When we first started building Glow, we weren’t chasing headlines or raising capital at every turn. We were building with purpose – quietly, persistently, and, of course, often frugally.
At the heart of it was a simple idea with complex implications: that research could be faster, smarter, and more useful if it was built on a platform designed for insight, not just answers.
Over the years, our team has done the hard yards to scale Glow’s mission:
- Designing scalable survey infrastructure
- Developing location and product-aware QR tools, enabling anonymous engagement at the point of experience
- And most recently, building the world’s first benchmarkable Social Responsibility Score (SRS) – a metric designed to track how people really feel about brands’ contributions to society.
And we’ve done this while working with some of the biggest brands in the world… with some of the smallest balance sheets you’ve ever seen.
That tension – between limited resources and unlimited belief – has been a feature of our journey.
And if you’re a researcher with a vision of your own, I suspect you know what I mean.
Building on purpose, not perfection
When you build technology in the insights space, you quickly learn that the biggest challenge isn’t complexity – it’s conviction.
The willingness to act before certainty arrives.
To ship a feature while it’s still evolving.
To test a methodology you believe in before it’s industry-approved.
If you wait for everything to be ready, the moment will pass. You have to bet. Not recklessly… but bravely.
That’s how we’ve approached SRS. It’s not just a metric. It’s a movement, one that moves us towards greater accountability, relevance, and truth in the way research intersects with corporate behaviour.
Now, we’re placing a bet again.
Only this time, it’s on you.
A Grant for the Bold
We’ve launched the Glow Research Accelerator with one core purpose:
To back researchers who want to change the game, not just play in it.
Whether you’re building a new methodology, testing new sustainability frameworks, or helping brands understand the public mood on a deeper level, we’ve long wanted to provide the tools (and the runway) to make it very real.
That’s why we’re offering up to 10,000 hosting credits (and more) to early participants; a meaningful grant of real value, structured to give users access to the full Glow platform, access to our team, and access to a community of fellow pioneers.
This isn’t marketing spin. It is a bet that we can do the right thing, build relationships of trust and value, and attempt to do for others what we wish someone had done for us.
Why Now?
The world of market research is at an inflection point. AI is changing how we work. Consumers are more fragmented, and more empowered, than ever before. And sustainability, once a niche concern, is now a business imperative. But with all this change comes uncertainty.
Young researchers entering the field today are looking for more than a career. They’re looking for impact and want to help shape the future, not just study it.
But to do that, they need tools that keep up, and a platform that shares their values.
Glow was built to be that platform. And this Grant Program is our invitation to you: to take a leap. Make something new. Bring a bold idea to life. And we’ll stand behind you.
What We've Learned
After years of bootstrapping, innovating, and sometimes failing fast, we’ve learned a few things:
- The best ideas don’t always come from the top – they come from those closest to the problem.
- Sustainable research isn’t a vertical. It’s the new default.
- And finally: impact isn’t measured in how much capital you raise, but in what you leave behind – insights, ideas, frameworks, truth.
We believe the future of our industry belongs to those willing to blend creativity with conscience, data with direction, and technology with tenacity.
What Comes Next
Glow will keep building. SRS will keep evolving. But more than anything, we want to build with you: with the researchers, strategists, analysts, and innovators who are already sketching the next big ideas on napkins and Notion docs across the world.
If that’s you, consider this your sign.
Push your idea forward. Take the risk.
We did.
And it changed everything.
This article was written by:
Tim Clover
Tim is the founder and CEO of the research technology platform Glow.
Glow’s research tech, audience access and support services enable marketers, salespeople and researchers to capture insights easily so they can make better decisions faster.
To learn more about how Glow can help your business, book an intro today or sign up for free and test the platform yourself.