Hi, I'm Millie, founder of TestFeed.
I've fortunately, or unfortunately (depending how you look at it), spent most of my adult life running my own businesses. There've been a few successes but plenty more failures.
And throughout that process, one recurring theme keeps showing up: send-button anxiety.
You know that feeling? You've crafted what you think is the perfect email to a potential client, and you're hovering over send, thinking: "Does this sound confident or desperate? Professional or boring? Will they think I'm brilliant or completely unhinged?"
The LinkedIn post that changed everything
So there I was, building my previous startup, when I decided to use Claude to help write a LinkedIn post. Nothing fancy, just wanted to share some thoughts about the industry. Claude did its thing, I thought "yeah, this looks good," and hit publish.
The reactions were... not what I expected.
People were interpreting it in ways I never imagined, and they were all the wrong ways. Without getting into specifics, let's just say I missed the mark. That's when it hit me: I was caught in my own bubble. I had blind spots. Not everyone thinks and sees the world like I do.
The daily reality
Like most of us, I spend the majority of my time communicating. Emails to prospects. Social media posts to build credibility. Tricky customer support responses. Sales proposals that need to strike just the right tone. Each one tailored to a different audience, each one carrying real stakes.
And the anxiety? Oh, the anxiety is real.
I'd write a DM to the owner of a women's fashion boutique, then immediately Slack it to Jack (my co-founder) with "does this sound too pushy?" He'd read it, shrug, and say "seems fine to me." But safe to say he isn't the 'demo'. Or I'd run fundraising emails past my Mum - "you're amazing they're going to love you." Sweet but not exactly the investor perspective I needed.
The broken feedback loop
Here's the thing about getting feedback from colleagues or friends: unless they ARE your audience, their opinion is basically guesswork. Your sales co-founder can't tell you how your email will land with content creators. Your designer friend can't predict how VCs will react to your pitch deck.
But we do it anyway, because the alternative is sending important communication into the void and hoping for the best. (Spoiler alert: hoping for the best isn't a strategy.)
So I built what I needed
TestFeed started as a desperate attempt to solve my own communication anxiety. I wanted to test how my words would actually land with different audiences before I sent them. Not after. Not through painful trial and error. Before.
We've built virtual audiences based on real psychology, not personality quizzes or generic demographics, but actual theory of mind research. They react like real people because they're built on how real people actually think and make decisions.
No more running emails past Kevin from accounting when you're writing to CTOs. No more second-guessing whether your LinkedIn post sounds authentic or like you've been possessed by a corporate communications bot.
Want to follow the journey?
I'm building TestFeed in public because honestly, the alternative is suffering in silence, and I've done enough of that. You can find me on LinkedIn or X sharing the real, unfiltered journey - the wins, the cringe moments, and everything in between.
If this story resonates with you, if you've ever felt that pit in your stomach before important comms, join our waitlist. We're building something that could genuinely change how confidently you communicate. Because life's too short for communication anxiety.
And if nothing else, you'll get to watch a founder either build a great product or spectacularly fail in public. Either way, it should be entertaining.