How we review startups

• Our own account. We sign up ourselves, on the free plan or a trial, like anyone else.
• Made-up data only. Nothing real goes in: no customer data, no personal data, nothing belonging to anyone else.
• No stress tests, no probing. We do not load-test, probe logins or security, or scan anything. When a product asks us to slow down, we stop.
• The rules of the product. We follow the product’s terms and its robots.txt. If the terms forbid publishing a review or a benchmark, we decide what to do before we record, not after.
• The conditions, in writing. Every review says when we tested and on what: the date, the plan, the version and the machine. You will find it under “How we tested” on the review.

• Private first. Before anything is public, we send the founder the walkthrough as a private video, with the problems we found.
• At least 7 days. That is the least time between the founder getting the video and the review going live. It is time to reply, to point out anything we got wrong, or to fix things.
• Problems stay private until they are fixed. A specific problem is listed on the company’s page only after we reported it to them and they fixed it. It reads “reported <date> · fixed <date>”.
• Unfixed problems, in our own words only. Until a problem is fixed, it can appear in public only as Connor says it: in the written review or his voice on the video. Never as a chapter title, a caption or a line in a list.
• The company can answer in public. A company’s verified team can reply on its MenFem page, marked as from the company. Replies are checked before they appear, like every post on the page.

• We stop. If we come across a security or privacy flaw, we stop there and do not look further.
• We report it privately. It goes to the company’s security or privacy contact, on its own, not in the same email as anything else.
• It stays out. It is cut from every video and never appears in a review, a post or a list, fixed or not.
• Readers too. If you find a security problem in a product on the roster, tell the company privately. A comment describing one is never published.

• A public log. Every review carries a dated log of what changed: a correction, an update, or a re-test.
• Scores keep their history. A re-test adds a new score. The first look and every earlier score stay on the review, so you can see how the product moved.
• Fixes are checked by hand. When a company tells us it fixed something, we check the fix ourselves before we say so on its page.
• Tell us. If you think a review is wrong, email [email protected]. If it is, we correct it and the log says what changed.

• Advising, said out loud. MenFem works with some startups as an advisor. If MenFem or Connor advises a company, paid, unpaid or for equity, or has any other financial tie to it, its review says so at the top.
• Money, flagged on the review. A review states it when the company is a paying client, has paid for sponsored content, when MenFem earns a commission on the page’s links, or when MenFem holds equity in the company, with the date it started.
• A review is not for sale. Being reviewed costs a company nothing, and no payment changes a verdict, a score or the date a review goes live.
• Introductions, both sides first. Readers can say they would use a product. We may offer to introduce them to its founders, but only once both sides say yes, and we take no fee for it.

Reviews are Connor’s: he tests the product, records the walkthrough and writes the verdict. The roster is the set of startups we follow closely, read every day from their own changelogs, careers pages and status pages.

How we handle the personal data of the people we contact is in the privacy notice.