$18m investment for product testing platform Highlight

US – In-home product testing startup Highlight has raised $18m in Series A funding, led by Acre Venture Partners and HearstLab, with participation from Ingeborg Investments and GS Futures.

Ethan Kellough and Dana Kim

Founded in 2020 by former qualitative market researcher Dana Kim and former product designer Ethan Kellough (pictured), the business runs an automated platform used by brands and agencies to conduct in-home physical product research.

The company, headquartered in New York, offers consumer testing across sectors including food and drink, beauty and personal care, and household goods and clothing. Businesses to have used the platform include Nestle and Procter & Gamble.

Highlight says its platform allows brands to obtain consumer feedback at scale. Earlier in 2023, the company re-launched the platform, with new additions including automation and visualisation of project tasks.

The Series A financing brings the company’s total raised to date to over $30m. Highlight plans to use the most recent investment to expand its tools and its network of home testers, as well as growing its staff headcount.

In a blog post announcing the funding, co-founders and Kim and Kellough wrote: “Physical product companies face many challenges to understanding customer needs and collecting critical feedback to create exceptional, enduring products.

“We’ve felt the pain firsthand — spending far too many hours recruiting specific audiences, combing through fraudulent panellist lists, programming and reprogramming surveys, ensuring the assembly and delivery of shipments, and manually managing this clunky process from end-to end.”

They added: “With the addition of templates and wizards, expert-led testing best practices across verticals, and a DIY experience, we’ll continue to make critical product data more powerful and accessible to teams of all sizes.”

We hope you enjoyed this article.
Research Live is published by MRS.

The Market Research Society (MRS) exists to promote and protect the research sector, showcasing how research delivers impact for businesses and government.

Members of MRS enjoy many benefits including tailoured policy guidance, discounts on training and conferences, and access to member-only content.

For example, there's an archive of winning case studies from over a decade of MRS Awards.

Find out more about the benefits of joining MRS here.

0 Comments


Display name

Email

Join the discussion

Newsletter
Stay connected with the latest insights and trends...
Sign Up
Latest From MRS

Our latest training courses

Our new 2025 training programme is now launched as part of the development offered within the MRS Global Insight Academy

See all training

Specialist conferences

Our one-day conferences cover topics including CX and UX, Semiotics, B2B, Finance, AI and Leaders' Forums.

See all conferences

MRS reports on AI

MRS has published a three-part series on how generative AI is impacting the research sector, including synthetic respondents and challenges to adoption.

See the reports

Progress faster...
with MRS 
membership

Mentoring

CPD/recognition

Webinars

Codeline

Discounts