SAN FRANCISCO, CA and BERLIN, GERMANY--(Marketwired - August 09, 2016) - test IO, Europe's leading provider of continuous human software testing, today announced the appointment of Philip Soffer as CEO. Soffer is a Silicon Valley startup veteran who has led product, engineering, and marketing efforts at Plumtree Software, Lithium Technologies, and Piazza. He is charged with leading a vigorous expansion of North American operations after a year of spectacular growth in Europe. Soffer plans to aggressively hire key personnel starting in the Bay Area before growing headcount in additional cities.

test IO's SaaS platform enables customers like Lacoste, Samsonite, and Deutsche Bahn to test their web and mobile apps continuously with real people, using real devices. These human-powered tests complement organizations' automated tests and internal QA testing, giving companies the confidence to ship software faster.

"I was the dream customer for test IO throughout most of my professional life; I know from bitter experience that shipping software is hard, particularly shipping something that works for all of your customers," said Soffer, interviewed on test IO's blog. "Android runs on almost anything, and the Internet of Things opens up a Pandora's Box of user experience problems. Don't even get me started on chatbots."

Soffer began his career running product management at Plumtree Software, which invented the enterprise portal market before going public in June 2002. He went on to lead engineering, product, and product marketing at customer community vendor Lithium Technologies before heading up marketing and business development at social learning platform leader Piazza. Soffer then founded his own start-up, Taproot Networks. He has also served on the Board of Directors of Naviance. Throughout his startup career, Soffer has helped create more than $1 billion worth of value.

Soffer's experience resonates well with test IO's crowdsource testing platform, which is frequently used in agile development organizations.

"I lived the agile dream at Lithium, moving toward continuous delivery with regular sprints and loads of test automation," Soffer added. "I learned that you need a testable product with deep automation coverage, but when you care about the customer experience, call a person. And at test IO, we combine people and technology to provide test insights to organizations that depend on software."

test IO's continuous human software testing provides developers, QA engineers, and product teams incomparable insight into the state of their apps wherever they are in the delivery cycle, from conception to production. test IO customers can run a variety tests as often as they like, and adding new tests and capacity is as simple as any cloud-based service.

"Phil is the perfect choice to lead test IO as we scale operations in the U.S. and continue to expand internationally," said company chairman, Frederik Fleck. "He's managed a large agile development organization, and he has deep experience in online community and collaboration products in the SaaS environment."

"I've known Phil for over 15 years, starting at Plumtree where he was one of the early leaders who built both the company and the entire market space," said Dominic Ang, Managing Partner at Turn/River Capital, which led test IO's A Round last year. "We're thrilled to have his leadership at test IO."

Soffer will split his time between test IO's headquarters in Berlin, Germany and its U.S. base in San Francisco, where he plans to grow the company's sales and marketing operations.

About test IO

test IO pioneered and specializes in continuous human testing for agile software development. Over a hundred customer-obsessed organizations -- and their developers, quality assurance engineers, and product managers -- rely on the power and flexibility of test IO's self-service platform to ship their software faster with the quality their customers demand. Originally founded in Germany as testCloud in 2011, the company is headquartered in Berlin, Germany with offices in San Francisco.

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