Instabug, the YC startup out of Cairo, is out of beta to squash mobile bugs(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Instabug, the YC startup out of Cairo, is out of beta to squash mobile bugs
http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/02/instabug-the-yc-startup-out-of-cairo-is-out-of-beta-to-squash-mobile-bugs/
15 comments
Congratulations guys. Been using Instabug for a couple of months out in production now and really like the product!
Congrats!
I've been an Instabug user for a couple of months - and while the product is alright, the company has some bug squashing to do themselves.
First off, the company coming out of beta meant that from v2.0 they updated the site to v3.0 overnight. Yes, this meant a massive facelift, new features - and of course breaking some existing functionality. Given the scale of the change you would think the first people to tell this to are their paying customers.
Not so fast - the company simply forgot to us that about this massive change. The change included removing custom statuses that we built our issue tracking workflow around. The only way to find out about the changes was... by logging into our account, and realizing that almost everything has changed. Instabug made sure to let Techcrunch know of massive update, but their paying customers? They completely forgot about us, and we were scrambling to understand what has happened.
Second, Instabug doesn't offer an API to record bugs, and their SDK is closed source and sparsely documented. It also has a bunch of unnecessary things, and they are very protective about any customer wanting to know more information on why they bundle certain things. Even getting them to disclose how to turn off automatic crash reporting - in favor for another app - was a difficult task.
I am happy to see they are gaining traction. However I would rather the company change mentality from moving fast and breaking things to being transparent with customers and moving fast like that. Also, to the credit of cofounder Moataz Soliman he still answers almost all support requests himself.
First off, the company coming out of beta meant that from v2.0 they updated the site to v3.0 overnight. Yes, this meant a massive facelift, new features - and of course breaking some existing functionality. Given the scale of the change you would think the first people to tell this to are their paying customers.
Not so fast - the company simply forgot to us that about this massive change. The change included removing custom statuses that we built our issue tracking workflow around. The only way to find out about the changes was... by logging into our account, and realizing that almost everything has changed. Instabug made sure to let Techcrunch know of massive update, but their paying customers? They completely forgot about us, and we were scrambling to understand what has happened.
Second, Instabug doesn't offer an API to record bugs, and their SDK is closed source and sparsely documented. It also has a bunch of unnecessary things, and they are very protective about any customer wanting to know more information on why they bundle certain things. Even getting them to disclose how to turn off automatic crash reporting - in favor for another app - was a difficult task.
I am happy to see they are gaining traction. However I would rather the company change mentality from moving fast and breaking things to being transparent with customers and moving fast like that. Also, to the credit of cofounder Moataz Soliman he still answers almost all support requests himself.
Instabug's other cofounder here.
Wow, that does sound frustrating and I'm sorry we let you down. I thought we did enough to communicate those changes, but obviously that wasn't the case. This is a learning experience for us and we'll definitely do better next time. But let me explain the things we did do, because I'm not sure yet how the information didn't reach you.
We've been reacting very quickly (as fast as we could) to this. And we've even applied some of the changes that you've asked for on the same launch day. And this is the way we treat our users in general. We do our best to react fast their requests.
We've made sure to document all the changes (even the statuses) in our blog post. We've sent it to all our users and placed it inside the dashboard to make sure everyone knows what changed and why it changed. What do you think would have been a better way to notify you?
Also, we didn't mean to be protective! On the contrary, we'd love to get your feedback. What would you like to know?
We got the crash reporting disable question more than once and we've added it to our SDK FAQs a few months ago (https://instabug.com/developers).
Anyways, we're truly sorry to disappoint you. And I'd be more than happy to explore a solution for the statuses changes issue, and also let me know if there's anything else we can do to make it up to you.
Wow, that does sound frustrating and I'm sorry we let you down. I thought we did enough to communicate those changes, but obviously that wasn't the case. This is a learning experience for us and we'll definitely do better next time. But let me explain the things we did do, because I'm not sure yet how the information didn't reach you.
We've been reacting very quickly (as fast as we could) to this. And we've even applied some of the changes that you've asked for on the same launch day. And this is the way we treat our users in general. We do our best to react fast their requests.
We've made sure to document all the changes (even the statuses) in our blog post. We've sent it to all our users and placed it inside the dashboard to make sure everyone knows what changed and why it changed. What do you think would have been a better way to notify you?
Also, we didn't mean to be protective! On the contrary, we'd love to get your feedback. What would you like to know?
We got the crash reporting disable question more than once and we've added it to our SDK FAQs a few months ago (https://instabug.com/developers).
Anyways, we're truly sorry to disappoint you. And I'd be more than happy to explore a solution for the statuses changes issue, and also let me know if there's anything else we can do to make it up to you.
How far in advance do you believe you notified your users?
The main change in v3.0 was that we moved the custom statuses into tags. We thought that would be a good idea to automate the workflow and make use of the tags given it's agility. We did the migration but we didn't think it'll break anyone's workflow. That's why we didn't think that we should notify anyone before launching, and that was our mistake. We explained the logic behind the change after we launched but we should have done that before we launched.
To;dr: they didn't.
Congrats guys!!
17 engineers and they've raised $300K? Perhaps they're already cashflow positive and are just getting the mechanics in place.
Well to be fair the median salary in Egypt is about 8000$ per year, when you don't have to pay 150-200K per head to onboard engineers 300K can get you a long way (if you think about it their entire team might cost less than what a single engineer in a SV startup will be earning, sucks I know but it's the reality in that region).
Asia, some parts of Africa and some parts of the Middle east are now some what ripe for investment as far as tech startups go, the barrier of entry for learning development has been lowered sufficiently and education in some places is actually quite available and well established these days.
These aren't regions in which you need to have multiple series of funding and raise millions to be able to pull even a power point presentation of the ground. Places like Cairo which have quite good higher education can be considerably cheaper than the baltic states and eastern europe were 5-8 years ago and if you develop a non-regional product you can have a huge return on investment, and it also allows companies to become cash flow positive very quickly as their yearly burn rate is probably lower than the price of some investor relation event/party in SV.
Asia, some parts of Africa and some parts of the Middle east are now some what ripe for investment as far as tech startups go, the barrier of entry for learning development has been lowered sufficiently and education in some places is actually quite available and well established these days.
These aren't regions in which you need to have multiple series of funding and raise millions to be able to pull even a power point presentation of the ground. Places like Cairo which have quite good higher education can be considerably cheaper than the baltic states and eastern europe were 5-8 years ago and if you develop a non-regional product you can have a huge return on investment, and it also allows companies to become cash flow positive very quickly as their yearly burn rate is probably lower than the price of some investor relation event/party in SV.
Actually yes, we're cashflow positive. But we don't really call ourselves mechanics, we prefer the word "pharaohs".
Would love to hear your feedback once you try the product that the pharaohs have built!
I meant mechanics of the business model. I.e., finding the right roles you need to grow.
Good luck.
Good luck.
He meant the "business machine" is well-oiled...
Honest q: Have you surveyed your competitors? HelpShift seems to be a pretty solid offering.
Also, alf mabrook!
Honest q: Have you surveyed your competitors? HelpShift seems to be a pretty solid offering.
Also, alf mabrook!
Helpshift is doing a good job indeed. What differentiate us is that we offer one SDK and one dashboard to view bugs, feedback and crashes, and act accordingly on each one (i.e., assign bugs and crashes or forward them to a bug tracker, and reply to feedback). Plus Instabug captures far more details (screenshot, device details and user steps) to help developers trace bugs faster. I'd really love to hear your feedback once you try v3.0
Congrats Instabug!