About
November 18, 2020 2022-11-16 10:24About
Our
Story
"We started paying more attention to who we were sending our surveys to and how we were finding them. We realized that we had been overlooking significant issues with the entire process. Survey experiences were confusing and unrewarding for respondents, data was full of bots and professional survey takers. This didn't make us feel confident presenting our research insights to clients. Our goal with Cashew is to be mutually beneficial for researchers and participants. We want researchers to be confident about their insights and participants to feel engaged in the surveys they take."
Fresh out of University we met in our early 20’s at our first corporate jobs. Our cubicles were next to each other, and it was clear we were the coolest people there (just a reminder we wrote this).
While trying to figure out how to write questionnaires and design 100 page PowerPoint reports, we bonded over things outside of work like food, and cocktails, and puppies, and design, and more cocktails. While our partnership flourished over things that we thought were interesting, research was always a big part of our life. We remained in the research industry through different organizations and even though we were not always researching the most riveting of topics, the need for insights and its impact was undeniable.
Over the years, we built up valuable experience mastering our research skills, travelling and connecting with people and clients all over North America, and partnering with extremely talented and smart people.
Along the way, we saw a critical gap that needed to be filled. We asked ourselves: Who actually takes our surveys? Why are surveys thought of as joyless and tedious things? Why do we treat participants as if they’re a disposable commodity when we rely so heavily on them for insights?
Enter, Cashew.
Our
People
Addy
User insights advocate who is relentless about getting to the bottom of why people do what they do.
Background
I'm a lil' East coast and a lil' West coast. Born and raised in Ottawa (hi), educated in Montreal (bonjour), and living and working in Calgary (howdy). I have found my niche in digital and design by adding the user's voice to everything I do.
Hobbies
Running, cooking/cooking shows, design, clothes, pups, hosting at home.
Rose
Passionate about exploring human behaviours and motivations to create customer-centric digital platforms.
Background
Conducted large scale research programs for retail, telecommunications, lotteries/gaming and financial companies. Works with multidisciplinary teams to create B2B and B2C digital products.
Hobbies
Travelling the world and the outdoors
What
Matters
to Us
Quality
A randomly selected person expects at minimum several dollars for 5 minutes of their time. The survey industry standard is around or below 50 cents and it continues to get worse. You can’t expect good quality responses if you’re not paying quality incentives.
We expect a high standard among our community. We’re putting time and thought into this survey experience, and we expect the same level of attention on the user’s side.
Purposeful Innovation
We are intentional in our design philosophy and selective in how we use technology.
In our case, we’re using tech to solve key issues we’ve experienced. It’s helping us streamline solutions while being open and honest with how we’re achieving this.
Transparency
We’ve heard from people that the research industry can often feel like a black box. We want Cashew to be different. We want you to understand how a survey is shown to the people taking it, how much goes toward paying for those responses, and which portion is going into our pockets vs. our users.