By Eydie Cubarrubia
Application simulation developer iRise will give startups a 90-day trial of its software that helps create other software, the company said Monday.
iRise’s product simulates what an application might look like, testing several ideas before a developer writes a single line of code. While it’s a startup itself, iRise says its software reduces development costs while helping companies bring their products to market faster.
The El Segundo, California-based iRise received $15.8 million in a round led by Morgan Stanley Venture Partners in 2005 and was a Red Herring 100 semifinalist last year. The company’s iRise For Entrepreneurs program is aimed at companies on the verge of—or newly flush from—receiving funding.
Executives say iRise has landed about a hundred Fortune 1000 companies as clients so far, and it’s hunting for other clients.
“The entrepreneur program is a seeding strategy… Ultimately every software application is going to be simulated just like every airplane today is simulated before it’s built,” said Mitch Bishop, chief marketing officer at iRise.
Mr. Bishop said companies great and small spend a combined $200 billion on application simulation methods of all kinds, and that iRise can help reduce that figure. With its entrepreneur program, he said iRise can help startups compete for VC dollars by letting companies more clearly show investors their ideas.
To be sure, after the 90-day trial, a startup may be shy about shelling out money for iRise’s application. Prices start at $10,000 and go up to seven figures, depending on the number of users and scale of deployment.
And there are similar companies doing the same thing, such as Toronto, Ontario-based Sofea and San Mateo, California-based Serena Software.
Aiming for Analysts
But Mr. Bishop claims that unlike competitors, its software is aimed at business analysts rather than developers. That puts different departments of a company on the same page to minimize confusion—and the wasted resources that arise—while developing a new product.
One client sang the praises of iRise: AlphaBay, a Salt Lake City-based retail systems software and services provider. CEO Jack Blount credited the simulation software with speeding up development of AlphaBay’s services.
AlphaBay“iRise’s software was easy enough to use that the other founders and I were able to get up and running on it in a matter of days,” Mr. Blount said in a statement.
AlphaBay was able to quickly create a “lifelike visualization of multi-channel retail services” and “shaved significant time off the development cycle,” Mr. Blount said.
Mr. Bishop said other applications created with iRise software include: online banking systems, electronic medical records systems, internal HR portals, green-screen mainframe applications, and PDA interfaces.