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The Testbirds Story

From our first crowdtest in 2011, we’ve been on a mission to help developers create flawless digital products that gain passionate users.

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Like so many good stories, this one starts with a vision for something better

In 2010, Philipp Benkler began a prestigious finance internship in China. He tried to make an impact from his tiny desk, but he didn’t even rank high enough to get the daily lunch email. Hierarchy blocked the flow of valuable ideas at every level. It was then that Philipp decided to build a better company where every employee was encouraged to – even inspired to – make an impact.

A better flow of ideas through collaboration

Back in Munich, Philipp called Georg Hansbauer. Friends from college, they often brainstormed about starting a business with purpose. Georg had been working as a freelancer coding websites and early iPad apps. During that time he often saw companies struggle to test before launching to customers. “What about a crowdtesting platform?”, he suggested.

The timing for such an idea was perfect. An increasingly digitalized world, the rise of crowdsourcing (the sourcing of tasks to a global online community), and new crowdsourcing technologies meant that digital fans like themselves could communicate directly with developers.

If they could then use the power of such diverse online crowds to help with the testing of their products; using both experts and unbiased consumers as testers – with their own devices and in real-world conditions – then surely digital products would be better, and customers would be happier!

Especially when you could use very precise criteria and characteristics to select a testing group that perfectly reflects the product’s target group. For developers, such a solution could ensure they had maximum flexibility in allocating their resources.

Real users, real impact. Right from the start

In a week they went from concept to business plan. They invited Markus Steinhauser for his marketing expertise and then spent many long days building Testbirds.

As the three gathered tester feedback by email, they gained design insights that are still part of Testbirds today. “We learned that the roadmaps covering our walls were all wrong,’ Georg recalls, ‘and clients needed a different report.” They re-designed their testing platform, The Nest, to serve real users and created our signature, user-friendly, Testbirds Final Report.

This was the first of many innovative ideas. As word grew about Testbirds and initial contacts quickly became investors and clients, it wasn’t long before the numerous benefits and opportunities of crowdtesting became clear.

Even early on, the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology (now Economy and Energy) funded Testbirds in the form of an EXIST scholarship and a start-up competition, ‘IKT Innovativ’.

Building a better digital world – together

Testbirds has grown into one of the largest and most active crowds worldwide. We now have offices in Munich, Amsterdam and London.

We now have over 100 employees and source our 1,000,000 testers from 193 countries.

Through the Nest, we give users a voice, and product owners a direct line to each user. We constantly pioneer innovative test solutions around QA and UX that are built on our learnings and our clients’ complex needs.

This includes enhancing and extending our service portfolio, such as increasing the number of smart devices that have found their way to our testers and boosting our Managed Service, Self-Service, and Self-Service Plus solutions.

Our people – our crowd

True to our founders’ vision, every member of our team is empowered to collaborate, share knowledge, and add value. To make an impact.

Our purpose today is to build a better digital world – together with you, for your customers.

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