The idea is to improve beta testing activities for startups. Because I like to focus on problems, I've separated the post into sections based on the problems I'm familiar with in relation to beta testing. These could all be individual products, all one product, whatever.

Problem - hard to find *great* beta testers.

The following tweet from Rick Olson stuck with me:

I would define a great beta tester as someone who's responsive, thoughtful, and demographically relevant.

I envision a community of people who are enthusiastic about beta testing (I think they exist). Members of this community could build reputation by beta testing apps and receiving feedback from the product owners. Members could be matched or recommended based on demographic information, interests, skills etc.

Problem - reinventing the wheel

When a web application enters private beta, you'll need to collect invite requests, survey responses, build an invite system for those users to invite other people, have a way to invite those initial users, manage that list of users etc. This stuff is somewhat trivial for an experienced web developer, but it takes valuable time away from building the product.

I see this as a centralized cloud service with embeddable UI. Time is the greatest resource for a developer, people will pay for things that save them time, I would.

Your thoughts?

I'd love to hear what you think about this idea. My intent is to start a conversation and hopefully spark some ideas for you.

Somebody already did this!

Sweet! Let me know in the comments and I'll add the links up here.

• Paul Rosania suggests http://www.utest.com/