A few months ago, Paul Freet (VentureLab) reached out to me and asked if StarPound would be interested in being a beta tester for a new software testing platform (Tarantula) being developed by a team of researchers at Georgia Tech.  I forwarded the message on to our CTO, Wei Wang, who followed up with the team down there.  We are incredibly busy right now, and Wei didn’t think he would have enough spare time to dedicate to the task, despite the fact that we have wanted to bolster our QA processes for some time now.  I was a little disappointed (not at Wei, but at the situation), because I believe very strongly in QA, even in an agile environment.  Then, something wonderful happened.

The Tarantula team took the initiative, downloaded our open-source platform, and started running their own tests.  They are coming in next week (I think) to share their findings and get our feedback.  Kudos to the Tarantula team for thinking out of the box, and finding a way to get their product out there in the hands of users. There is most certainly a lesson there for other entrepreneurs – never take no for an answer – be creative – adapt, improvise, and overcome.  Be a real partner!

I am excited about the meeting, and I’ll post a followup here with the results of their findings.

If you aren’t familiar with Tarantula, here is a quick rundown:

Tarantula is a technique and tool for helping developers find bugs in source code.  The tool takes source coverage information from a set of test cases and produces a color-coded visual representation of the code. The color coding identifies areas of the code which are most likely to be buggy so that the developer may focus his/her attention in suspicious areas first.

For each statement in the source code, a suspiciousness and confidence value is computed. The suspiciousness is based on the relative numbers of passing and failing test cases that execute a statement. The confidence is based on the percentage of the total passing and failing test case sets that execute a statement. In the visualization, suspiciousness is represented by hue ranging from red to green; more suspicious statements appear more red and less suspicious statements appear more green. Confidence is represented by the brightness of the color; less confident statements appear dimmer and more confident statements appear brighter.

How does it work?

The Tarantula tool requires the source code, a set of test cases and per-test coverage information. While it has an independent data format that will support other tools in the future, the current implementation requires test cases written in JUnit and the use of Clover for coverage instrumentation. To use Tarantula, one instruments the source code with Clover and then runs a set of JUnit test cases. Assuming there are failing test cases to address, the data is imported from Clover reports into Tarantula. Then, the project is opened in Tarantula and the code is reviewed using the information it provides. The import functionality is available both as a wizard and a custom Ant task.

According to their FAQ, the original version worked only with code written in C, which makes it an prospective fit for Linux/UNIX system developers, embedded systems developers, etc.  StarPound is over one million lines of J2EE (not C), so it will be interesting to see how their approach and tools fare against a different code base.  Stay tuned!

Cheers.

The cycle for the 2009 edition of the GRA/TAG (Georgia Research Alliance/Technology Association of Georgia) Business Launch Competition starts on January 8th.

Many of you may remember my post and the resulting comment storm about last year’s affair.  I caught a good bit of flak for over that post, but the good news is that it promoted an important dialog, and dialog is never a bad thing.  The good news is that the organizers of the event have apparently listened to the collective voice of the community, and key changes have been implemented.

According to Lance, the competition organizers have clearly set forth that entrants must have raised less than $500K in aggregate cash capital, regardless of source. The TAG/GRA event took a nasty blackeye over the aforementioned flap last year, but they seem to have corrected the problem for future events.

With all of this being said, at a time when fewer angel investors are writing smaller checks with less frequency, this competition is even more deserving of your attention.

The winner of this year’s competition will receive $100,000 in cash, $200,000 in support services and lots of good publicity.

Each year, the GRA/TAG Business Launch Competition organizers select a theme for businesses that they will consider for the award.  This year, the theme is Internet Technologies.

“This includes companies that are developing products, online services, or backend technologies that are using or extending the reach, flexibility and ease of the internet; with a particular interest in companies within the fields of digital media/technology, cleantech, mobility and securities.”

Formal applications are due by February 10th, 2009.

Lance is leading a panel discussion of prior winners on January 8th TAG Entrepreneurs Society monthly meeting at the ATDC (TSRB building) at 7:30 am.  The panelists will include IVOX, Acculynk, and REACH Call.

By the way, you can learn more about IVOX’s experience with the competition by listening to our podcast (StartupLounge #17) with Greg Warren called “Inside the Winner’s Circle: IVOX”, which we published on August 7, 2007.

Cheers.

If you are seeking early-stage capital in Georgia, and haven’t heard about this by now, you should check out what Sanjay Parekh, David Cummings, Allen Graber, Suleman Ali, Wayt King, and David Wright are doing with Shotput Ventures.

You can read more about it on their web site, but basically it is a clone (or close fascimile) of Y-Combinator.   They will invest $5K per team and $5K per founder into an idea, then provide you with additional resources and coaching to help bring your idea to fruition.

There has been some debate as to whether or not this investment model makes sense here in Georgia.  Personally, I think that it does, with some caveats.

Who it is good for: Young, aspiring technology entrepreneurs that can quickly prototype an idea into a tangible product or service.

Who Isn’t a Good Fit (IMHO): This list is a bit longer …

• Entrepreneurs that aren’t really entrepreneurs but are looking for a “job”, or individuals that think $250K (or even $100K) is a valid salary for a startup founder here.
• Entrepreneurs that are still trying to apply antiquated business school methods to startups (i.e. those who think pre-money valuations on pre-product, pre-revenue companies is anything over $250-500K)
• Entrepreneurs who still think that it takes $2-5M to get an idea off the ground (see above)
• Entrepreneurs in non-technology or capital intensive industries (manufacturing, nano-tech, bio-tech, and many/most consumer product plays)

Given that Atlanta has a nice cluster of (younger) idea-oriented technology/software-minded innovators, I think this model has a lot of applicability here.  The metrics make sense to me.  Short time-to-market, quick iterations, fail fast, and move on.  Time will tell, of course, but I’d bet on success.

There have been several successful exits from Y-Combinator companies.  They have proven the model that small investments can create large returns, especially in the web/software space.

I’m sure the founders might have some other thoughts, but these are mine.  Back to work now …

Cheers.