Before developers release their code to the world, they need to make sure it works by running tests on it. But this process can take hours – even small touch-ups
Two leaders in the world of DevOps, a fast-growing field dedicated to helping developers deliver more software, faster, want to change that.
Kohsuke Kawaguchi, who comes from CloudBees, and Harpreet Singh, who comes from Atlassian, teamed up as co-CEOs to start the company Launchable, which helps developer teams with testing their software – a process that can take up a lot of time.
Kawaguchi is known as a pioneer in the DevOps space thanks to his creation of Jenkins, an open source software that helps developers release code faster and more often. Since then, other companies like GitHub, GitLab, and CircleCI have built similar software, but the 15-year-old Jenkins remains one of the oldest and most influential.
Eventually, the company CloudBees, where Kawaguchi previously served as CTO and later chief scientist, built a business out of Jenkins. That's where Kawaguchi and Singh met, and worked together on Jenkins for over a dozen years. Singh later on moved to working at Atlassian.
"I really enjoy building a company from scratch and finding product market fit," Singh told Business Insider. "I really enjoyed my time at Atlassian. I want to bring all the great things I learned at these two companies. Having worked with [Kawaguchi], he's a DevOps visionary. Building something new and useful was too exciting."
Now on Thursday, Launchable announced it raised $3.2 million in seed funding from Battery and Unusual Ventures, with participation from the founders' former colleagues at CloudBees and Atlassian.
Tests 'take forever to run'
Besides the time it takes to run tests, it can also be difficult to nail down why certain tests failed, especially when developers are releasing code around the clock.
"Software development teams have enough tests. They take forever to run, which adds to the delay and the frustration," Kawaguchi told Business Insider.
To speed up this process, Launchable uses machine learning to help developers pinpoint what tests are most important and relevant to the code changes they just made. That way, when developers want to release a change, they know which tests are the most important to run — meaning no more wasting time on failed or irrelevant tests.
"There is still opportunity in terms of making it much faster," Singh said. "Literally a developer pushes a commit in, and he has to wait an hour at best to get feedback...That's sort of how we got together on this one."
'It has been resonating with many people'
Both Kawaguchi and Singh saw testing as a major headache for developers. Because of this, they left their jobs to start Launchable. The idea started growing last summer, and Launchable was incorporated in October.
"I felt that we had great chemistry together," Kawaguchi said. "It was kind of obvious where we were thinking...We were excited about the opportunity to do it all over again."
While Launchable has been in stealth mode, Kawaguchi and Singh have been building the underlying machine learning technology, as well as talking to potential partners. Now, with the funding, Launchable plans to hire more engineers, data scientists, and designers.
"Large companies are facing challenges with running tests and wasting time," Singh said. "It has been resonating with many people. We've had close to 1000 conversations where individuals and companies are coming back to us and are excited to work with us. That's the path we're on right now."
Now that he's focused on Launchable, Kawaguchi says he'll take a step back from Jenkins since he's been working on it for the past 15 years. He believes the next generation of Jenkins developers are "very capable."
"Now I can leave the whole thing in their hands. I wanted to do a few more things before I die," Kawaguchi said.
