Improving code at Airbnb, Dropbox, and Crunchbase

Build breaks—when one engineer’s code negatively affects the entire codebase—are incredibly costly for large, fast-moving teams. Koality set out to prevent code mistakes from bringing whole engineering teams to a standstill. As the startup’s Director of Product, I created the company’s go-to-market strategy, was responsible for major product decisions, and designed the entire user interface.

Submitting code on a large team is like writing a poem in real-time with hundreds of other co-authors. Structural and grammatical mistakes are going to appear as everyone writes and rewrites their individual sections. Some of those mistakes are isolated, while others will significantly affect the work of others.

The interface I designed needed to run a myriad of tests and point out tiny errors in thousands of lines of code so mistakes could be caught and corrected before they introduced bugs or hurt the productivity of other engineers.

Positioning


Instead of building another free developer tool, I recommend we focus on larger enterprise customers. Small teams moved so quickly that build breaks were infrequent and mistakes were easy to fix. Large organizations, however, were far more likely to experience breaks that could affect hundreds of highly-paid engineers. A mistake for these companies was extremely costly, and a tool with the right value prop could demand a premium.

Design strategy

Engineering tools are not usually known for their elegance or design. I recognized this was an opportunity for Koality’s product to be quickly differentiated in a competitive space. I focused on creating an experience that would feel intuitive and familiar to software engineers. For example, the dark color scheme mimicked the console.

The biggest challenge was creating a hierarchy that would let engineers quickly identify a single mistake in millions of lines of code. Using a series of panels, engineers could see their changes or the changes pushed by others. Selecting a Commit ID showed every type of test being run on the change. Selecting any test showed the process and results in real-time. If a test failed, it was distinctively highlighted to standout from successful tests, helping the engineer quickly assess what went wrong.

The interface’s design and ease-of-use was a major competitive advantage that customers remarked on often during the sales process.

Product strategy

Enterprise customers needed to reduce software testing down from hours to mere minutes while maintaining absolute security. We were able to integrate with EC2 virtual machines from behind-the-firewall so proprietary code could be checked quickly and securely in the cloud. This kept code secure, but also enabled parallelization in the cloud to run tests lightning-fast.

Offering analytics also added immense value. Because all code passed through Koality, we could show which teams were doing well, whose code contained the most errors, and even what time of day mistakes were most likely to occur.

Winning top-tier customers


In one pilot, Koality’s code testing tool brought testing time down from 35 minutes to 5 minutes. In another pilot, the product reduced average monthly build-breaks from 40 to 0. These results, combined with Koality’s enterprise-positioning, unique technology, and differentiated product design proved successful. We won Airbnb, Dropbox, and Crunchbase as customers.

Launch at TechCrunch Disrupt

Koality’s product was successful in identifying and displaying a single mistake in millions of lines of code, and blocking mistakes from affecting the rest of the team. The results were impressive enough that the company was admitted to TechCrunch Disrupt 2013 as a Battlefield competitor.

Acquisition by Docker


After competing at TechCrunch Disrupt and launching at AWS Re:Invent, Koality was successfully acquired by renowned cloud company Docker.

Press

"Docker buys Koality, getting code-testing tech & Palantir mafia" — VentureBeat

“Koality Closes Its $1.8 Million Seed Round From FF Angel And Others" — TechCrunch

"Koality Helps Engineers By Eliminating Broken Builds And Making Test Suites Efficient" — TechCrunch