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How BugHerd came back from the brink

smartcompany.com.au

11–20 of 27 posts

Re: How BugHerd came back from the brink

#11
post #3
post #2

Huh, I actually thought they were dead. Glad to hear they're still going.

(founder here) Definitely not dead! Far from it! Profitable and still growing. September was our largest single month growth since April 2014 and we'll easily beat that this month. Lots has changed with the app in the last 12 months and lots happening as we speak. If you haven't looked for a while, drop in and take a look!

Awesome! Will do, next time I'm working on something customer-facing.

Re: How BugHerd came back from the brink

#13

>>> Two years of development had been done that hadn’t made it to market That seems fairly hard to do ... it sounds more like abandoning one product to pivot to another that never made it?

It was a pivot that failed.

Even though we were growing quickly, the data showed that we'd landed on a local maxima with the original product. Our churn rate was around 3%/mth and the vast majority of churn was "because we don't have a project in QA". We felt we could address that with a different offering (you'd call it a pivot). That pivot failed to deliver a product that resonated the way the original did.

Fortunately, we hadn't shut down the original product (which was still growing), and so the mistake was not fatal.

Re: How BugHerd came back from the brink

#14
post #7

Loved reading this. I’ve been a happy user of BugHerd for six years now across two companies. But it’s true that waiting for a couple of QoL features have been painful. Please let someone see all their assigned bugs across all their projects at once. :) I had hacked this together with the XML API at one point (as JSON was horribly rate limited) and then paid TacoApp to write the same integration, but it’s not functio…

Thanks for sticking around :) I know it's frustrating to see so little action over such a long period of time. We're slowly rolling out a bunch of stuff which we really should've added years ago... We have some other wish list items we're working on at the moment, but a "user dashboard" is on our roadmap I promise! :)

What is the current "sweet spot" of the product? The perfect customer, if you will.

Re: How BugHerd came back from the brink

#15
post #14
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sticking around :) I know it's frustrating to see so little action over such a long period of time. We're slowly rolling out a bunch of stuff which we really should've added years ago... We have some other wish list items we're working on at the moment, but a "user dashboard" is on our roadmap I promise! :)

What is the current "sweet spot" of the product? The perfect customer, if you will.

Digital Agencies get the most value (because they tend to have more projects on the go), but any web team wanting feedback from stakeholders will enjoy it.

Re: How BugHerd came back from the brink

#16
Love Bugherd. Been a happy user for ages - first used it at an agency years ago where it saved us _so much_ time and effort in QA.

Since then I’ve introduced it everywhere I’ve worked as there’s nothing else like it.

It’s great to hear the company is in good shape again and I wish the best for everyone involved.

(Our agency head had to send round a number of all-hands emails warning NOT to mispronounce the name, especially in front of clients)

Re: How BugHerd came back from the brink

#18
post #17

I don't understand business much but it looks it was really nice of them to return the money to investors. They could just let the investors bear the brunt of their bad investment without giving a damn.

> They could just let the investors bear the brunt of their bad investment without giving a damn.

Not if they wanted to continue running the company.

Re: How BugHerd came back from the brink

#19

That name seems easy to mispronounce.

I'm not a native English speaker, can you explain?

I mean, I can see how it would be a problem if you were to mispronounce the 'g' as a 't', but a g and t differ enough that I can't imagine that happening.

Or is there another mispronunciation that I'm missing here?

Re: How BugHerd came back from the brink

#20
post #17

I don't understand business much but it looks it was really nice of them to return the money to investors. They could just let the investors bear the brunt of their bad investment without giving a damn.

The investors owned part of the company in return for giving them money. Possibly they owned a majority of the company. For example, the investors would make more money by forcing some sort of fire sale of the companies assets which you don't want if your goal is to continue running the company.
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