A startup’s purpose is not to make money (at least not initially). Nor is its purpose to build a product (although it won’t go far without a product). No, the real reason why a startup exists is to learn about potential customers and to define a market.
Compare this to big companies: they are really good at serving a known solution to a known market. They can reliably and consistently deliver lots of the same thing to many people. A large base of customers tells the vendor what they want, and as long as the vendor can build the product to satisfy those needs, everybody is happy.
Startups are different, and they require a radically different approach. At first, I found it strange too. But when you think about it, it makes sense.
A startup is disruptive. It does things which are bold and new, which the big companies would not dare to touch. It rewrites the rules. It sees things from a novel point of view. A good startup defines a new category, by creating a market which doesn’t yet exist, or by serving a specific market segment vastly better than the existing products do.
When a startup has an intimate understanding of its market (exactly who its customers are, how they think and work, and what they care about) then the rest is comparatively straightforward. Or so I think, at least. The team behind Go Test It is very strong in technology, and I know for sure that we can solve any technical challenge amazingly well. And Red Gate, who acquired Go Test It, is very strong commercially – if a product is useful, they will turn it into a solid business. So you see, building a product and selling it are hard, but we know how to do that, so that’s not a problem.
The most important things we need in a startup like Go Test It are therefore:
Figuring this stuff out is actually a huge amount of work. It’s very easy to start with some sweeping assumptions (“we help everybody who makes web applications test across different browsers!”) until you realise that you need a much more detailed understanding of how people currently work, why things are done the way they are, what works and what doesn’t.
Having a product is important, because it gives us a good basis for conversations with customers: it allows them to see what is possible now, and sparks their imagination about what it might be in future and how it can solve their problems. But more important than the product are the conversations we have with our users, because what we learn from them determines what the product will be like in future.
This is our journey of discovery and learning, and it has been our main focus over the last two months. We have a product which works well, and although we have an immensely long list of things we want to do with Go Test It, we’ve deliberately been holding back, listening rather than talking.
Learning about your customers is not something you can do once and then you’re done; it has to be a continuous, ongoing conversation which helps both sides. We will therefore be keeping in touch with everyone we have spoken to and are always keen to hear back from you.
We’ll also use this blog to explain what we have learnt. Over the next few weeks I’ll be writing a series of posts on what we’re doing and what we’ve learnt, so please subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss any insights! And, as always, please email us or leave a comment below.
It has been an exciting start to the new year at Go Test It. We are currently making contact with many people who have used Go Test It or who are interested in it, and speaking to them on the phone or visiting them in person. Our goal is to learn how people in a range of different organisations work and what problems they face, and the things we are learning are determining our roadmap for 2010.
This means that at the moment our focus is on learning, not on building new features. Sorry if you have asked us to do something but it hasn’t happened yet: I’m sure you’ll understand that we don’t want to clutter Go Test It with complicated features which hardly anyone would use, hence our research into what people really need.
However, one of the things which we found we did need to support is Google Chrome, and I’m pleased to announce that Google Chrome on Windows is now available on Go Test It. Any tests you already have should work fine on Chrome – just tick the box and run them!
Of course, the tests will only work fine if your website actually works correctly on Chrome. And although Google have done a great job of making a standards-compliant browser and compatibility problems are rare, you can never be sure without testing it.
One example of a website which does not work at all in Chrome is Apple’s iPhone reservation site. It works fine on Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer – but on Chrome, you can’t get past the first page.
No matter what you choose from the two drop-down menus (store and plan type), the “choose your phone” section always stays dimmed. If you try to continue to the next page, you get an error, and you still can’t choose which type of phone you want to reserve. You are completely stuck, and the only way out is to go and find the same page in a different browser. You can’t even copy and paste the URL into a different browser.
(Incidentally, the error message is also wrong: it says “Please select a store” if I don’t select a phone.)
How many customers is Apple losing because of this problem? Who knows. Don’t let this happen to you. Go test your website now.
For over two months now I’ve had to keep biting my lip in conversations, because of a very powerful development happening behind the scenes in the world of Go Test It. I could barely contain my excitement… And now, at last, the news is out: Red Gate Software have agreed to acquire Ept Computing, the company behind Go Test It!
We decided to tie the knot for several reasons. Red Gate make a range of tools for developers, DBAs and sysadmins, with a focus on simple use and powerful results – much the same philosophy as we carry for Go Test It. Whilst testing tools are not currently part of the palette, we expect that our product will complement Red Gate’s product range very well, and potentially pave the way for expansion into new market segments.
For customers and suppliers of Go Test It, all stays the same for now: our team is continuing to work in the same way, and I personally will definitely continue working on the product full-time for another 10 months at least (during which we will gradually hand over to people in Red Gate who are without doubt better than me). Over the next months you will also see a lot of progress: as a part of Red Gate we have access to many excellent people and resources, and together we will work towards being the undisputed leaders of cross-browser testing. Watch us make Go Test It so great that you’d be crazy not to use it!
As it happens, Red Gate is not new to web application testing: a few years ago, they had a load testing tool called ANTS Load, but it was discontinued for a variety of reasons. With the acquisition of Go Test It, Red Gate is re-entering this market with a fresh perspective and renewed inspiration.
We’ve also known each other for a while – in fact, some of the Go Test It developers, along with other startups, have been borrowing desks from Red Gate for more than 8 months already. Our unique arrangement is so cool that even Joel Spolsky wrote about it. Through the Springboard incubator, Red Gate were able to track Go Test It’s progress month by month, and were thus in a uniquely informed position when the possibility of an acquisition was considered.
Right now, Red Gate focusses on companies working on Microsoft platforms; maybe we will give a similar focus to Go Test It, maybe not. Where the market will lead us we do not know, but we are definitely listening. Tell us in the comments: what do you want from Go Test It? Or drop me an email – I look forward to hearing from you.
I was lucky to get a chance to be interviewed by the great Bob Walsh, founder of StartupToDo, and author of the Web Startup Success Guide (review by Joel Spolsky, review by Neil Davidson).
The interview is for the Startup Success Podcast, a series of shows providing a wealth of useful information and inspiration for startups. In this episode, Patrick Foley talks about his visit to the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), and I talk about Go Test It – what it is, how it works, why we built it, where it is going in future. There’s even a special discount in there! :)
Head over now to the Startup Success Podcast and listen to the episode! (The interview with me starts at about 15 minutes in.)
Go Test It is a hosted service: we provide all the test machines and web browsers through our test infrastructure. That’s incredibly convenient because you don’t need to waste precious hours of your life debugging test machine issues and installing system updates – we do that for you.
However, you still have to host the application you want to test yourself. If you’re testing a public-facing production website, that’s no problem – our test servers can access the site like any regular user. But chances are that you want to test development, staging and pre-production versions of your application, and you’ll typically be running them on a server inside your organisation’s network.
The good news is that this is normally not a problem. With the following 3 steps you can give us access to a specific testing server:
Identify the name of the test server on your internal network, and the port number on which the test version of your application is running. Then ask your IT department to forward a port on your organisation’s public IP address to this internal server and port. This is a standard feature supported by most routers, and should take your IT guys only a couple of seconds to set up. Note the public IP address and external port number which are set up.
Make it secure by locking down the source IP addresses which may access this service. That way only our test servers can see the test version of your site, but nobody else on the internet can. Ask your IT department to only allow access from the following IP addresses:
93.93.131.122
79.125.54.3(More addresses may be added in future as we grow our infrastructure.) Restricting access by IP address is a standard feature of firewalls and should also take no more than a few seconds to set up.
In your Go Test It account, click “run test now” and choose the scripts and the browsers you want to use. At the bottom of the page, there is a box where you can enter your target server. For example, if your organisation’s public IP address is 12.34.56.78 and the external port set up by your IT department is 9999, you would enter http://12.34.56.78:9999 in this box.
You only need to enter these numbers once – the next time you want to run a test, you’ll see your internal test server as one of the choices.
And that’s it! From now on you can take advantage of the Go Test It infrastructure, even if your server is behind your corporate firewall.