How Rundoo engineers pilot directly with clients

At most software companies, the distance between the person writing the code and the person living with it is measured in layers: a support team, a product manager, a roadmap, a ticket queue. At Rundoo, that distance is measured in feet, and sometimes those feet are standing in a greenhouse.

Day one is at a store, not a desk

When an engineer joins Rundoo, their first project is not a project at all. They spend a full day working at one of our clients' stores, ringing up sales, fielding the weird returns, and watching where the software helps and where it gets in the way. We do this because we believe something simple: the closer the engineer is to the client, the better the product. You cannot fake the empathy you get from holding the line at a register while the contractor behind you checks his watch.

3-5 pilot clients

That closeness does not end after onboarding. When an engineer gets staffed on a new feature, the first thing they do is identify three to five pilot clients who need it most. Then they build with those clients, shipping early versions, watching them used in the wild, and iterating until the clients genuinely love it. Not tolerate it, not submit feedback about it. Love it.

My turn: gift cards

For me, that feature was gift cards, which we built as part of our expansion into lawn and garden. One of my pilot clients was Country Gardens & Nursery in Heber City, Utah, and they did not hold back. Every assumption I had made at my desk got pressure-tested at their counter: how a card should ring up when the line is six gardeners deep, how balances should behave across seasons, how a busy team member sells one without thinking about it.