I am proud to announce that Sofy has now raised an oversubscribed round of $7.75 million led by James Newell at Voyager Capital with participation from PSL Ventures, GTMFund, and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund (founded by AOL’s co-founder Steve Case). Since Sofy’s inception, we have raised a total of $9.6 million.
At Sofy, fundraising is a means by which we will achieve our mission of maximizing engineering productivity and setting the stage for engineers the world over to test mobile apps effectively, efficiently, and with high confidence. Our goal is nothing short of a No-Code Revolution, and we believe that it can’t arrive soon enough.
Over the last three decades or so, software testing—especially software test automation—has not evolved beyond the inefficiencies of traditional manual testing or the complexities of manual-code-composed automation creation. Meanwhile, as apps have grown more and more complex, the cost of maintaining test environments and running test automations has increased at an exponential rate.
This pain point, which I so often saw firsthand over the course of my nearly two decades at Microsoft, is exactly what inspired me to start Sofy. While managing engineering teams (and an accompanying wide variety of software stacks), I often witnessed inefficient test automation that resulted in delayed product releases, missing coverage, and an all-around general decrease in engineering team productivity. I knew that there had to be a better way.
I decided to act on those observations in 2016. That year, I found myself increasingly guided by a vision to eliminate testing bottlenecks for engineering teams everywhere, and it is with that vision in mind that I left Microsoft and started Sofy. Soon, my new team and I performed a comprehensive assessment of the mobile application testing landscape. Over the course of our review, our focus repeatedly turned to the amazing potential of no-code automation. The possibilities were simply too impressive to ignore, and we’ve been blown away by the incredible power of no-code testing solutions ever since.
Since day one, our goal at Sofy has been to provide mobile application teams with the ability to release their applications as quickly as possible while at the same time maintaining the highest possible quality for their customers, and to innovate wherever and whenever we can. We’ve built Sofy to allow any member of your software team to create testing automations, run every product change at scale, and intelligently analyze results through our intuitive no-code test automation platform.
This fundraising will help us continue to realize our vision to achieve the following points:
- The ability to create the best no-code automation possible, significantly increasing engineering productivity: Built from the ground up—and without compromise—to provide the best in no-code automation, Sofy is fully capable of running on any physical device (Android or iOS). Our self-service experience enables anyone in the world to create automation within minutes, and on any app and device. We are very fortunate to have so many great companies as customers, and that our customers provide us with such excellent and helpful feedback. We greatly appreciate the insights they provide on how to make our no-code platform even better.
- Shifting left to run for every product change: We believe in shifting left, meaning ever-earlier testing and hunting down issues just as early as code is checked in. Sofy’s no-code automation capabilities easily integrate into CI/CD pipelines and can be run at scale within minutes, providing test coverage that otherwise usually takes days when performed manually.
- A simple and delightful user experience built for creating test automation: Existing software testing tools are extremely complex and difficult to maintain. Simply setting up an environment using Appium and other automation tools, creating an automation, running at scale on hundreds of devices, and analyzing results on a daily basis requires several different and disjointed tools. This inflating complexity and increasingly specialized tooling results in a higher cost of maintenance. In response, Sofy provides a holistic test automation experience, all without the need for any level of coding ability.
- Actionable feedback aimed at improving quality: With over seven million mobile apps available on the Android and iOS stores today, what really matters most to end users is quality. The modern process of building a great mobile application necessitates ideal performance on differing network speeds, a pleasing visual presentation on a multitude of different devices, a thoughtful and considered user experience, high-quality visuals for each screen, and assured application reliability on different types of devices and across operating systems (Android and iOS). At Sofy, we provide specific and actionable feedback for each of these quality attributes.
This funding round will help us execute our vision, grow our team, and accelerate the adoption of no-code test automation. For example, it will assist us with:
- Fueling innovation through our no-code test automation platform: As mentioned above, we continue to receive great feedback from our existing customers. This positive feedback cycle has proven invaluable in assisting us in moving our latest no-code innovations forward.
- Building a Sales and Marketing Team and scaling our GTM: With more than 17,000 apps tested for over 32 million minutes (saving over 1.2 million developer hours!), Sofy has covered a lot of ground. We’re looking forward to moving even further ahead by expanding our Sales and Marketing Team and creating specific GTM programs.
- People, people, people: Any company’s success is dependent upon its ability to hire amazing people who share common values and a core vision. We know the importance of a great team and, in stark contrast with the current hiring environment (where we hear about layoffs almost daily), we’re hiring! In fact, we expect to nearly double our team over the course of the next 12 months. We’re currently hiring across our engineering, sales, marketing, and customer success teams. Looking for a rocket ship to join? Click here to apply!
I have often remarked that I am very fortunate to be surrounded by talented people who care deeply about Sofy’s success. My friends, mentors, investors, and team members ultimately form the bedrock of Sofy. Sure, building a company is hard, but the support of those who believe in the vision—and in turn provide support and mentorship—is truly priceless, and I want to thank every Sofy team member for their tireless efforts over the years.
In particular, I offer my thanks to Sofy’s leadership team:
- Hyder Ali (VP of Sales): Over the past three years, Hyder has worn many hats at Sofy, ranging from sales to marketing, and from customer support to far beyond. Sofy’s first salesperson, Hyder can be found leading from the front, guiding many of our top customers to the Sofy platform.
- Usman Zubair (VP of Engineering): Usman has proven instrumental in transforming Sofy’s engineering team into the powerhouse it is today. He’s also responsible for scaling the engineering org from the ground up, has built world class infrastructure, developed nimble processes that scale, and driven the team to deliver breakthrough features never before seen in development cloud tooling.
- Nikhil Kejriwal (Director of Product Marketing): Our very first marketing team member, Nikhil has sagely led our GTM and product marketing functions. He’s also the main driver behind the self-service experience that has ultimately led to Sofy’s most significant growth to date.
- Alex Pasco (UX Director): Everyone who tries Sofy tells me that Sofy’s UX is amazing (sign up and see for yourself here!), and I have Alex to thank for that. Ensuring that software testing tools offer a smooth and pleasant—and, yes, even enjoyable—experience is no easy feat. Somehow Alex, by way of his impressive attention to detail, achieves just that.
As we embark on the next phase of Sofy’s growth, I look forward to working with the following amazing investors, all of whom believe in Sofy’s vision of disrupting the software testing market:
- James Newell (Managing Director, Voyager Capital): James will be joining Sofy’s board of directors and I thank him for leading this round. As we scale, his prior investing experience in this testing space will undoubtedly prove to be an invaluable asset.
- Julie Sandler (Managing Director, PSL Ventures): I am super excited to work with Julie and her team at PSL Ventures. Julie will be joining Sofy’s board of directors as an observer.
- James Barlia (Senior Associate, Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Revolution): Based out of Washington DC, I’m very pleased that James assisted Sofy in becoming part of Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.
- Paul Irving (Principal & Platform Director, GTMFund): Paul is already helping us recruit great talent for our Sales and Marketing teams.
- Bedy Yang (Managing Partner, 500 Startups): Investor at 500 Startups, Bedy is an accelerator with over 1,200 companies invested. Sofy was part of batch 22 and has received help in each area. It’s great to have 500 Startups participate in this round!
As we continue to scale our teams and move the No-Code Revolution forward, I am exceptionally excited for what’s ahead for Sofy!
