Sector: Software
Invested: September 2024
Founder:
Co-investors:
Stickybeak’s consumer testing platform helps marketers connect with their target audience across a wide range of geographies, offering quick, easy, and cost-effective access to valuable consumer feedback. Their intuitive solution spans diverse geographies and taps into billions of consumers through innovative recruitment channels, making rapid, confident and evidence-based product and campaign launches a reality for brands. With a roster of renowned clients and an ambitious product roadmap, we are excited to be joining the Stickybeak journey alongside other investors through their recent $1.2m capital raise. So why did we invest?
Disrupting gut feel:
Approximately 75% of FMCG products fail to meet the expectations of their target consumer segments. Traditionally, FMCG marketing teams have relied on in-frequent questionnaires, focus groups, and in-depth interviews to close gaps in understanding consumer value and product-market fit, and often nothing at all but a meeting room conversation. These approaches often lack the agile approach needed to stay competitive, suffer from biases like confirmation and selection, and are costly with long lead times.
While large FMCG companies can afford extensive budgets for consumer testing and outsourced research, smaller companies face the challenge of competing with marketing giants while managing tighter budgets for new product pipelines.
Stickybeak’s platform challenges the status quo of relying on “gut feel” and boardroom discussions by offering a practical alternative to comprehensive market reports and the need for dedicated insights teams. The platform is built on the belief that “consumer feedback shouldn't take weeks, cost thousands, or be overcomplicated.” Designed with marketers in mind, Stickybeak prioritises timelines, ease of use, and broad geographic reach.
Built by marketers, for marketers
The six-person founding team, though unconventional, unites industry leaders in market research, product engineering, and branding. Leading the team is CEO Anna Henwood, a founder with an unmatched energy for all things marketing that inspires her team and has captivated clients and investors. The team have demonstrated a profound understanding of marketers’ needs and have crafted the Stickybeak solution to address them.
At Aspire, we have been impressed by Stickybeak’s ability to deliver rapid value to its FMCG customers, with early adopters highlighting the solutions’ marketer-driven design and functionality. Putting the marketer at the heart of their design and business model with their credit-based subscription plans has translated into strong early traction. We have also been impressed by the growth in their customer usage in the 12-months since launching their first market testing product. This further highlights the value that Stickybeak offers their customers.
Sights set on the global stage
Beyond New Zealand, Stickybeak have ambitious growth plans for Europe, Asia, and Australasia. With their robust product development roadmap focused on delivering high value consumer insights—quickly and on-the-go—Stickybeak is well-positioned to become the go-to tool for FMCG marketers and we look forward to backing them on this journey.
