ProtoTest pivots from QA staffing to mobile-app lab

ProtoTest moved downtown from the Denver Tech Center last fall and has since launched a mobile-app lab and made 12 new hires to grow to 40 employees in all. The lab now represents about a third of both revenue and staff for the company.

CEO and Founder Pete Dignan says the company will transition all of its business to the lab by the end of 2014, but the number of employees will remain about the same.

"Mobile is eating the world," says Dignan. "It's growing so fast, and there's no end in sight. From a QA perspective, very few companies have found a way to do a good job with that."

Dignan founded the company in 1998 after realizing there was no good way to debug with his previous employer, MSHOW. "We worked all night to find a bug," he says. "We found it and killed it, and I walked out in the morning thinking, 'I've never worked anyplace that did a good job with software QA.'"

Dignan subsequently launched ProtoTest with MSHOW as its first customer. The company moved from QA testing and debugging to QA staffing, grew to about 40 employees, and Dignan left the company from 2009 to 2011 to run CORE Colorado. Upon his return to ProtoTest, "It became really hard to differentiate," says Dignan.

The resulting pivot to an internal QA lab for mobile apps has opened them up to an international market, whereas staffing services are largely local. ProtoTest's client roster includes American Express, WebMD, Whole Foods and DirecTV.

The company's initial 3,500-square-foot space at 1999 Broadway could hit 8,500 square feet next year. "I like the energy," says Dignan says the move from DTC. "The ecosystem has just exploded and it feels richer to me than the Tech Center."