What FIELD NOTES COMMUNITIES LIMITED does

Field Notes Communities Limited is a London-based, privately-held software company founded in 2017 that operates a mobile self-ethnography platform designed for remote qualitative and market research. The platform is composed of three integrated components: a participant-facing mobile app (iOS/Android, localized into 8+ languages) that captures video diaries, audio recordings, photos, and text responses; a researcher-side web-based management and reporting dashboard with AI-powered transcription and translation, filtering and tagging, sequential task management, and in-app messaging; and a distributed infrastructure footprint of 10+ global servers supporting high-quality video uploads from any geography. The company serves two primary use-case verticals — Market Research (collecting customer insights to inform strategy) and Employee Experience (capturing authentic employee content for retention and engagement) — through named customers including The Sound, Mental Health Foundation, Humankind Research, Gemic, and Davies McKerr. Its commercial model combines subscription and pay-as-you-go pricing with a freemium academic tier under the Field Notes Academy university partnership programme, and it supplements product sales with a free Let's Go! Migration Programme to win customers switching from competing platforms.

The business is operated by a small team of 1-10 employees with no disclosed external funding rounds, parent company, or institutional investors in the source data, suggesting a bootstrapped or near-bootstrapped operating model. The company is GDPR compliant with documented data-protection procedures and a designated compliance contact, which is operationally significant given the platform's processing of participant personal data across multiple jurisdictions. Distribution is hybrid: a content-led multi-language website, a Calendly-driven demo booking flow for enterprise sales, a self-serve platform access route, and partner channels including freelance researchers and third-party participant recruiters. Geographic reach is global in claim and infrastructure but lacks disclosed local sales offices, indicating a digitally-distributed go-to-market rather than a regional sales build-out.

Name

FIELD NOTES COMMUNITIES LIMITED

Legal name

Field Notes Communities Limited

Website

https://fieldnotes.space

Company type

Private

Founded year

2017

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Field Notes Communities Limited operates a mobile self-ethnography research platform with AI-enabled transcription, serving qualitative market researchers and employee experience teams globally through a participant app and researcher dashboard.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Qualitative Market Research Software

NAICS

Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling (541910), Research and Development in the Social Sciences and Humanities (54172)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Social & Digital Insights (Social Listening, Online Community Research) (MPAAALAK)

akta.pro secondary industry

Industry & Sector Research (Syndicated/Custom) (BPAHALAE)

Keywords

• Qualitative research platform
• Self-ethnography software
• Mobile ethnography tools
• Video research platform
• Market research software

Headquarters

HQ city

London

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations

Revenue model

1. Platform Subscription: Subscription-based access to the Field Notes platform for managing research projects and participants
2. Pay-as-you-go (PAYG): Pay-per-use model for platform access, available alongside subscription option

Pricing tiers

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

Field Notes Communities Limited provides a mobile self-ethnography research platform that enables organizations to collect high-quality user-generated video, audio, photo, and text content from participants worldwide. The platform combines a participant-facing mobile app with a web-based researcher management and reporting dashboard, supported by AI-powered transcription, translation, and a globally distributed server infrastructure. It serves market research, employee experience, and academic research use cases.

Product overview

Field Notes Communities Limited offers a unified self-ethnography research platform consisting of three integrated components: the Field Notes Participant App (mobile application for iOS/Android, localized in 8+ languages allowing participants to capture video diaries, audio responses, photos, and text), the Field Notes Management & Reporting Platform (researcher dashboard with AI-powered transcription and translation, filtering and tagging, sequential task management, and in-app messaging), and supporting services including the free Let's Go! Migration Programme and Field Notes Academy university partnerships. The platform is designed for market research and employee experience applications, enabling organizations to collect high-quality user-generated content from global participant audiences through structured research tasks.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Field Notes Self-Ethnography Platform A cloud-based research platform enabling organizations to collect high-quality user-generated video, audio, photo, and text content from participants worldwide through structured self-ethnography projects. Targeted at market research firms, employee experience teams, and academic researchers.
• Field Notes Participant App A mobile application (iOS/Android) that participants install to record and submit video diaries, audio responses, photos, and text as part of assigned research tasks. Localized into 8+ languages for global research deployments.
• Field Notes Management & Reporting Platform A web-based researcher dashboard for managing self-ethnography projects, engaging participants, and analyzing collected content. Includes AI-powered time-coded transcription and translation, filtering and tagging, sequential task and rotations management, and in-app messaging.
• Let's Go! Migration Programme A free structured migration service for new customers switching to Field Notes from another platform. Includes onboarding training, kick-off meetings, how-to guides, and migration templates to reduce switching risk.

Quantifiable outcome

• Best video quality available according to customer testimonials

Named customers5 records

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability7 records

Feature10 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• Universities (Field Notes Academy)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerField Notes Academy initiative - partnerships with universities providing free platform access for students conducting PhD or dissertation research projects. Offers academic collaboration and educational support.
• Freelance ResearchersminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorFreelancers can join Field Notes database and app to connect with potential clients and work opportunities. Data collected via LinkedIn and Typeform for contact database creation.
• Recruiters and Partner CompaniesminorChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorPartner companies used by research clients to recruit participants for Field Notes research projects. Part of the participant recruitment ecosystem.

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Broad incumbents

• Toluna: Toluna is an end-to-end market-research platform with consumer panels, surveys, and qualitative tools. It competes for the same insights-buyer budget as Field Notes but with broader methodologies and scale.
• Qualtrics: Qualtrics is an experience-management platform spanning surveys, CX, and research. It overlaps Field Notes on the qualitative-research buyer and offers video-feedback capabilities as part of a much broader portfolio.
• GutCheck: GutCheck is a market-research and consumer-insights platform with agile qualitative and quantitative offerings. It is a broader incumbent targeting the same insights-team buyers Field Notes serves, often with bundled research services.
• UserTesting: UserTesting is a broad human-insights platform for usability and customer-experience research, including video-based task capture. It competes with Field Notes on enterprise research budgets but at much larger scale and with a wider portfolio of methods.

Direct peers

• Indeemo: Indeemo is a mobile-first ethnographic research platform for capturing video, photo, and text from participants worldwide. It is closely comparable to Field Notes in target customer (insights teams) and core methodology (self-ethnography via app).
• Dscout: Dscout is a leading diary- and self-ethnography research platform with a participant mobile app and researcher dashboard. It is the most directly comparable peer to Field Notes, offering the same core workflow of remote video/audio/text diary capture and qualitative analysis.
• Discuss.io: Discuss.io is a qualitative market research platform with mobile capabilities, live video interviews, and asynchronous research tasks. It overlaps Field Notes on the qualitative-research buyer and on the mobile asynchronous research workflow.
• Recollective: Recollective is a community research platform supporting diary studies, video responses, and asynchronous tasks. It targets the same insights/research buyer and overlaps on self-ethnography-style study design.

Emerging players

• Remesh: Remesh uses AI to analyze live and asynchronous qualitative conversations at scale. It is an adjacent qualitative-research platform with a more analytical AI angle, serving partially overlapping research-buyer personas.
• Lookback: Lookback is a user-research platform enabling moderated and unmoderated video studies from participants' devices. It targets the same UX/research buyer as Field Notes with a comparable mobile-first self-recording workflow.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/fieldnotes-platform

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about FIELD NOTES COMMUNITIES LIMITED