What is Thingtesting?
Thingtesting is a place to discover and learn more about new online brands. We’re on a mission to build the corner of the internet where people can come together to talk honestly about new things.
Your guide to new brands
We’re here to guide you through the endless, fascinating (but often overwhelming) aisle of modern retail.
Featured in
A note from our founder
Thingtesting was born from the question, has anybody tested this? In 2018, I was working at a London-based venture capital firm when I saw the direct-to-consumer landscape accelerating. Mattresses, suitcases, toothbrushes; commonplace items, now packaged with a point of view. The brands looked stunning in my Instagram feed, but were they actually “better”?
To find out, I started @thingtesting as a side-project, an Instagram account where I reviewed brands. In the year that followed the first review, the account grew to 25k+ curious IG followers. Readers were tuning in for the stories behind things, founder interviews, and honest, unpaid reviews of the brands.
The ever-increasing number of brands launching online, coupled with the rise of fake reviews, paid influencers, and cherry-picked endorsements, made me realize that bringing more transparency and structure to the world of online shopping was nothing I could do alone. Today, Thingtesting is a directory of the best internet-born brands. I’m lucky to be building Thingtesting together with a brilliant team, and we have big ambitions. Our goal is to collectively build a trustworthy resource for making more informed purchase decisions.
Join us on the journey. We are constantly working on new features together with our users, and shipping them as fast as we can. Our success is based on participation from people like you, and we hope you’ll test things with us and help others buy better.
The Weekly Newsletter
Every Thursday our users receive a weekly brand digest. It covers a selection of the most interesting new online brands spotted each week, along with exclusive interviews and analyses. Read more.
Team
Frequently asked questions
What can I do on Thingtesting?
Discover and learn about new brands. Dive into our editorial articles on Thingtesting Stories. If you create a free user profile, you’ll receive our weekly brand digest, plus get access to user exclusive features on Thingtesting. You can sort and tag brands, build your own lists and share them, whether that’s because you love them or because you want to try them. We are a small team continuously listening to our users and building new features.
How do you select brands for Thingtesting?
Thingtesting features new online-born brands that sell physical things. To be featured on Thingtesting a brand must bring something new to the market, be that a differentiated product, or an interesting story with world-class branding. From a product perspective that could be a new material, channel, service, technology, or even better - something totally new. From a story perspective, the company’s team, origin story, and positioning to their competition should stand out. This curation enables us to always showcase the most interesting brands to our users. Know a brand you think should be included, but don’t see it on the site yet? Submit a brand here.
How do you get the information on brand pages?
Most of the brands in our directory are directly claimed by their founders in order for the information on brand pages to be verified and kept up to date. If you are a founder or brand builder who would like to verify your page or if you have questions about the information displayed on a brand page, email us at [email protected].
Are brands paying you to be featured on Thingtesting?
No, you can’t buy your way into our directory or our content.
Then how do you make money?
We are backed by our readers. The Friends of Thingtesting membership enables us to produce unbiased content. You can join the membership here.
We also work with one newsletter partner for each issue of our weekly newsletter. Let us know if you're interested. Newsletter partners are carefully selected by our team and never companies that we would otherwise feature in our directory.
Who are your investors?
We are an early-stage startup and proud to be backed by world-class investors. Forerunner Ventures led our seed round, you can read about their thoughts on Thingtesting here. To preserve our editorial independence, investors in Thingtesting cannot influence what brands are featured on Thingtesting or what we say about them.
I want to get involved!
That’s great! You can sign up and create a free account here. If you want more Thingtesting in your life, let’s say you want to see what we are working on behind the scenes, or you want access to discount codes, you can join Friends of Thingtesting membership. If you’d consider working with us, here are our open positions. We truly appreciate your support.
More questions?
Having tech issues? [email protected]
Press inquiries? [email protected]
Partnership questions? [email protected]
Thoughts, feedback & high fives? [email protected]