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In Córdoba, Argentina, about a year ago, two lifelong friends put their heads together to create a tech product for tech people—something to change the way teams build software all over the world.

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By some accident of fate (with a little romance thrown in), they’ve ended up building the foundations of their product in Australia.

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It’s here that they’re iterating, testing, and building. It’s here that they’re networking and onboarding their first clients. And it’s here that they’re learning some of their biggest lessons as first-time founders.

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Testing, testing

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Bugster is a tool streamlining testing processes for software development teams of all sizes, with a particular focus on smaller businesses that typically lack dedicated QA teams.

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For these companies, which wouldn’t typically use QAs, it catches faulty code before customers do.

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These kinds of tests simulate user experience, co-founder and CEO Facundo López Scala explains. And they can already be automated.

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However, traditionally, when the user experience changes, most tests become completely ineffective.

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Bugster uses AI to assess exactly what has changed in the user journey and adapts the tests accordingly.

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According to Facundo, this means time spent creating, tweaking, and fixing tests can be reduced by up to 80%.

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A former QA himself, Facundo has intimate knowledge of the challenges in this space.

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He’s done this job at finance institutions, scrappy tech companies, and even a streaming platform. At each, the testing processes were largely the same. The problems were the same, too.

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“We spent a lot of time fixing tests, and there was almost never a whole suite of tests working at once. It was almost impossible,” he says.

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“Businesses are throwing money at the problem. They try to hire one QA for every one or two developers.”

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Speaking with friends and colleagues, Facundo realised this was a common experience. QAs were stretched and scrambling, spending more time fixing tests than running them.

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So, he took his idea to Ignacio Solorzano, an old friend and long-time collaborator, who also happens to be an accomplished AI and machine learning engineer.

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“We knew this was a big problem with a huge market,” Facundo says.

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“And we knew we were the ones to solve it.”

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Founders and friends

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Together, Facundo and Ignacio make something of a co-founder dream team.

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Ignacio brings deep technical expertise and a penchant for problem-solving.

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Facundo, with his technical background in QA and an entrepreneurial streak, bridges the gap between technology and business.

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“We have really defined roles, and our personalities are distinct,” Facundo says.

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They’re also good friends, and have been for years. That can make it easier to know when someone is feeling off their game or needs to take a break, he adds.

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“Some days, we’re in the office from 8 am to 11 pm. We enjoy working; it’s not stressful. But we know we need to take time to play sports or be with our girlfriends.

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Argentinians down under

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It was Ignacio who led the Bugster team to Australia. He came to Sydney with his girlfriend, who was here on a working holiday visa, and was working on Bugster in local co-working spaces.

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By chance, he met Annie Liao, and Bugster found its way into her AI-focused accelerator, Build Club.

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“That gave me the opportunity—or the excuse—to go to Sydney and work from there,” Facundo says.

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“We met a lot of VCs and were recommended to apply to Startmate,” he adds.

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“So we did.”

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Realistically, if Ignacio’s girlfriend had gone elsewhere—the US or Europe—things may have worked out differently.

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However, the team knew doors might open Down Under. Australia boasts a rich tech ecosystem with huge opportunities for a product like Bugster.

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“We knew that if Ignacio came here, made the right connections, and spoke to the right people, it could be very beneficial,” Facundo says.

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“Now, so many of the companies in our pipeline are Australia-based,” he adds.

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“We can address the US market later—because this is a worldwide product and we want to be huge. But Australia is the perfect starting point for us.”

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Pivoting for developers

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In the early days, Ignacio and Facundo set out to build a comprehensive platform with a broad suite of different features. While the initial platform was functional, they recognised that many features were non-essential and detracted from the core value Bugster could provide. To enhance quality and focus, they streamlined the platform, concentrating solely on developers and introducing a versatile Software Development Kit (SDK).

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“We realised that focusing on our core features would deliver more value,” Facundo explains. “By eliminating non-essential features, we could concentrate our resources on what truly matters to our users.”

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To better serve developer teams without dedicated QA teams, Bugster introduced its SDK. “Our SDK allows developers to easily implement automated testing within their applications, reducing the time and effort required,” Facundo adds.

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The scaled-back Bugster—which “works perfectly”—is now in the hands of more than 15 companies, either using the free trial or collaborating as design partners, sharing insights and feedback as they go.

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The founders are pushing changes every day, listening carefully to early customers and iterating as they go.

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“We’re really confident in the product now,” Facundo says.

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“Those mistakes helped us learn and build faster. I think it’s part of the process. No regrets.”

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“People are cheering us on”

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From day one, Facundo and Ignacio knew they were onto something with Bugster, simply because they understood the scale of the problem.

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Even so, since being in the Australian market, they’ve realised just how much their prospective clients want a product like this.

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“People are really cheering us on. They want our product to work."

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“Even when it was not working, they bought into the vision and what we wanted for the future. They trusted our experience and the idea behind what we wanted to do.

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“There is still a lot of work to do, but we’re pushing hard because we know we’ve got something. Now, we need to prove it.”

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