What is Railsonfire?

"Software is eating the world” as Marc Andreessen says and in this software industrial revolution, software engineers need to release their software in faster cycles and with less bugs. We provide them a hosted continuous testing and especially continuous deployment service to address both of those needs.

Currently, most of the developers are managing the testing environment on their own server, but it is much easier, cheaper and helps to speed up the development when doing it in the cloud. Furthermore, they can concentrate on their core business (eg. on their product or on their customers).

How did you come up with the idea?

While working on various software projects we saw how much of an improvement a dedicated infrastructure for testing can be. But getting that infrastructure up and running was a long and painful process every single time. So we decided to build something that takes care of all the setup and makes starting with this incredibly easy. Continuous deployment as software as a service is a rather new market with a very big potential. Many companies test their software on their own, however, it takes lots of resources (time and money). Therefore, there is a need of exporting this process to the cloud in order to be faster and cheaper. Especially startups have to be as fast as possible and iterate quite often. Services like Railsonfire assure a smooth continuous testing and deployment functionality to automate a lot of painful procedures in the software development cycle.

Why did you decide to participate in the hub:raum accelerator program?

Railsonfire started as a side project while all of us were working in different jobs (other startups or freelancing). We realized that in order to be able to promote our project, we needed to dedicate all of our time to it. So this summer we all decided to quit our job and fully dedicate ourselves to Railsonfire. We applied to the hub:raum accelerator program because we wanted to move to Berlin to take advantage of the startup scene. When we heard the hub:raum accelerator program would happen at betahaus we were even happier. We knew the people behind betahaus for some time already and came by several times over the last years. Also coworking is perfect for us. It is very motivating as we can experience both a fast-paced environment broken up with some more relaxed networking and spare time. As long as we are able to focus on our deadline it is easier to meet people with a similar mindset and have positive feedback in a coworking environment

What are the main difficulties that you faced so far?

We worked on a first iteration of our service for a long time, but it wasn’t always clear to us when we should jump in full time. Although we were sure that we tackle a massive problem and that people are willing to pay for a solution, the overall market size was unclear for a while. We probably should have gone full-time earlier to push our product and company even more.

What are your future goal?

The first goal, once the hub:raum accelerator program ends, is moving to the US, specifically to San Francisco. We believe that it is the best place for a tech startup in the cloud computing industry. We would have the possibility to build relationships with other providers in order to target and conquer our market. In addition, the American market is really important for us as a starting ground to promote Railsonfire all over the world.

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Want to join Railsonfire and other entrepreneurs at betahaus? See how here!