Codeship is a developer tool company offering Continuous Integration & Delivery as a Service. It got started in 2010 and is used by 10.000's of developers around the world. Codeship started in Austria but is headquarter in Boston/MA and employs 30+ people around the world with a remote first culture.

1. H O W T O B U I L D A ( D E V E L O P E R T O O L )
C O M PA N Y
@ M O R I T Z P L A S S N I G

2. Q U I C K I N T R O
• Founder/CEO of Codeship
• Biz+Tech Background
• Living in Boston/USA
• Always learning
• @moritzplassnig on Twitter

3. H O W T H I S I S G O I N G T O W O R K
• I’m not here because I like talking
• I’m here to share some learnings & help YOU
• You need to ask questions
• A lot of questions :)

4. C O D E S H I P

5. B U I L D F O R T H E B U I L D E R S
• CI / CD as SaaS
• Automated software testing & release management
• Cloud-based
• Customers = Software engineers
• Codeship enables software development teams to
deliver better software faster

6. S O M E M O R E FA C T S
• Founded in 2011
• Started in Vienna, now based in Boston/USA
• 30+ employees across the world
• 50% of the team working out of our Boston office, 50%
remote
• 10,000’s of developers using & paying for the product
• $11M+ funding

7. H O W W E G O T T H E R E

8. T H AT ’ S W H AT O T H E R P E O P L E T H I N K
( H I N T: I T I S B U L L S H I T )

9. A M A Z I N G C U S T O M E R S
A R E A L L T H AT M AT T E R S
W H AT W E T H I N K

11. T H E R E ’ S N O S U C H T H I N G A S A N
“ O V E R N I G H T S U C C E S S ”
2010
2017

12. S T E P 1 : I D E A
• Context
• Back in 2010, automated software testing wasn’t as common
• If companies were doing it, they did it locally but not with a SaaS
product
• Built their own solutions, hired dedicated engineers/teams
• Pains/Problems
• Companies needed to spend lots of money to do that
• And still didn’t get a product that allowed them to ship better
software faster
• Major trends in the market
• Cloud software
• Software as a Service

13. S T E P 1 : I D E A
• Don’t start a company just because you want to build a
startup, be your own boss and look “cool”
• Identify a problem you care about that isn’t solved well
• The hard truth: It’s more likely that you find that while
working than while being in school/university
• Whatever your initial idea is, it will likely change

14. O U R I N I T I A L N A M E
• Focus on a sub-segment of the market first (Ruby on Rails
applications on GitHub deploying to Heroku in our case)
• But don’t reflect that focus in your company name as we did

15. S T E P 2 :
F O U N D E R S
• Find co-founders
• They shouldn’t be like you
• Your weaknesses should be
their strengths
• Diverse team > non-diverse
teams
• Multi-disciplinary teams are
more likely to succeed
• Define your roles early on

16. S T E P 3 : VA L I D AT E Y O U R I D E A
• Talk to potential customers
before writing a single line
of code
• Build a MVP
• Talk to potential customers
• Repeat it over and over
again

17. I T T O O K U S 2 Y E A R S T O G E T O U R
F I R S T C U S T O M E R
2010
2017
2012
August 2012: First Customer

18. S T E P 4 : B U I L D S O M E T H I N G
C U S T O M E R S T R U LY L O V E

20. S T E P 5 : F O C U S
• The only thing that matters is building something
customers love
• You don’t need a fancy office
• Don’t go from startup event to startup event
• Ignore media/press
• Don’t worry too much about scaling
• 10 customers that truly love you are better than 100
that don’t really care

21. S T E P 6 : C U LT U R E + T E A M

22. P E O P L E A R E Y O U R M O S T VA L U A B L E
A S S E T
2010
2017
2012
July 2013: 3 Founders + 3 Employees
2013
Jan 2017: 30+
Employees

23. S T E P 6 : C U LT U R E + T E A M
• Vision & Product = What you do
• Culture & Values = How you do it
• Define your culture early on
• Remote vs. office
• Diversity (there’s no choice)
• etc.
• Culture is not about fancy perks, the office or other bs
• It’s about how you decide to work together as a team

24. S T E P 6 : C O R E VA L U E S M AT T E R A L O T
• In Codeship’s case:
• Continuous Improvement
• Customer Focus
• Drive
• Integrity
• Leadership
• Open-mindedness
• Respect
• Transparency

25. S T E P 6 : T E A M & H I R I N G
• Hire people, not skills
• You as a founder have to get extremely good with
hiring
• Fire fast if somebody is not a good fit

26. S T E P 7 : S C A L I N G
• You have customers & a small team => awesome
• Biggest decision regarding scaling:
• Bootstrapping = no funding
• External capital = funding
• Both are good & valid options; none is better per se
• Define what type of company YOU want to build

27. T O O M U C H M O N E Y T O O E A R LY I S
V E RY D A N G E R O U S
2010
2017
2012
February 2013: First small investment
2013
Jan 2014: First
major VC round
2014

28. F U N D R A I S I N G I S O V E R H Y P E D
• Fundraising is NOT a success indicator
• It’s a tool or necessity to grow and survive
• It doesn’t come for free and it creates a lot of work
• But most importantly, it only raises the bar for what
you have to achieve (as an exit)

29. I T N E V E R
E N D S
• Continue talking to
customers all the time
• Keep hiring great people
• Make sure they can work
well together
• Don’t forget to have fun :)

30. Q U E S T I O N S ?
P I N G M E O N T W I T T E R : @ M O R I T Z P L A S S N I G