

That became Flamingo.

The Beginning

Flamingo kicked off in May 2024 with me working alone, trying to answer one question: Is this even possible?

Could I actually build a complete MSP platform, security, monitoring, automation, and client management entirely on open source? And could I make it work better than the commercial stuff?

I spent months talking to MSP owners across the country. Some were curious. Some were skeptical. But almost all of them were burned out from managing a dozen different vendor dashboards just to get through the day.

By the end of 2024, the first code for OpenFrame was written, a unified orchestration layer that could tie together dozens of open-source tools and make them feel like one cohesive system. Think of it as the connective tissue that turns scattered open-source projects into a real platform.

In February 2025, I raised $2.2M in pre-seed funding from Array VC and Focal VC. That money let me assemble a small but incredibly talented team of engineers and designers, and really start building.

The Team

We built the team the same way we're building the product: slowly, carefully, with zero compromises.

Within weeks of getting funded, we found our first engineers and designer. Not just people with the right skills, but people who got what we were trying to do. Since then, every hire has been senior, remote, and deeply technical. We're spread across time zones, but we move fast and hold ourselves to standards most companies only pretend to care about.

We stay small on purpose. We only hire when we're certain. Everyone here actually builds, no figureheads, no corporate theater, no bullshit.

What we're building demands trust. MSPs will run their entire business on this platform. That means every decision, every line of code, every interaction with a customer has to be deliberate and thoughtful. We're not just shipping software. We're building infrastructure that people will stake their livelihoods on.

The Platform

OpenFrame is the core platform. It integrates and orchestrates open-source security and IT tools into one unified system. Identity management, endpoint monitoring, backup orchestration, ticketing, automation, all of it. Everything communicates seamlessly. All your data in one place. No more jumping between eight different dashboards. The AI layer sits on top with two intelligent agents, Fae and Mingo, that learn from all the unified data flowing through OpenFrame. Fae handles client-side tasks like password resets, low disk space warnings, and system patches, while Mingo manages MSP operations, including threat detection, suspicious process monitoring, alert triage, and routine maintenance. Unlike traditional AI assistants that only provide recommendations, these agents take action autonomously, automating the repetitive work that burns out MSP teams: ticket responses, diagnostics, and suggested fixes. They require technician approval for sensitive operations, striking a balance between automation and oversight. Over time, these intelligent agents become capable of handling tier-1 support on their own, letting actual humans focus on work that requires real expertise and judgment.

We're not trying to eliminate people. We're trying to free them up to do the work that actually matters, building relationships, solving complex problems, thinking strategically, while the AI deals with the constant noise.

What We're Really After

Flamingo isn't just another software company trying to extract subscription fees from MSPs.

We're trying to fundamentally change how the economics of this industry work.

Right now, most MSPs operate on 10-20% net margins. With Flamingo, we believe they can reach 50-60% EBITDA or even more by actually owning their infrastructure, cutting out middlemen, and automating the repetitive work that eats up their time and energy.

The bigger picture is a future where:

• MSPs control their own infrastructure instead of renting it
• Their data belongs to them, not trapped in proprietary systems
• AI handles the routine technical work, but humans make the decisions that matter
• Teams become smaller but more skilled, with technicians focusing on complex problems instead of repetitive tasks
• The community, MSPs, developers, and security researchers actively contribute to making the platform better for everyone

This isn't about building cheaper software. It's about independence, sustainability, and creating a fundamentally better model for how IT services should work.

Why We're Talking Now

We're stepping out of stealth not because we're finished. We just started.

But the foundation is strong. OpenFrame works. Real MSPs are testing it. The vision is proving itself.

What comes next is about working together. With the MSPs who are exhausted from being squeezed by vendors. With open-source developers who believe in what we're building. With anyone who thinks the current system is broken and wants to help fix it.

The future of this industry doesn't belong to vendors who raise prices every year for the same tired products.

It's open. It's intelligent. It's built on fair economics.

And this is only the beginning.