Boston-based ProdPerfect, a startup that aims to automate web application testing, has closed its Series A round at $13 million.
Anthos Capital led the round, with participation from Fika Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator and aCrew Capital. This funding comes on the heels of $2.6 million seed round in March, which was co-led by Eniac Ventures and Fika Ventures.
Through the use of machine learning, ProdPerfect wants to automate QA testing for end-to-end web application testing, a necessary task that can consume hours of software engineers' time.
Or, as founder and CEO Dan Widing put it: "We're here to fight burnout."
Widing is no stranger to the world of startups. He actually started ProdPerfect while he was still director of engineering at WeSpire, an employee engagement platform provider. Before that, he was a software engineer at the MIT-born startup HelmetHub.
"I've personally seen enough places struggle with products and software in ways that burn out the engineers, burn out the teams, burn out the products, burn out the companies," Widing said. "There are much better ways to do this. There's a way to structure work and organizations that's much more data-driven... that makes it easier to be successful in the long term."
ProdPerfect's new funding will be used to build out that technology, making ProdPerfect's application faster and higher-quality, according to a press release. Widing said he is also looking to hire a vice president of engineering, a CTO and a chief data scientist, along with more employees in sales, marketing and engineering. By this time next year, Widing hopes to have hired roughly 50 new employees.
The company has 45 customers and about $2 million in annual recurring revenue.
"What we're going for is getting a much bigger business out: If you're a high-technology business that wants to build software the right way, you come to us first," Widing said. "[We want to make this] the standard for quality assurance."
