Sofy is a company that provides scriptless test automation platform for mobile apps, and users can run QA tests from CI/CD on real devices & complete testing in ten minutes. To learn more about the company, Pulse 2.0 interviewed Soft CEO and founder Syed Hamid.
Syed Hamid’s Background
Prior to starting Sofy in 2016, Hamid managed software testing teams at Microsoft for over 18 years. And Hamid said:
“My experience leading teams in the United States, China, Denmark, and India repeatedly led me to an important conclusion: There had to be a better way to test mobile apps. My combined observations with the incredible innovation promised by easy-to-use visual editors instead of code, led me to launch Sofy.”
Formation Of Sofy
How did the idea for Sofy come together? During Hamid’s work at Microsoft, he saw firsthand how painful, time consuming, and expensive software testing was. Hamid shared:
“I worked primarily in engineering productivity roles and realized that it’s not just Microsoft having this problem, but an industry problem. Software testing hadn’t moved from manual testing or code testing (automation); both approaches were expensive, time consuming and required coding skills. I faced all these challenges at Microsoft and saw that as an opportunity to address these pain points.”
Favorite Memory Working At Sofy
What has been Hamid’s favorite memory working for Sofy? Hamid replied:
“Being selected to the 500.co accelerator and working with 40 other companies for three months in San Francisco was a favorite memory.”
Challenges Faced Building The Company
What have been some of the challenges Hamid faced in building Sofy and has the macroeconomic climate affected the company? Hamid acknowledged:
“Hiring talent has been the biggest challenge, especially engineering resources. Over the past five years, there has been tough competition for hiring talent and we’ve struggled to compete with the top companies. So far, we’ve not seen any impact on the company because of current macroeconomic environment, in fact I see us growing because all the latest layoffs in tech are now more focused on engineering productivity (as Mark Zuckerburg said, Meta year of efficiency) and Sofy is solely focused on engineering productivity.”
Core Products
What are Sofy’s core products? Hamid explained:
“Sofy’s core products include:
— Real Device Lab – Enhances user experiences by QA testing across multiple real devices in the cloud within 10 seconds without requiring hands-on setup and maintenance of devices
— Manual test Conversion – This increases productivity by converting manual tests to automated test cases
– Visual Match – users can manually select elements to test rather than interacting with cumbersome code
— Scriptless Test Execution – Reduces the QA time from days to just a couple of hours
— Reporting – Deploys faster by identifying and reproducing bugs easily with robust reporting
— SofySense – Manual test cases and test results AI generator for helping speed up testing processes
SofySense was launched in the middle of last year so I asked for more details about that product.
“The software development lifecycle has evolved, and releasing software in hours – with high quality in mind – is a must for any software company. When we started Sofy, we wanted to bring significant productivity to manual testing and automation which are time consuming, expensive and require specialized skills. We see SofySense a natural progression of next-level engineering productivity: Manual testing -> Automated testing -> Scriptless testing -> Intelligent testing. SofySense is intelligent testing. We built it on the latest AI advancements including OpenAI. We are now adding OpenAI components to our already leading scriptless test automation platform.”
Biggest Milestones
What have been some of Sofy’s most significant milestones? Hamid cited:
— The scriptless automation for mobile app testing platform launched in 2020
— The company secured $7.75 million in seed funding in 2022
— And SofySense launched in the middle of April
Customer Success Stories
When I asked Hamid about some customer success stories, he said that over 2,500 companies used their platform, and their existing customers include Microsoft, Rover, and others. On average, companies have been seeing 5X QA productivity gained by using Sofy.
Funding/Revenue
When I asked Hamid about funding and revenue, he noted that they have raised about $9.5 million since the start, and they have grown significantly year over year.
Total Addressable Market
What is the total addressable market (TAM) size that Sofy is pursuing? Hamid assessed:
“Mobile Software Testing currently has a TAM of $8.8 billion and is expected to grow exponentially over the next decade.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Sofy from its competition? “Most of our competitors are focused on coded automation which requires software engineering skills. Sofy was designed to address testers’ pain points: environment setup, running manual testing, creating automation, running automation at scale and analyzing results. This holistic approach has resulted in significant engineering productivity for engineering teams,” Hamid pointed out.
Future Company Goals
What are Sofy’s future company goals? Hamid pointed out:
“Sofy’s focus is to increase the adoption of automation for mobile app testing and revenue.”
Additional thoughts
Any additional thoughts to discuss? Hamid concluded:
“When we started Sofy, we looked at the progression of QA and its future. The 80s were all about manual testing; The 90s — writing code and running it fast. Over the last five to seven years, we’ve been talking about no-code. I see the future in intelligent testing. Intelligent testing is software’s ability to self-identify ‘what other areas do I need to go test?’ Just how cars can drive autonomously, why can’t software test autonomously, at least certain pieces of it? We have all the building blocks today to do that. I believe it’s the right time for companies like Sofy to start thinking about it and ask, what’s the next level of productivity? We’re taking action and moving that forward.”
