🦄 Unicorner Startup of the Week:

Trag

✍️ Notes from the Editors

Any engineers in the house (besides the two of us)? 🙋‍♂️

News flash: bad code exists. But reviews exist to keep bad code from existing… ideally. The reality is a lot of code isn’t properly covered. A lot of not-so-good code does manage to get through the cracks! Trag’s bet is on improving the process of reviewing code for cleaner, more bug free, and standardized code. Not a bad bet.

Looking into the challenges engineers face, we present an interesting opportunity from this week’s author, Maguire—he’s looking for a technical co-founder for his company Hokyo. Hokyo is building the unified data layer for multi-discipline engineering teams. If you have broad software experience and can appreciate (or more correctly, want to solve) the challenges caused by scattered engineering data, reply to this email and we’ll connect you.

- Arek and Ethan 🦄

AI Code Review for Developers

Trag allows organizations to use plain English to enforce standards and quality throughout their code repositories. Using natural language rules provides companies with an easy way to exercise control over large codebases and feel confident in the software they are building. It offers features like automated code review, developer tool and command line interface (CLI) integrations, and support for any programming language.

🔗 Check it out: usetrag.com

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💰 Business Model

Trag is offered as a subscription-based product that currently charges per code repository but will soon charge per repository contributor. It is free for open source repositories.

📈 Traction and Fundraising

• Raised a $225k Pre-Seed round in May 2024

• Achieved 50% month over month user growth

• Reached #1 Product of the Month on Product Hunt

• Currently raising Seed round

📖 Founder Story

The founding team brings together seasoned entrepreneurs with deep roots in Armenia's startup ecosystem. Having collaborated on previous ventures, they bring strong team chemistry, mutual trust, and nearly 30 years of collective software engineering expertise. Trag emerged from their firsthand struggle with maintaining code quality across large codebases throughout their careers. Strong technical and business backgrounds and a deep understanding of customer needs have been crucial to Trag’s success.

🔮 Our Analysis

Trag allows teams to express coding standards in plain English—a simple but powerful innovation that transforms how organizations maintain code quality. Trag represents an evolution in code quality tools that combines sophisticated traditional analysis methods with an intuitive natural language interface. This combination architecture is one of the main things that sets Trag apart from its competitors. By balancing expensive AI model operations with a powerful internal platform, it provides a more sustainable business model without compromising on capabilities that customers need.

What makes Trag truly powerful is how it enables teams to encode their best practices into automated rules using natural language patterns. Traditional methods require complex tool configuration or engineers to manually review all changes. This problem is exacerbated by the rise of AI-generated code which pressures organizations to maintain higher quality checks and balances before code reaches the consumer. Trag’s approach not only saves engineering time, but ensures consistent standards across large codebases, giving teams confidence their code meets organizational requirements.

The code review space is quite competitive, but Trag has several unique advantages over competitors. The company’s hybrid architecture allows consumers to get first-rate experiences and control over their codebase while allowing the Trag team more flexibility in pricing and margins. Even more important is the founders’ direct experience with the struggles their customers face, and with their strong technical and business backgrounds, Trag is poised to deliver huge value to development teams worldwide.

📚 Further reading

• Product Hunt Trag Reviews [Product Hunt]

Written by Maguire Papay

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Nothing in this email constitutes investment or legal advice. Readers should conduct their own research before making investment decisions.