In this episode of the No Reserve podcast presented by BidWrangler, host Tim Peters is joined by Andy Harbick. Together as the co-founders of BidWrangler, they discuss their journey building their online bidding platform. They delve into principles that allowed BidWrangler to aggregate demand effectively, resist quick gains, add value to the platform, and embrace strategies benefiting the entire community. Additionally, they highlight the significance of automated testing in ensuring software quality, developer responsibility, and continuous improvement, reflecting on the complexities of mobile-centric operations, technical challenges with app development, and evolving platform policies.

Guest Background

Andy shares his background, including experiences at Amazon and Rosetta Stone.

Starting BidWrangler

Tim and Andy discuss the genesis of BidWrangler, which evolved from a Startup Weekend event in 2013 at James Madison University. They also discuss challenges faced in transitioning from a prototype to a functional, market-ready platform. They also share challenges with mobile app development, including platform compatibility and app store policies.

Evolution of Technology

Tim and Andy share the complexity of managing platform policies over time, leading to improvements in app deployment. They also discuss stressful aspects of early-stage operations, including dealing with scheduled and asynchronous jobs at scale.

Quotable Moments:

"We built a foundation, an architecture, and a platform that then allowed us to continue to build more and more components on top of that to serve auctioneers' needs."

"We learned a ton. We talked to a lot of people that had a lot of opinions about what we were doing right, what we were doing wrong, and we came back and ended up asking for advice."

Links Mentioned

https://bidwrangler.com