Egyptian startup Instabug chosen as a finalist in The Next Web's USA Mobile Rally
Egyptian startup Instabug is quickly becoming one of the
region's major fledgling success stories this year, despite
the country's recent turmoil.
Yesterday, the bug tracking app was listed as one of
15 finalists in The Next Web’s Mobile
Startup Rally, after competing against over a hundred
applicants from around the world.
On October 1st and 2nd, Instabug's founders,
Omar Gabr and Moataz Soliman, will present onstage to
investors, media, and marketers at TNW Conference USA,
along with their 14 fellow finalist teams, who hail from countries
including Germany, Estonia, Argentina, The Netherlands, and the
U.S. FIve more finalists will will be chosen on site from those
with Startup Tables or Demo Desks at the event.
It’s a big opportunity for Giza-based Instabug, which has been on a
roll ever since it graduated from Flat6Labs last September (under
the name A*Apps), and then won the MIT Enterprise Forum Arab Business Plan
Competition this April and then was accepted into the first Google for Entrepreneurs
program, which brought eight startups to Silicon Valley to work
for two weeks in the “Blackbox Mansion” in Palo Alto this July.
What seems to set Instabug apart is its ease of use; it's designed
to make bug tracking dead simple for mobile app developers.
Here's how it works: Once a developer adds a single line of code to
their mobile app, Instabug runs in the background. Then, with a
shake of the iPhone, a user can pull up Instabug's feedback layer
and use a highlighter, paintbrush, or text to circle buggy areas
and explain bad user experience issues. Instabug then submits an
annotated screenshot to the developer, along with statistsics and
information about the user's device, OS, and location, making it
intuitive to both submit feedback and learn from it.
The app's simplicity and focus on a critical need has gained the
attention of international investors. Sean Jacobsohn of Silicon
Valley-based venture firm Emergence Capital pointed out the value
that he saw, as a judge in the innovation Showdown at the
MobileBeat conference in San Francisco this year. "In the
mobile world, you don’t have a lot of time with your consumers — if
you have a bad experience, that company might be done,"
Jacobsohn told
VentureBeat.
Founders Gabr and Soliman were unable to attend that
particular competition, due to visa issues at the time, but when an
investor presented the product, it wowed judges anyway. The two
founders have
continued to iterate their features this summer, according to
user feedback, and are are now in Silicon Valley; we'll update with
a quote once they wake up today.
When we
spoke to them in July, they noted that they were staying close
to their users. "We have people who don't know us sending us emails
and telling us that the service is really solving a huge pain they
were facing. It's this feedback that makes us continue on what
we're doing," said Soliman.
Check out the video below for more on how it works.