Returning to Slush: Game Analytics, Gizlo, Plumbr & Usetrace

Fall has arrived and Slush 2015 is approaching with over 500 startups already registered to the event. As well as promising newcomers, several young ventures are back after attending Slush in previous years. Next up are fours startups that are making their return to Slush during November 11-12th. Meet Game Analytics, Gizlo, Plumbr and Usetrace — four startups that deserve a closer look at.

Game Analytics

Gaming and data are among the main themes at Slush 2015. Game Analytics  combines both of these industries with their mission to help game developers to leverage their data. The company provides a free analytics platform for game developers to analyze their metrics and performance of their games. “The insight generated from our data leads to unique innovation that is data optimized and automated for the biggest problems in gaming”, explains Nick Roveta, Vice President of business intelligence at Game Analytics.

When asked about the company’s future, Roveta describes that Game Analytics is fortunate to be at the forefront of a very interesting point in the industry — the intersection of gaming and data. The short-term future of the company is to use machine learning to test, create and optimize new products for the biggest opportunities on top of their huge dataset. Examples include data driven advertising and acquisition, churn prevention, and dynamic content. In the long-run, Roveta sees that the company will power the gaming data ecosystem by opening the platform up to selected partners to release Game Analytics data driven products for their over 20,000 developers. “We know our huge scale in gaming data coupled with data science can give Game Analytics developers the unique edge over any other solution.” Roveta says.

In November, Game Analytics will return to Slush. Above all, Game Analytics is looking forward to the high quality of speakers at the event, the number and level of leading companies attending and surprisingly, the weather.

Gizlo

Gizlo is an app that enables customers to give feedback directly to the places they shop and eat. In exchange for their thoughts, customers are rewarded with points that can be exchanged in return for a reward. The real-time data, given every day, allows the reviewed company to improve their business based on customer experiences.

The company was founded in 2014 with a single mission: to create a global standard for giving feedback. According to Eemeli Ahonen, Head of Marketing at Gizlo, the goal will be achieved with the combination of professional, talented and committed people with a startup mindset. “Our team is built to be great and we are backed by people who have done a great work,” he states.  The strength of Gizlo is the ease of giving feedback. In the future, Gizlo wants to make it possible for people to give feedback wherever they want – through one channel.

According to Ahonen, the company gained great investor connections and one key recruitment from Slush 2014. “At the moment, we are raising our next funding round and recruiting for key positions, so we are looking to meet experienced people who share our vision and fit in our team”, Ahonen explains about their expectations for Slush 2015. For now, it seems that Gizlo is ready for their next round.

Plumbr

Plumbr is currently the only Java Performance Monitoring solution that automatically detects the root cause for performance issues. Plumbr monitors the IT system of a company. When that system slows down, the software directly identifies the malfunctioning of the source code. “When the server is in real usage it can become slow because of a mistake in the code. Often these types of problems are very hard to track manually”, explains Priit Potter, CEO and co-founder of Plumbr.

When asked about Plumbr’s next step, Potter was excited about their new product improvement that is set to launch in the beginning of October. The team has devoted a great amount of time to customer research, and the product improvement will focus more on user experience. Currently, Plumbr informs the customer which file contains a problem, but it doesn’t tell how many end-users have actually suffered from it. “There are always smaller or bigger problems in the code, but you don’t want to waste time with all of them, because you anyway write new codes all the time and lots of new problems appear and you just don’t have the time to create the ideal code”, Potter explains.

Thus, starting from October, Plumbr will be able to link the end-user impact with the problem in the source code. Plumbr will alert the customer if it detects a serious problem. If it doesn’t detect any serious problems, it will show a green light. With these improvements, Plumbr seems to be developing the product in order to make the system management simpler for their customers. “There will come a day that there will be no slow applications anymore and we are working to make that day come sooner”, concludes Potter.

Usetrace

A great amount of software projects lag behind the schedule or exceed the budget.  This is an issue that Usetrace wants to alleviate with more efficient software testing. With Usetrace, automated cloud computers test the site by repeating functions similarly to how real customers would use the service. Traces are run periodically and whenever bugs are found, Usetrace informs the customer instantly before the end-user is affected.

The team behind the startup is passionate about the information technology industry and the idea of Usetrace was inspired by own experiences from the field. Usetrace aims to solve the problems that occur with other techniques, mainly the need for professional and inefficiency. As the CEO Eero Heino states, “This is a service that I would have always wanted to have in all of my projects.”

Usetrace has expanded globally and already has customers on four continents. “Companies that have started to use Usetrace have been extremely pleased”, Heino states. For instance, ComputerWeekly.com wrote how call center software maker LeadDesk had cut the time used to release testing in half, decreased the amount of manual testing work and now has 50 percent fewer reported user interface bugs. It seems that Usetrace is on a good path. For the future, the company has a clear goal:  to be the best software-testing product within four years.

The article is written by Venla Väkeväinen, Editor at Slush News. Slush is the biggest startup and investor event in Northern Europe, organized on November 11-12th in Helsinki, Finland. Read more about the event at slush.org.