The growing complexity of websites, apps and other online services is making it more difficult for developers to know if their code will work, Speedscale CEO and Co-Founder Ken Ahrens said.
That's why Ahrens and fellow Georgia Tech alumni Matthew LeRay and Nathan Lee, who all have experience in production monitoring, created Speedscale in 2021.
“It's harder than ever to understand whether code will work properly and the confidence in changes has gone down over time," Ahrens said.
Speedscale, based out of Georgia Tech's startup incubator ATDC, helps developers and engineers test and validate whether a new update or feature for an application will work before it is used by customers. Its software alerts engineers on what functions have changed and detects performance issues.
Major businesses have already taken advantage of the service. Speedscale’s clients include beauty product giant Sephora USA Inc., e-commerce company Vistaprint Netherlands B.V. and eyeglass company Zenni Optical Inc.
Now, Speedscale has $9 million to grow its team and add Fortune 500 businesses as customers. The early-stage round was led by Grotech Ventures.
Key Atlanta technology players, such as TechOperators partner Tom Noonan, TiE Atlanta and Tech Square Ventures, also invested. Other investors included Correlation Ventures, CreativeCo, Sierra Ventures and Wally Wang.
"Engineering and development teams often spend hours or days manually testing their APIs and software," said Tim Guleri, managing partner at Sierra Ventures, in a press release about the funding. "For the first time in the space, Speedscale provides a modern way to scale API quality automation as fast as releases take place, combining observability technology with cloud data warehouses."
Funds from the raise will primarily go to expanding Speedscale’s staff with hires in sales, marketing, engineering and customer support. By the end of the year, it expects to grow its staff from seven to 10 and its client base from 10 to more than 25.
