April 17, 2017

Meet Michael Pang of Santa Monica Tech Support in West Los Angeles

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Pang.

Michael, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started Santa Monica Tech Support a year ago because I realized that there were a lot of people in the Santa Monica region who were not very tech savvy. Typically, a lot of older Americans rely on their kids to help them with their tech support issues but their kids are not always available (sometimes they’ve moved very far away or are busy) so they can’t always help them or they get frustrated because of this gap between the generations in terms of tech.

So, I really enjoy helping people with tech problems – I do it all the time in my personal life so I figured, why not try it out and see if there are people who could use my help?

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It wasn’t really a smooth ride. The hardest thing was definitely getting awareness and that’s still something I’m working on. My next step is to figure out how to get the word out effectively.

Please tell us about Santa Monica Tech Support.
I basically just created like an Uber for tech support that could come to people’s homes and fix their problems ASAP instead of making people drive all the way to a store where there are lines, waiting times etc. that are just a nuisance. I also like to help people by making suggestions on what they should buy in terms of tech because sometimes they don’t know what to buy or how to buy it.

I think I really enjoy the customer service aspect. To be honest, when I think of my younger brother and how frustrated he would get trying to explain to my mom what an app was or how to login, I think it’s pretty common amongst Millennials who are like part time tech support for their parents. One thing I do have is patience and I enjoy teaching people the things that I know.

I do think bringing tech support into homes is way more convenient for the customer and for me since I don’t need an office and have all these crazy expenses.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite memory from childhood – it had to be when I was 2 years old and I was building a puzzle map of the United States. At the time, I didn’t know what the states actually were – I was just able to piece them together because I had a good memory and I did it very quickly too. It was captured on tape and it was just funny to watch it.

I also enjoyed building Legos as a kid – another home video has my dad taking a video of me “using” a camera that I built out of Legos to take a photo of my brother.

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