Open Core Ventures (OCV) is proud to announce the launch of MCPJam, a platform to test and debug MCP servers built on the open source project of the same name. MCPJam provides developers with comprehensive testing tools and enterprise-grade evaluation frameworks for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, ensuring they work reliably across all client environments and LLM interactions.
Co-founders Matthew Wang, CEO, and Marcelo Jimenez, CTO, are former Asana software engineers who intimately understand both AI product development and enterprise software requirements. The duo first met as summer interns at Asana in 2022, part of a small cohort of just 30 engineers, and discovered a shared passion for cutting-edge technology. Matthew worked on AI automations and the Asana MCP server, while Marcelo brings deep expertise from seven different teams at Asana, including API development, authorization systems, and infrastructure reliability.
The MCP ecosystem needs reliable testing
The Model Context Protocol, released by Anthropic in November 2024, represents a fundamental shift toward an agentic future where LLMs use tools. Enterprise adoption is already accelerating, with companies like Asana, PayPal, Vercel, and GitHub building MCP servers to prepare for this agentic transformation. "Every company with an API will also build an MCP server or is already on its way to do so," said Marcelo, highlighting the massive scale of this opportunity.
However, the current testing landscape is fundamentally broken. Matthew's firsthand experience at Asana illustrates the problem perfectly: "We didn't adequately test the Asana MCP, and there was a security vulnerability that took down the server for a while." This isn't an isolated incident—companies building MCP servers often lack the proper testing infrastructure to ensure reliability, security, and performance.
“Designing a good MCP server is hard,” said Matthew. “Developers have to make sure their servers’ tool descriptions and outputs are designed well such that LLMs can understand how to use the server, and mitigate hallucinations. They also have to make sure that the servers behave properly across all MCP client environments, different LLM models, and even agent interactions.” MCPJam evaluates LLM performance on your MCP server.
Existing solutions fall short of enterprise needs. Anthropic's own inspector, while open source, was weeks behind the MCP spec and didn’t have a clear roadmap. “We thought this was great opportunity to build a high-quality product around it. We forked the Anthropic inspector, and then we built our own product roadmap. One of the highest demanded features was an LLM playground which lets you test your server against a real LLM, in a real environment. That was something people were asking Anthropic to build, but they never built it, so we did.”
Meanwhile, established players like Postman are retrofitting their API services to support MCP, rather than building MCP-native solutions. "We are an MCP-first company. We can move faster, and we have more domain expertise than Postman," said Matthew. “If an MCP server works on MCPJam, it’ll work anywhere.”
From developer tool to enterprise platform
MCPJam's open core strategy leverages its open source foundation to capture both developer mindshare and enterprise revenue. The open source MCPJam Inspector has already demonstrated strong product-market fit, growing from 200 to 1,000+ GitHub stars in just two months with OCV's support, while building a thriving community of 120+ Discord members.
While they have primarily focused on testing and debugging, the pair plan to release a MCP evals framework as a premium product. “Our MCP evals benchmarks the performance of your MCP server across all environments and LLMs,” said Marcelo. “Build that into your CI/CD pipeline, and we can monitor whether changes to the MCP server made an improvement or introduced a regression,” said Matthew. “Evals are critical to understanding where your server lacks in design quality”
Developer experience and open source
The open source foundation serves as both a superior product and a trust-building mechanism. "Open source breaks down the barrier to adoption,” said Matthew. “MCP is so new that there is a lack of trust with MCP from the security angle. With open source, developers see exactly what's happening behind the scenes.” This transparency is crucial in the MCP space where security remains a common reason why people are hesitant to build MCPs.
Enterprise testing and evaluation framework
The premium offering centers on MCP evals—comprehensive evaluation frameworks that benchmark the performance of your MCP server across all environments and LLMs. This addresses a critical enterprise need: ensuring MCP servers work reliably across different LLM providers, client environments, and agent interactions. The service will integrate directly into CI/CD pipelines, providing continuous monitoring to catch performance regressions and ensure high quality MCP servers.
Premium UI/UX and developer experience
Drawing from their Asana experience, the founders bring enterprise-grade design thinking to developer tools. "When you build something that works, and it's beautiful, and nice to use— that goes a long way," said Matthew. This design advantage has already proven effective, with users preferring MCPJam because it's very intuitive. “It feels like you're using a premium product, because it is," said Matthew.
From Catalyst program project to Postman for MCP
The partnership with Open Core Ventures began when MCPJam was selected for the OCV Catalyst program, a three-month program designed to help promising open source projects grow. "Joining the program was no-brainer. We received $6k to grow our project and gained expertise in growing an open source project," Matthew recalls. The founders already had entrepreneurial ambitions to work on the project full-time but lacked the framework to execute on their vision.
The Catalyst program proved transformative. Under OCV's guidance, MCPJam grew from 200 GitHub stars to over 1,000 in just two months, while building crucial community infrastructure. "If we didn't join OCV, we would have not built our Discord community. We would have not posted good first issues on GitHub, which led to new contributors supporting the project," Matthew admits. "We were thinking about how to get as many people using MCPJam as possible. We weren't thinking about how to build a community and find contributors." This shift in perspective from pure user growth to community building laid the foundation for sustainable open source success.
The transition from Catalyst program participant to portfolio company represents the natural evolution of a relationship built on shared vision and proven results. "Given that we already have a working relationship with Alex and built that trust, we wanted to continue working with OCV," said Matthew. The founding team's confidence extends beyond their direct relationship with Alex Smith, Catalyst managing director, to the broader OCV leadership, with Marcelo noting that "Sid has the track record of leading an enterprise open source company, so I know we're in good hands."
What’s next
The MCPJam team will test your MCP server for you and help you improve your server’s design. You can contact the founders at matthew@mcpjam.com and marcelo@mcpjam.com to start testing your server. Or get started with our docs.