Often we here at TEST Huddle want to address the needs of our community. One topic that we felt that we should cover that hasn’t been discussed much in testing blogs, forums and other locations is the testing start-up. We want to highlight software testing companies that have been started by software testers. We want to show you how they started out, what products or services they are offering and how these guys manage to move from testing to managing their own company.
Many of the authors we feature started and run their own companies. Often they have to multi-task by not just managing the testing but being aware of and managing marketing, finance and all the other issues that come with running your own company.
As part of our continued focus on aspects of software testing that is not highlighted in the industry that often, we are bring you the TEST Huddle Start-Up series. The series will be published every second Tuesday. Before you check out the posts, let us introduce you to the contributors to the series.
So each and every month on the second and final Tuesday of that month, we will be bringing you a new blog post from one of our start-up authors about their company, work and lots more.
Gordon Baisley
Before founding Quast, Gordon’s previous four roles involved leading large QA and Test functions at major technology-focused organisations. This included leading the Test functions for EE and Eircom, the UK and Ireland’s largest Telecommunications companies respectively, as well as being Director of Quality Assurance at IFDS, the UK’s leading Fund Administrator, as it launched new business lines for Wealth Management and Retirement and Insurance Solutions.
Common to all these roles were significant structural transformation within the companies, which meant that their QA and Testing requirements needing restructuring as well. As result, Gordon has developed a specialisation in designing systems that meet an organisation’s changing requirements, delivering change and building high performing teams to deliver on current and future requirements. His success in building a great management team at IFDS was recognised when he and his management team won Best Test Management Team at The European Software Testing Awards (TESTA) in October 2014.
In founding Quast, Gordon is looking to bring the same qualities to his clients as he did when working in-house, helping businesses build best in class QA and Test functions to fit their needs.
Gordon’s posts will be published on the second Tuesday of the month. Read his first post here.
Gordon Marsh 
Gordon is the founder of CodeFuse Technology. CodeFuse reduces software development time by making regression testing faster, better and easier. Gordon graduated with a 1st class degree in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at Sussex University and also holds an MBA from Imperial College with a specialisation in Entrepreneurship. He has worked successfully for blue-chip, SME and start-up companies. His passion is software quality and making sure that continuous improvement is used to enhance quality efforts across the entire development lifecycle.
Gordon’s posts will be published on the last Tuesday of the month.
Simon Tomes
Simon began this series on TEST Huddle. Simon is the co-founder of Qeek. His mission is to help product makers get intimate with their products and features. Simon love tech, music, startups, quality assurance, design, business culture, organisational behaviour and playing the drums. Before Qeek, Simon cut my chops in various QA and Dev leadership roles at Rightmove, Gumtree and eBay. Sion states that he believe’s in simplicity, transparency and collaboration.
Simon started contributing to the Start-Up series last year. He recently wrote his last contribution to the series but we hope he will return in the future.
Read all the start-up series posts by checking out the Start-Up series in our blog.