Unguess, the first Italian crowdsourcing offering  Cybersecurity, UX,and Quality testing services

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Unguess is the first crowdsourcing platform for in-depth testing and research in the tech world in Italy. Founded in 2015 and initially named “AppQuality”, the start-up was born within the Cremona Centre of the Politecnico di Milano University, from the idea of three founders. Today Unguess is the first company in Italy that is based on the model of crowdsourcing, i.e., engaging communities of users and experts to test products on functional, quality, and security levels.

Currently, Unguess can reach a very large community of about 160 million testers around the world, who are hired to carry out in-depth research that results in different and more in-depth findings than those produced by typical market surveys.

The Evolution of Unguess

The purpose of Unguess “has always been to import and emphasize the value of quality of a digital product by reducing defects or bugs,” says Luca Manara, & CEO Co-founder of Unguess.

For this reason, they have launched the first crowdtesting community in Italy, based on millions of potential testers who are in charge of testing and directly reporting any problems they might encounter during use.

In the beginning, the platform only tested the functional side, as it grew, however, they started focusing on user experience and cybersecurity.

Currently, Unguess  has three specific vertical department:

  • Quality
  • User Experience
  • Cybersecurity

The role of P101

Unguess’s journey started in 2015 when the founders met Andrea Di Camillo and had the opportunity to describe the project idea they were working on. In P101, they found willingness to listen and a lot of advice to carry out their business strategy. The path evolved over the years, and in 2019 the founders got in touch with P101 again, laying the foundation for the growth of the project. “Close to the first round, the Covid pandemic exploded, but this did not stop their fundraising. In fact, in June 2020, we managed to close the first round entirely remotely,” says Luca Manara. In January 2023, again thanks to the support of P101, Unguess closed a 10 million euros second round.

Saas technology

The technology on which Unguess is based is more of a process. The platform has a SaaS approach, and its innovation lies in the engagement and gamification logics that allow it to engage many users in a short period of time and, therefore, to provide answers quickly. The SaaS logic also makes it possible to quickly implement all the insights we gather through the integration with third-party platforms (that customers already use), to which they integrate specific modules that are used to solve bugs swiftly. This type of technology allows for a highly profiled community, that responds in a very fast way and makes deep and articulated research, and it also allows Unguess to observe customers’ sentiment.

Target markets and differences with competitors

Unguess is the only solution of its kind in Italy. Iin Europe, there are others, but their offer is different from that of the Italian start-up. In fact, Unguess differs from competitors due to its horizontal approach to the various solutions: communities are developed in three vertical areas (Security, UX, and Functionality), but compared to competitors, Unguess manages to engage different types of communities per area, not only one-to-one vertically, but also transversally, obtaining deeper and more complete results and answers.

Unguess’s future

Currently, Unguess has 80 employees throughout the country and Europe.  In the short term, they plan to enter important European markets, particularly France and Spain. Another goal in the short term is to keep developing their tech platform, in order to offer more and more tools to engage and extract insights from crowdtesting communities, to launch tests autonomously, and to increase integrations with bridging management tools.

Some specific facts about Unguess

One of the features of Unguess is its very remote-friendly policy, which allows anyone to work from wherever they want. Unguess also carries out hundreds of tests every month, and thanks to this philosophy, combined with its community of more than 160 million testers worldwide, it has reached approximately 300 enterprise customers globally, working in a variety of industries.