Rent the Runway’s first iOS team launches Runway, an easier way to coordinate app releases – ProWellTech

A team of engineers and designers for mobile apps from companies like Rent the Runway, ClassPass, Kickstarter and others are now starting their own startup. runwayto resolve the most common issues encountered with the mobile app release cycle. With Runway, teams can connect their existing tools to track the progress of an app’s release, automate many of the manual steps along the way, and better simplify communication between everyone involved.

“Mobile app releases are exercises in herding cats, we often say. There are a lot of moving parts and a lot of fragmentation between tools, ”explains Runway co-founder Gabriel Savitwho met his co-founders – Isabel Barrera, David Filion, and Matt Varghese – when they all worked together as the first mobile app team at Rent the Runway.

“The result is a lot of time and waste, a lot of back and forth over Slack to make sure things are ready to ship,” he says.

Typically, multidisciplinary teams that involve engineers, products, marketing, design, quality assurance, and more keep each other informed of the app’s progress using spreadsheets and other shared documents in addition to Slack.

In the meantime, the actual work in preparation for the release is managed using a variety of separate tools such as GitHub, JIRA, Trello, Bitrise, CircleCI, and others.

runway is designed to act as an integration layer for all of the team’s tools. Using a simple OAuth authentication flow, the team connects the tools they use to Runway, then configures some settings that Runway can use to understand their unique workflow – such as: B. what branching strategy they pursue, how they create release branches, how they mark releases and soon.

In other words, teams train runway to understand how they work – they don’t have to change their own processes or behaviors to support runway.

Once set up, Runway reads the information from the various integration points, interprets it and takes action. Everyone in the team can log into Runway via the web interface and see exactly where they are in the release cycle and what still needs to be done.

“We shape this glue, this connective tissue between all the moving parts and the tools, creating a true source of truth that everyone can relate to and synchronize or collect. That makes collaboration easier and better, and brings people on the same page, ”says Savit.

Credit: runway

As the work progresses, Runway helps identify problems such as: B. Missing JIRA tags. These tags are then automatically replenished. This can also help avoid other mistakes, such as: B. If the wrong build is selected for submission.

Another automation concerns Slack communication. Because Runway understands who’s responsible for what, it can route Slack notifications and updates to specific members of the team. This will reduce the noise in the Slack channel and make sure everyone knows what to work on.

Currently, Runway is focused on all parts of the mobile app release cycle from launch to delivery to the actual App Store releases. On its near-term roadmap, the company plans to add connections to things like bug reporting and beta testing platforms to its integrations. In the long term, the company would like to expand its workflow and launch apps on other platforms such as the desktop.

Credit: runway

The startup is currently in pilot trials with a few early customers including ClassPass, Kickstarter, and Capsule, as well as a few others. These customers, although not yet paying customers, have already used the system in production for over 40 app release cycles.

Pricing for the startup starts at $ 400 per app per month. This enables, among other things, unlimited release managers and unlimited apps, access to all integrations and support for iOS and Android. Custom pricing is offered to customers who want a higher level of customer support and advice.

The startup doesn’t have an exact ETA of when to launch publicly as it works to have every customer on board and work closely with them to meet their specific integration needs for the moment. Today Runway supports integrations with the App Store, Google Play, GitHub, JIRA, Slack, Circle, Fastlane, GitLab, Bitrise, Linear, Jenkins and others, but can add other integrations based on customer requirements.

Most of the Runway team is based in New York and is currently participating in Y Combinator’s Winter 2021 virtual program. The company has not yet started a starting round.