🦄 Unicorner Startup of the Week:

Kropply

✍️ Notes from the Editors

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As engineers, we just love developer tools. At least, the truly useful ones.

Kropply might be very early on in its journey, but it’s trying to solve a pain point that even the most experienced developers deal with, often daily.

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- Arek and Ethan 🦄

AI autocorrect for runtime errors

There are many types of bugs, or code errors, developers might run into while programming. Runtime errors are among the hardest to catch, because they occur only after the code has been run, and can be difficult to detect before the code has been run. Runtime errors are often inevitable in the software development process, and Kropply is a software tool that leverages AI to help developers debug such errors.

🔗 Check it out: kropply.com

💰 Business Model

As an early-stage company, Kropply is not currently charging users. However, Kropply plans to monetize through an intermediary — essentially, it will not charge the end user (the developer). This means that long-term, it will implement a B2B model that charges companies or organizations based on their developer’s use of Kropply.

📈 Traction and Fundraising

• Started in 2023 as part of the Loyola Marymount University business incubator program

• Currently participating in the Alchemist Accelerator in SF with a demo day approaching in May

• Has had 200 adopters

👫 Founders

• Panos Halios, CEO

• Marcus Lewis, CPO

• Andrew Demirdjian, CMO

📖 Founder Story

Kropply’s three co-founders met at Loyola Marymount University at the school’s business incubator. CEO Panos Halios has been passionate about software development and writing code since he was young, and was the one who originally pitched the idea of Kropply for a pitch competition. From there, the head of the Entrepreneurship program at Loyola connected him with other students interested in entrepreneurship, where he met CPO Marcus Lewis and CMO Andrew Demirdjian, both of whom had prior experience with startups, business, and product/marketing. 

The three joined forces, and have since brought Kropply to the Alchemist Accelerator program. Halios is the technical expert who also understands the process and pain point of debugging. Meanwhile, Lewis is focused on the product strategy, getting feedback from the ideal users and understanding what opportunities/problems they can tackle as they continue fleshing out the product. Lastly, Demirdjian is focused on growth hacking and getting Kropply into the hands of relevant users.

💼 Opportunities

Right now, Kropply has a small team (less than 10 full-time employees) and is currently preparing for its accelerator demo day in May, so there are no official listings. However, in the near future, the team will be looking for:

• Senior level engineers

• General feedback from developers who use their tool

Keep an eye out for opportunities soon!

🔮 Our Analysis

Anybody writing code, from engineers at work to someone hacking up a side project, will encounter runtime errors, resulting in time spent debugging. In the enterprise context, in a team of multiple developers, each person spends time debugging their own code prior to integrating their code with each other’s. This time spent debugging takes away from collaboration across engineers. Kropply’s mission is simple: to help developers focus on building and not debugging. 

As an early-stage company, it is focused on getting in front of ideal customers, ie. developers, and getting feedback. The more the team can do this, the more they can not only grow the product’s adoption, but see what types of errors people are running into and what recommended fixes work. As they are leveraging AI, they can learn from the debugging process of their early adopters, meaning Kropply will get better, more efficient, and versatile as time goes on. 

Given how synonymous debugging is with writing code, and the current buzz surrounding AI, it’s no surprise that AI-based debugging tools is a crowded space, with large tech giants investing resources as well as small startups building solutions. Even though Kropply is entering a crowded market, it has the benefit of not being tied down to a specific solution, set of parameters, or use case. With the company currently building, iterating, and learning from user feedback, it’s well-positioned to pivot and hone in on the niche that presents the best opportunity. 

Lastly, one thing that stands out about Kropply is its co-founders. The backgrounds and respective expertise of all three of them feel perfectly complementary with no major holes or blind spots. Continuing to iterate and grow at such an early stage is challenging, but with early momentum with its accelerator program, early adoption, all paired with a strong founding team, Kropply is off to a great start as they look to make debugging as simple as clicking a button.

📚 Further Reading

• Kropply’s Product Hunt Page

• Kropply’s “Code & Caffeine” Podcast

Written by Matthew Huo

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