BugBuster

Originating as a spinoff from the Operating Systems Laboratory (LABOS) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL), BugBuster was established in 2011 to address inefficiencies in software quality assurance. The founding team, consisting of Olivier Crameri (CEO), Renault John Lecoultre (CTO), and Professor Willy Zwaenepoel (Chief Scientist), leveraged years of academic research in program analysis to create the company. Professor Zwaenepoel's extensive background in operating and distributed systems, particularly in software testing, was foundational to the venture.

The company engineers and markets a cloud-based platform designed to automate the bug detection process for web applications. This service targets web developers and quality assurance teams, aiming to drastically reduce the time and cost associated with manual testing. The business operates on a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, providing its tools to clients through subscriptions. The platform is built to handle applications focused on HTML5 and JavaScript cross-platform standards and can be used to test a variety of web properties, including e-commerce sites and applications built with Magento or PHP.

BugBuster's core product is a web testing platform that employs smart bug detection robots. It combines fully automatic exploration of a client's application code with a JavaScript API that allows developers to specify functional properties for more detailed testing. The system executes the application's code, identifies bugs, and provides graphical reports detailing their exact location. During its beta phase, which involved hundreds of users, the technology successfully identified bugs in 89% of the applications tested, suggesting a potential to cut testing time and costs by a factor of five to ten. The company has secured $2 million in funding over three rounds, including a Series A round of $1 million in November 2013, with investors like Polytech Ventures, the Hasler Foundation, and Venturelab.

Keywords: automated testing, bug detection, software quality assurance, web application testing, EPFL spinoff, program analysis, SaaS, JavaScript API, HTML5 testing, continuous testing, software development tools, QA automation, code analysis, functional testing, regression testing, bug tracking, ecommerce testing, test automation platform, Olivier Crameri, Renault John Lecoultre