The Emotional Side of Building QA in a Startup

 

Some days I feel like I’m drowning. Other days I want to set my computer on fire.
That’s startup life — an emotional rollercoaster.

Building a QA and automation discipline from scratch in a startup isn’t just about trying to bring order to chaos — or choosing frameworks, workflows, tools, pipelines, and test coverage.
It’s emotional. It’s lonely. It’s that mix of excitement and frustration that only people who’ve been there truly understand.

One moment, you’re on top of the world because your first automated tests finally start to run.
The next, someone pushes an untested “quick fix” straight into your testing environment, undoing hours of validation you’ve already performed — because “we’re moving fast.”
It’s not just about testing — it’s about resilience, communication, and learning when to fight and when to let go.

I’ve been here before — this isn’t my first time building QA from scratch.
And somehow, despite the chaos, I keep finding myself drawn to it. I guess that deep down... I kind of love it. :)

The Lonely Beginning

When you join a startup to build QA from scratch, there’s no manual for what you’re walking into.
There’s no structured documentation, no clear ownership, and usually, no stable testing environment to even start from.

You’re the person who’s supposed to bring order into a system that’s allergic to order.
Everyone’s sprinting. Deploying. Pushing fixes.
And you? - You’re still just trying to figure out where the logs are.

At first, it feels exciting — being the one to build everything from scratch.
You have the freedom to design it your way.
But then it hits you: freedom without structure is just chaos in disguise.

You quickly realize you’re not just testing a product — you’re testing the company’s ability to handle quality itself. And that’s a very different kind of challenge.

Tiny Wins That Keep You Going

In a startup, progress rarely comes in big milestones.
It comes in small, quiet wins — the kind that slowly changes the culture around you.

- Like the first time you hear a developer next to you debating the right way to structure a unit test — and you realize that your effort to define clear coverage for unit and integration tests is becoming part of daily reality.
- Or when your test report finally becomes part of the daily stand-up.
- Or when the onboarding plan you built for your own recruits turns into a shared resource for others.
- Or when you see the action item of building mutable testing environments as part of the Roadmap.
- Or when different teams start approaching you for advice on their own quality gates and testing efforts — because they see the value in what your newly founded team is doing.

Those moments matter more than they seem.
Because they’re not just signs of technical success — they’re signs of cultural change.
You start seeing people talk about quality as part of the conversation, not an afterthought.
You see curiosity replaces resistance.
You see collaboration start to happen naturally.

That’s when you realize the real win isn’t just stable builds — it’s shared ownership.
It’s the moment the team starts caring as much about quality as you do.

Still, there are phases that test you — weeks when progress feels invisible and every path forward looks blocked.
It’s easy to mistake those moments for failure.
But over time you learn they’re just part of the cycle — the natural friction that comes with building something new and meaningful, and if you look closer around you — you will see that you are not the only one feeling this way.

Finding Balance

At some point, you stop trying to win every battle.
You start focusing on the ones that truly matter.

You realize that quality isn’t a destination — it’s a rhythm.
Some days you lead the charge, other days you simply hold the line.

You learn to accept that progress in a startup will never be linear. It’s messy, unpredictable, and often two steps forward, one step back. But with every iteration, the foundation gets stronger — not just the codebase, but the culture around it.

That’s when you know you’ve made it past the chaos.
Not because everything is perfect, but because quality has become part of how the company thinks.
And for anyone who’s ever built QA from scratch, that’s the moment you can finally breathe — and maybe, just maybe, close your laptop without wanting to set it on fire.