Meet Patrick Joubert, CEO of Ponicode and team. Ponicode is on a mission to clean up the land of code while making developper’s lives easier. Read on to find out more.

In today’s increasingly digitalised world, almost everything we depend upon – from the most mundane household articles to our phones, computers, work tools to transport systems to pretty much…well, everything…- is run by software.

Software is made up of millions of lines of code that power our world. So it’s interesting that in our automated environment the coding process is still manual, leaving ample room for software bugs.

And software flaws mean software vulnerabilities. Veracode’s recent report on the State of Software Security, stated that as much as 76% of applications contain security flaws, 24% of which are classed as “very severe”. This means that attackers can potentially take full control of vulnerable systems, steal sensitive data, or trigger denials-of-service after successful exploitation.

Serial tech founder and CEO, Patrick Joubert, came up with the bug-busting idea of creating a code-quality assistant after selling his second company, Recast.AI (a conversational AI platform for chatbot devs) to SAP in 2018. 

“In an era of wide-scale digitalisation, I found it incredible that coding should be so time- consuming and that so many programs contain errors and recurrent bugs – sometimes with disastrous consequences”.

Cue Ponicode.

Introducing Ponicode

Ponicode is a platform for developers that uses AI, machine learning and language processing, to test computer programs. Available in three coding languages (Javascript, Python, Typescript) and growing, the AI assistant continually learns from millions of lines of code.

Therefore, if you’re a developer, you can simply plug in Ponicode’s extension to VS code (Microsoft’s integrated developer environment – IDE) and with one click it will seamlessly assist you in generating exhaustive unit tests as you code allowing you to spend more time innovating and less time writing tedious and time-consuming tests. As Ponicode says, the aim here is to challenge the code and not the coder!

For companies, Ponicode’s solution improves product quality, speeds up time-to-market and helps drive company innovation.

Patrick and his co-founders, Benedetta del Canton, Edmond Aouad , Simon Guilliams with their team of technology whizzes, launched the beta version of the platform last summer (2020) and the feedback from the dev community so far has been outstanding.

Why Ponicode?

Ponicode’s solution was waiting to be invented. Despite today’s increasing dependence on software, the industry is lacking the necessary time-saving tools to ensure code accuracy. Kind of like the industrial revolution waiting to happen.

When Patrick first told Breega Co-Founding Partner, Maximilien Bacot, his plans for cleaning up the world of coding, Max was instantly convinced by Ponicode’s potential. Breega invested in Ponicode last July, leading their € 3 million round followed by Kima, silicon valley investor Plug & Play Ventures and Bpifrance. And things are going well. Less than a year after its beta launch, Ponicode has nearly 6000, extremely enthusiastic users.

Max say’s:

“Ponicode solves a real pain point for developers, providing them with an innovative and seamless correcting tool that allows them to save time and produce better code. Breega is delighted to be helping Patrick and his team conquer this extremely promising market.”

Why Breega?

Patrick was already familiar with Breega’s entrepreneurial model and its founder support system so when it was time to raise, he got in touch:

“Working with Breega means working with entrepreneurs. Their support system is invaluable especially in the early stages. So far, we’ve received help and advice on our business and marketing and when it’s time to scale further, we will definitely be counting on their recruitment squad!”

So what’s next for Ponicode? According to Patrick, in 2021 will be about continuing to grow their community and commercialising their platform. Although it’s only been a few months, companies like Microsoft are already active users and others are following suit. Beyond cleaning up the world of code, Ponicode is ultimately looking to become an international developer support platform offering a whole range of tools (check out their latest one, Dogstring), for devs and managers. And with team Breega on hand to help guide them, we’d say that this Ponicode is definitely hot-to-trot.

Discover Ponicode