Muukbang of Innovation w/ Ivan Barajas Vargas | Ep. 135

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast, prepare for a Muukbang of knowledge as Ivan Barajas Vargas, founder of Muuktest, joins us to talk about automated testing. From the inception of Muuktest to its impact on the software development industry, Ivan's insights are a treat you won't want to miss. 

Links: 

https://muuktest.com/

LinkedIn: Ivan Barajas Vargas

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] David: Networking and marketing are similar. You throw either money, in marketing's case, down a hole or you throw time down a hole, that's networking. And you have no idea. The roi is going to be so squishy.

[00:00:15] David: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host joined per usual by Gary Voigt.

What's up, man? How are you?

[00:00:24] Gary: I'm doing good. How are you?

[00:00:25] David: I cannot complain. I cannot complain. It's beautiful weather here. So it's nice. It's strangely nice. So I will soak it up more importantly than Gary, which is not hard to do. We have Our guest this evening, it's evening, it's afternoon, whatever. Yvonne Barajas Vargas, who I have known. How long have I known you?

I'm trying to think, cause it's been almost as long as big pixels have been around. I'd say eight plus years. Is that sound right?

[00:00:54] Ivan: six or seven. Yeah. Maybe you were studying one year or more. Yeah. So six or

seven 

[00:01:00] David: So six to eight years, something like that. So. I don't want to steal your thunder because you have a cool company. And I want you to introduce that company, but we met, I'm trying to remember the first time we met, but your company was in its absolute infancy when we got started and we met and we did mentorship and we did some design work for you.

We're talking, this is back when I did all the design back when they were way better than Gary's. And he's not even

[00:01:28] Gary: Yeah, we'll just edit, we'll edit that out. No, we'll just

[00:01:31] David: a, is

[00:01:32] Gary: we don't put out disinformation like that.

[00:01:34] David: false news, fake news. Anyway, so w we did a design for you, a man, this is, it was a long time ago.

And you guys, and I remember I was thinking to myself, man, I don't know what this guy does. Like I knew what the product did, but I was like, I don't know if it's going to make it. And boy, have you just absolutely blown everything away. And I love that. So tell me about your company. Tell everybody about your company.

Tell, tell us what you do.

[00:02:00] Ivan: Thank you. Thank you, David, for that, for the intro. And I was remembering, I think we connected when we were just exploring the idea, maybe it was 2018 and you had launched a contest, the big idea, big pixel, like big pixel

[00:02:17] David: The big idea project. That's right. Yes.

[00:02:20] Ivan: we participated there. So, yeah. And

yeah, so what we do we call it a effortless software QA. So we help customers go to make, so we're testing pretty fast. We created a set of tools that helps on software test automation. So usually for context like developers need to test their software before it goes to production. You know that and usually the fear solution is to test it manually. But as the companies scale, that takes too much time and too much money to test. So all of a sudden the companies have 5, 10 manual testers, then they think on test automation. If they want to do test automation, now they need to put developers or hire SDTs, software developers, in test. To automate this with code. So that's also painful, expensive, and it's low. So what we did is we created a platform with a set of tools to make these test automation effort super fast. Practically we are automating part of the automation effort. With our tools we have a platform that helps to create this automatically helps to maintain the test pretty easily and automatically as well. So in short we call it effortless software QA, and we help the companies to automate software testing pretty fast. We don't need to hire a big team or even. Someone else in their team, they can do it with their current team. Is that kind of clear?

[00:03:58] David: That is perfect. Now, the one thing you are the first CEO who has not actually mentioned the name of your company within three seconds. How do you say the name of your company? Because it's, I'm, I know I would absolutely butcher it.

[00:04:11] Ivan: MOOC test. It's M

U K test. MOOC test. Yeah.

[00:04:16] David: That means something that I don't know.

[00:04:18] Ivan: So the story of the name is so me and my co founder, we are from Mexico. So when we were thinking about the name for the company we went ahead and researched Aztec and Mayan words then we pick MOOC, which means empowerment. So we empower software development teams, software engineering teams. So it's a Mayan word that means empowerment. Yeah.

[00:04:42] David: So I love the story of that name, but I have to ask the question. Do you have to explain that it's not MOOC? Like all the time

[00:04:51] Ivan: Yeah.

[00:04:52] David: would just call it muck.

[00:04:53] Ivan: I think surprisingly, 80 percent of the people gets it, but 20 percent goes with Mac, and I have to explain it. So actually we were worried at the beginning because I think you brought it up when we started the company and you brought it up, and other people brought it up. But as the time has advanced almost everyone say smoke by default, but there's still 20 percent of people we talk to, they, they might say Mark.

Yeah. 

[00:05:22] David: I am definitely in the bottom 20 so that makes sense. So Your ideas to autumn this speaks to so As you know, we build UX and software products. And so this is near and dear to our heart. Cause clearly this is something that we do now. We don't automate it. We are not customers of Muk test, even though I might change that some point.

But cause we do it. We are exactly what you described our company. We have testers who do it manually. So, which is strangely in my world. That's unusual. Most people have no testers at all. Most software developers, unless you're talking about big companies, but most software developers, the developers do all the testing.

And one thing that is 100 percent true is developers are horrible testers and they should never do that. But that's where most developments, especially smaller jobs. Including us, I'll be honest, at first, five or six years of big pixel, we did not, we tested our own stuff, right? And that, what that really meant is the client tested their stuff and that doesn't go well,

It just doesn't, 'cause you don't look like you're doing your job, right, because there's. Software is buggy. It's just the nature of the beast. But the client shouldn't be the first one to find that, right? And so we now have our own internal testers, but we still do it manually. We don't do anything automated.

We have spreadsheets and stuff that tells us what we're supposed to be testing. And then we go and do that for all of our major releases. So a software, generally, I would think larger companies. Is that accurate? Most of your clients are larger development companies or have a larger development teams.

Is that accurate?

[00:06:56] Ivan: So we sell more right now to large SMBs and early mid market companies. So actually how we define our ICP when we add the most value is companies that have five to 40 developers starting with in five, like when the companies have a less than five developers, manual testing might be someone can be here and there, but if they keep adding developers. They need to test more and they need to go faster to production. That's when automation makes more sense. And I see what you mentioned, like we have talked to many software development providers, UX designers, and. Not they don't use too much QA and testing. Like they let the customers, as you say, that there's a product. So it's great that you guys are doing it. And I think test automation, the traditional test automation makes more sense. When the products will be a scale the products continue growing. 

 Testing is important and as you scale, you need to automate it or it's impossible to do it manually. And I think that's a good summary of why testing is important.

[00:08:06] Gary: Yeah. It definitely puts a polish on the product.

[00:08:08] David: it's just, it's so easy. And I will say we've had clients, most clients don't want to pay for testing automated testing, because the only people who can do it, especially when you're small, obviously at some point the automation kicks in, but when you're running tests and writing tests and creating that software scripts, like you were saying, the only person to write those are developers.

And they would rather spend their limited budget building more features than testing their old features. And the problem with that is, is oftentimes. By the time their software is large enough and complex enough that they need those tests, because not everybody's poking every edge of the software anymore, right?

Now that investment needed to write all those tests is very large. And again, the bang for your buck from a client perspective, not a user, but the client perspective, is almost zero. Because they get new functionality, right? Now, long term the value is huge, but initially if I told you, Hey, I need 25, 000.

I'm making a number out, 25, 000, 50, 000 to completely cover your software end to end testing. They would be like, I could use that and build. a whole new flow, a whole new feature, a whole new whatever, don't do that. That's, that gets told to me all the time. Only our largest clients, our largest client have their own internal testers.

We test, we hand it to them, they test, like they, it's still manual for them, but they have a whole fleet of people that this is all they do. And that, but that's extremely rare. Most of our clients would rather not pay for it. So the automation stuff, the reason I'm like, when I, every time I talk to you, I'm like, I should probably really hire him because I think if we could figure that out and make the, cause it obviously helps us solid software is only good for us, but I can't test it for free.

Right. So that, that there's that balance, right? I want to pivot pretty hard though cause I love your story. I was a very early part of it, an inconsequential part of it, but I've been around on it, you know, from the bleachers watching this. And so it's a great story. And I want to, I want you to be able to shine on that.

So from the moment we met six, seven years ago, whenever that was big idea project, which was a fun little thing we did a long time ago, did you know, here's a weird side thing we ran that twice. The first one, we had a really good, we had 50 so applicants, which sounds like when I was originally designing that idea, I was thinking I was going to get hundreds because we were offering some really cool stuff.

And I found out later that dozens is how those things are judged, not hundreds, but so we had 50 applicants. And if I remember correctly, you were way up there at the end, but I, you didn't win. I know, but I can't remember. You got pretty far. And then, but then you kept doing your idea and that's where you, most people came to our little contest.

It was basically a pitch contest for lack of a more complicated than that, but let's just boil it down. But you kept going. And so from that point, you're going six, seven years ago. Tell me your story. Cause this is a great story.

[00:11:15] Ivan: Yeah, so yeah, I didn't go to study there. The thing is that the story comes that I'm from Mexico. I did computer science there. I think this year will be 20 years since I graduated. So man, a lot of time. So I did computer science. I already dated myself. And most of my, my, my life. I'm also really,

[00:11:37] Gary: I've been designing for that long. So yeah, I'm right there with you.

[00:11:40] Ivan: career. I need a little bit of software development, but most of my career was in QA. Then I moved here to RTP in 2011, to work for EMC at the time, which was Dell. I was going to be a software QA architect and and also to study at UNC. So when I got the job offer, I said, okay, I want to move to that area because they have three great schools. I want to do grad school there. So I went to the three schools to NC State, duke, and UNC Chapel Hill for the MBAs. And at the end I decided to go to C. And there I did BA. So I started learning about business. I started taking entrepreneurship classes and I said, okay it's time to, to launch something.

I really got caught by the entrepreneurship bug. And that was 2014. I just started testing different ideas with my co founder and 2018 we. We had tested three, four ideas, not related to software testing. Like I think we were just jumping into the train's wagon and we were doing something with analytics. Automating social media stuff, like things, industries, we didn't know. So 2018, like we got accepted in a Google incubator in American underground. And they told us we had an idea there to make more efficient use of food by the restaurants, like instead of they throwing them, how. Can they get some money back from tax incentives?

Like something we didn't know anything about. And they told us, Hey, that's cool. But do you have any other idea? I was like, okay, we want to automate our testing with AI. And me and my co founder, we said, okay. I was a QA architect. I was seeing how difficult it was to test automation. He was a software architect at IBM at the time. And we saw how difficult also it was to automate this there. And we said, what the heck are we doing? Like focusing on other things we don't know. So 2018, when I met you, we just got the idea. And then we started building a prototype 2019, we launched the prototype. That took us to Boston Mass Challenge the accelerator in Boston.

And that also led us to, to win the NC grant. In thousand 19, the seed grant that was the first money we got until that point. We were bootstrapping we were strapping. And then 2020 2019 was when we have a prototype and we say, okay. We need to go full time. So, we were just thinking about the idea and then we had a a prototype, we went full time 2019 by the end of 2018, 2020, we had a commercial product that could be used that we felt decent charging for that.

We could say that's our definition of commercial product that took us to Techstars, which is also one one of the best accelerators. Then we earn a NSF grant SBIR because we are applying AI to software testing. We applied for NSF grant. That was 2020. Then 2020 we got our funding and we continue there 22. By the end of 22, it's when. We started taking off and that's because we discovered that we have a powerful tool. But the teams needed, they didn't have the time or resources to think about how to implement the tool. So we say, okay, the tool is powerful, but we are seeing that customers, and the customers that are being successful are the ones that have QA experts, but there is a big market that they don't have QA experts to implement the tool, and even the tool was no code.

And use of the AI. Customers need, needed to think what to test and how to test it. So we decided to start helping with the implementation of the tool and get the customers to hundreds of tests running in a few weeks, rather than just selling a tool to implement to implement the test.

And we started growing from there. We raised another a seed one round last year and a seed two round this year, and that's where we are right now.

[00:16:00] David: So I love that story because to me, if you're gonna raise money, which is a big fork in the road, right? You have lifestyle versus raising money. But if you're going to raise money, you followed the map. Which is a great map, which you probably didn't realize you were following this, right?

You're just doing the best you can, but everything you did is what I would recommend someone to try to do, right? Doing it on your own, building an MVP. Now that's the hard part. Obviously you guys had internal expertise, which is very cool, but you're talking tech stars, you're talking NC idea grant, you're talking about all of the SBIR grants.

These are all amazing things that every, I'm going to specifically say tech in this case, startup should start looking into 

[00:16:44] AD: BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business. 

[00:17:09] David: because all of these are sources of funding and in mentorship and expertise and things that One people don't know about. If you don't know about NC idea, that's a North Carolina thing.

So if you're outside of North Carolina, it is not. But I would hope that every state or most states have something equivalent. I would hope I don't know that, but gosh, if you don't, every state needs to have that, which is basically the government finds really cool startups and gives them money to continue their ideas like 50, 000 and they have several different versions of it now, but every state should have that if they don't, but anyway.

Your would like something like tech stars. Did they give you money or is that purely a mentorship kind of thing?

[00:17:49] Ivan: Textors give money, but it's investment. 

[00:17:52] David: Okay. So there's an 

[00:17:52] Ivan: MassChallenge is just mentorship. Yeah. We went first to MassChallenge. MassChallenge

is, I think, according to PitchBook, is. The third best accelerator in the world. And they don't take, they don't take equity. They don't give you money. They give you network and mentorship. Techstars they invest in you. They are part of your investors and they give you money. They invest and also mentorship network and the whole program. Yeah.

[00:18:16] David: So would you, I know it's like naming your favorite child, but would you say if I have a tech idea, would you say that is the right order of those? Or would you say, which one's your favorite? Would. You know what I'm saying? Or is that just I can't, I love them all equally.

[00:18:34] Ivan: For the accelerators, MassChallenge and Techstars to me. So I think for us, it was the right order because Because MassChallenge helped us to shape the business model and the idea, like we, we, had a prototype, we want we always have looked for automating QA on a click and they help us to shape the idea on the, and the business model of what the heck we will sell, who will care about it.

So it was key because then that helped us. To get the NCA diagram, all the process within MassChallenge and then that help us to get to Techstars or for us, that, that was the right journey. But I have seen companies doing the opposite and they have been successful. Like sometimes they go to Techstars first and they then go to MassChallenge because it adds value on the network side.

So, I think, but MassChallenge, they give a prize to one of the winner companies. I think it's two or three prizes now. But they select within our time, it was a hundred companies, I think so, finalists. So, and they, and three were winners of non equity grant. So that's great. But three out of 100, so it was not super easy to get and so I think then my recommendation would be, I think there is not just one path. I think if you have. Some budget to, to shape better your idea, go fierce to mass challenge because it will help you to give it a lot of body and mature the mature the product and the business. Then you can go to raise funds or go to other accelerators, but you can get directly to Techstars and you need the investment on the network.

Yeah. Go that way. I don't think there is one, one, one answer for us. It was the right thing, but I have seen companies doing the opposite and it works for them too. Yeah. Mentorship

[00:20:26] David: and, so I was recently a judge for NC State's, they call it the ALA, the Andrews Launch Accelerator which is their big Internal. It's only for NC state grads, but it's their big internal thing, but they don't give a lot of money. They give some, but not a ton, but what they give is 14 weeks of amazing mentorship and they bring in entrepreneurs and all this very cool stuff.

And there were a few people who would apply and they're like, I need the money. And then there were some people were like, I don't, the money's nice, but what I want is the people I want. And I think that is a path that is not taken enough. I think. More, in the end, like using shark tank as an example, it's not the money, those sharks give you, it's the access to the shark that matters.

You know, you get Mark Cuban standing on a, on his, you know, a ladder yelling at people, a lot more people are going to hear you, right? It's cause he's Mark Cuban. That's the value of the shark, not the 000, a hundred thousand, whatever check they write. And I think that people really say I need the money to keep going.

That's, Maybe that's true. I'm not going to discount that, but that don't sell that mentorship short because man, that's powerful stuff. It's almost a force multiplier in some ways, right? So you got someone who's taking interest. They know people they're introducing to people. Your network is going to explode all of that stuff.

Even if the money, like you're saying, the mass challenge is 0, but man, what an investment as I think that's something that's overlooked a lot.

[00:22:01] Ivan: did you talk to 100 mentors? Back to back giving you feedback, 20 minutes calls in one week that you just block a lot of time there and what they, you just pitch your idea.

Mentor madness is the name. So you just pitch your idea and to to new people, every time new mentors, new people that has made business entrepreneurs, investors, like huge network. You pitch back to back, and you get a lot of feedback. Your head starts hurting, but you get a lot of trends too.

At the end of the week, if you make an analysis of what they told you, like you learn a bunch of where your business is working on what you need to do. So mentors and also the network, like the network of these accelerators They give you credibility. Credibility. So, and more people open the door when you say, okay I'm just a challenge. Or I'm a Techstars at Amos, like they they open the door easily for you to customer discovery prospects that you could sell investors. So yeah, mentor and network. Actually last year I saw one analysis, I think it was from PitchBook, like startups that did one accelerator had higher chances of success, of raising funds in the later, or the ones that did two, they even had higher chance.

I don't remember the exact numbers. I think you can, if someone is interested, you can look for PitchBook accelerator report from last year. And you will see that one, but in short, adding an accelerator increases your chance of success because of this mentorship and network. If you add two, you increase it even more. So pretty interesting data from last year. Yeah.

[00:23:47] David: So you've raised some money. Where are you guys now? Are you on that runway? Are you self sufficient? Where are you guys as a company?

[00:23:55] Ivan: So we just raised a serious, uh, seat two rounds. So another seat round. We didn't want to go for the big serious eight yet because we didn't need it. Because to answer your second, the second part of the question, like we are in a good trajectory to get to make even So we continue growing, so we didn't need like a lot of money right now to keep growing.

So we just designed a series C2 that will take us to bigger milestones so we can raise a big series A late next year probably.

so so yeah what, yeah we have always liked to grow pretty close to break even so we don't just increase expenses crazily. So we had customers and we raise funds to. Push the pedal faster, but without getting crazy putting a risk the company. So we are always close to the line of of revenue. So we can get to break even at some point. Yeah,

[00:25:02] Gary: Now you mentioned earlier the value of the networking and the customer discovery, which brought up an idea like, so the networking itself and the customer discovery, that's almost like a built in marketing budget, especially if it's, you know, within the same industry that you're getting the mentoring that doors are opening for you for, You know, new customers to at least try out your product or you're being recommended by someone that they trust within the network.

Did that help you guys start generating clients at the beginning as well?

[00:25:30] Ivan: got we got introductions and we got a couple of early users. In mass challenge, we have just a prototype. So we got users of the prototype to get feedback. So definitely yes, and most likely the first customers you will have in a startup will come from the network and they will teach you and you will learn how to sell and who to sell to.

So yeah, that helped us answering your question, Gary. And and the network is key when you're starting a business, a startup is key to get started. Yeah.

[00:26:03] Gary: Yeah. A lot of the startups that we've talked to, you know, their first clients are always like family, friends or people they knew. It's never like just for random, unless they're selling a product, but most of the startups we've talked to, you know, they're not just selling something. Like an e commerce product there, they're building something to sell.

This leads me to the last question we have to wrap it up now in your journey, what have you learned as your top three pieces of advice you would give to any entrepreneur, new business or startup?

[00:26:31] Ivan: I think one is a real commitment. You have to try You won't get it right at the first time. So real commitment second, I would say sell something fierce that will teach you a lot of what the real value that you are delivering is. So. Try to sell because I think a lot of entrepreneurs, they start building before selling.

Actually, we started a little bit there, let's build something to get momentum. And then we learn how to sell it. But when we sold it, that helped us to build something better. So, sale, I think lately I have been seeing more. More entrepreneur, more successful entrepreneurs starting with some kind of consulting, maybe help with technology that gives them ideas on what to build. So selling, so commit because you will need to try sell sell the product so you can see what what value you're selling and network like. I didn't, I was, I have always been a little more in the introverted side, but I push myself to network and say in, in grad school and the network, as we were discussing because of these accelerators, like it helps, but you can also create your network, start going to events, connect with other entrepreneurs, with investors help them you will get help at some point, so. Network because that will open a lot of doors to, so those will be my three

[00:28:07] Gary: Networking is a big one and networking is something that if Dave will agree is something you should never stop doing. Okay.

[00:28:16] David: right. 

[00:28:17] Ivan: And David is great at 

[00:28:18] David: that mistake.

[00:28:19] Ivan: You stopped for a while because you you were great. When we met you were networking all over the place.

Yeah, 

[00:28:26] David: I find networking is a force multiplier in that you don't, it's weird. It's like Gary would agree with this mark. 

Networking and marketing are similar you throw either money, in marketing's case, down a hole or you throw time down a hole, that's networking. And you have no idea, the roi is going to be so squishy. But if you don't do it, your company will be half the size as it should be.

If I don't go to those networking events, I felt that actually, I quit, you know, COVID helped of course, which everything died at that point. But I was, I had this hubris. I was good enough, whatever. I was, you know, we're successful enough, whatever, stupid. And everything just slowed down. The call stopped coming the, you know, just the momentum of the, as a company will slow down network and marketing is the same thing.

That's a different conversation, but same kind of thing. You throw money in that hole, but if you don't do it, things just start slowing down. And so anyway, yes.

[00:29:23] Gary: Now, if anybody wants to learn more about your company or maybe more about you, how can they reach out? How can they get in touch?

[00:29:31] Ivan: we have the website mooctest. com or you can reach out to me Ivan at mooclabs. com. So M U K L A V S. com. I'm happy to connect with LinkedIn also with with anyone that wants to connect.

[00:29:45] OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net. The BizDev Podcast is produced and presented by BigPixel. See you next week. Until then, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and LinkedIn.