Most internal bug-fixing workflows are completely disconnected from the activity that caused the bug, consisting mostly of written reports from users. Jam’s The founders wanted to change that by automatically collecting a bunch of error-related information and delivering a complete package to engineering to fix bugs much faster.
Today, the startup announced a $9 million Series A to help them continue to build on this idea.
So how does it work? “Jam is a browser extension that connects the development tools and all the underlying information under the application [you’re using]. When someone who has Jam installed sees an error, they simply click on the Jam extension and copy a link to their clipboard to share with engineering,” Jam co-founder Dani Grant told TechCrunch.
The link includes a 30-second instant video replay of what was happening in the moments before the error occurred, so the engineer can see exactly what happened. The link also includes console logs, network request timing information, and even custom metadata like user ID, group ID, anything related to the company.
Grant said this differs significantly from a typical bug fix report, which often lacks content or detail and is usually a human-generated report of what happened, which can often be vague and vague. This means that the engineer, who collects the report, has to do a lot of detective work to figure out what the problem is, or if there even was a real problem. Jam arms them with enough information to fully understand the nature of the error and what they need to do to fix it.
Grant and co-founder Mohd Irtefa cut their teeth at Cloudflare in product management and saw firsthand how difficult it could be to communicate a bug to engineers. They saw an opportunity and launched the company in 2020 with the goal of making reporting and fixing bugs simpler and more efficient.
The two founders spent quite a bit of time trying to come up with an elegant solution to the problem and actually created seven iterations before the eighth one did the trick. In April 2022, they opened it to the world. “One of the things we did differently with the eighth edition is we didn’t let it out the door until it was so high quality that it was ready for production. And actually, I think that’s part of the reason why this has done so well,” he said.
The product is free for individual users, but $10 per user month for groups. Custom pricing is also available for high-volume enterprise users.
Grant says they have 15 employees supporting about 75,000 users. She aspires to keep her team lean. “I really believe in these small groups of seniors. I think they are powerful. I think they can do more than big teams,” he said. “What I saw at Cloudflare is that when things were important, they were [actually] put fewer people in it, not more. I hope we can become like Instagram, a company of about 20 people supporting a million users.”
Today’s $8.9 million round was led by GGV Capital with participation from Figma Ventures and a number of high-profile industry angels. The firm says that partners Hans Tung and Glenn Solomon are leading GGV’s investment, and that this is only the third time these two partners have joined forces in an investment with the other two being Airbnb and Slack. Jam’s founders hope to follow in those footsteps.
