Launching today
Timelaps
Know if your marketing is working with real-time insights
403 followers
Know if your marketing is working with real-time insights
403 followers
Timelaps conducts primary research, collects responses from 4,000+ real consumers in target demographics, and tells you whether your brand marketing is working. Compared to traditional agencies or trackers, Timelaps is 5x more affordable, based on the latest science of brand growth, and continuously updated in real time.
Timelaps
Hey Product Hunt 👋
I'm Harry, cofounder of Timelaps.
I previously cofounded HackQuest, raised $5M+ in funding, and grew it into one of the leading developer ecosystems in the world with over 2M users.
After HackQuest was acquired, I spent months traveling the globe: discovering, designing, coding, testing, and validating over 35 ideas from my "things to build" list to find what's next.
In San Francisco, during ODF, Henk and I sat together during the opening ceremony and connected instantly on the type of company we want to build together and the massive opportunity in the intersection of AI and market research.
We kept asking: What matters most in the age of AI? After months of exploration and pivots, Henk and I answered the question with our Timelaps thesis. Below are snippets of why we chose branding & brand tracking.
Why Branding?
Brand is back. According to the recent McKinsey study published in November 2025, Branding was cited as the number one priority for 2026 by marketing leaders across all business models.
That’s because a strong brand drives real business outcomes:
Brand is a measurable financial asset. Econometric analysis of 135 global firms shows that every $1 increase in brand value equates to $1.76 in turnover.
Sustainable Pricing Power: Brand is the antidote to commoditization. Kantar’s BrandZ data proves that stronger brands command higher than average prices vs their competitors.
Cheaper to grow. The same studies show that a strong brand hugely improves the ROI of marketing and lowers CAC.
What is Brand Tracking? Why Brand Tracking?
Brand tracking measures how strong your brand is now, how that is changing over time, and how you compare to competitors.
It answers questions like:
Are people aware of us?
Are we associated with the right problems and solutions?
Are we becoming the default choice in key moments of the customer journey?
Are paid and PR campaigns actually shifting perception?
Are we growing faster than competitors in brand health?
You wouldn’t run paid socials / search without knowing your CTR, CPC, and CPA.
Brand tracking is the equivalent of long-term growth. It helps you:
See if your marketing is working for building brand equity.
Show which campaigns have an effect, or not.
Identify segments you are over- or underperforming in.
Detect signs of competitor threats.
Identify the top growth areas for your brand.
Importantly, brand tracking shows you what demand looks like before it shows up in sales figures. Revenue is the lagging indicator. Brand is the leading one.
The AI revolution has transformed what brands can create. It's time for tracking to catch up.
We are still very early in the journey (<5 wks). Our goal is to document our growth journey on Product Hunt and share it with all of you. Our team is available ALL DAY for all your feedback and questions. Grateful for your support and excited to chat here / over a call :)
@harryzhangs Interesting direction here.
Most brand tracking tools I’ve seen still operate on the old quarterly research cycle, which makes the insight almost historical by the time teams see it.
I'm curious about something though.
When marketers see the dashboard update with new data, does Timelaps also help explain what likely caused the change (campaign, channel, messaging), or is the focus mainly on surfacing the signal?
Timelaps
@harryzhangs @taimur_haider1 Love this question. And it's one of the reasons we built timelaps. Our focus is on explaining what moves the needle, not just the signal. Because we track continuously we can overlay campaigns on the timeline to show what has had an effect. it's possible already but we're adding a feature where brand marketers simply upload their campaign info (and competitors if they have it) and this displays on all timeline views. So that shows not just if things changed but why.
@harryzhangs @henk_pretorius1 Appreciate the detailed answer, Henk.
Overlaying campaigns on the timeline is a smart approach. A lot of brand tracking tools show the movement but leave marketers guessing what caused it.
Connecting campaign activity directly to brand shifts could make the insights far more actionable.
I'm aurious about one thing. As the dataset grows, are you planning to surface patterns across campaigns as well, like identifying which types of campaigns consistently move awareness or consideration in a category?
Timelaps
@harryzhangs @taimur_haider1 don't give away our feature roadmap :) Yes, that's exactly what we plan to do. What we're building is a data asset that can both surface patterns and later start predicting marketing effects. Great question.
Timelaps
@taimur_haider1 thanks so much, Taimur! You are spot-on - the cadence here is a key differentiator.
Love your question!! Henk already covered it perfectly - I just wanted to add that the AI analyst is also here to help. In this release, you can play around with the AI chatbot analyst, which has insights into all your data and business context, to help answer basic questions and probe the reasons. This will be especially powerful once you add more context, like campaigns you ran, events you hosted, and more. We will also be rolling out several exciting new features in the next few weeks that explain what drives the changes!
@harryzhangs Thanks, Harry! The AI analyst sounds like a really strong differentiator.
Excited to try it out and see how it surfaces patterns across campaigns. Do you have plans for highlighting which campaign types consistently drive specific metrics across multiple brands?
Timelaps
@taimur_haider1 It really is - thanks so much - and love this question! As our dataset grows, our capability to predict outcomes and recommend strategies will grow as well. Recommendations will also be increasingly more tailored to the category and personalized. We will publish public report for knowledge sharing also :)
Happycapy
@harryzhangs Pretty cool idea. Real-time insights from thousands of consumers sounds really powerful. Congrats on the launch!
Timelaps
@harryzhangs @victoria_wu Thanks Victoria!
@harryzhangs Hey Harry. How do you help users distinguish between correlation and actual marketing impact?
Timelaps
@harryzhangs @kimberly_ross We track the outcomes marketing is ultimately trying to move — awareness, salience, and mental market share — the moments when your brand comes to mind. Causation is always hard, but we're adding campaign overlays soon so you can see what was in market when brand metrics shifted. Of course, brand building is cumulative and multifaceted, but with Timelaps, we offer a lot more context than most teams have today.
Raycast
Thrilled to co-present On Deck alums @harryzhangs and @henk_pretorius1's Timelaps.
Brand building in the age of AI requires constant vigilance and adaption.
Customer attention is fickle; keeping it means seeing shifts early.
This requires a tighter feedback loop.
Historically, brand tracking took months and cost $100K–$500K+.
Useful, but way too slow now.
Timelaps gives you an instant-replay view of the moments that matter— when someone chooses you… or chooses a competitor.
With real-time insights from real people, you can spot what’s changing, update your messaging, and stay top-of-mind when it counts.
If you market a brand and you’re tired of waiting a quarter to learn what happened last quarter, grab a consult with the team today (it's not everyday you get free advice from a PhD!).
Copus
Really interesting thesis on brand tracking. Most startups I know treat brand measurement as something you check quarterly through expensive agency reports, by which point the data is already stale. Having continuous, real time consumer feedback on brand perception changes everything about how you iterate on positioning. The 4,000+ consumer panel approach reminds me of how product teams use continuous discovery. Curious what the typical turnaround looks like from launching a study to getting actionable insights.
Timelaps
@handuo thanks! And great question. Set up is super quick - you'll be up and running in days. As opposed to the weeks of planning with research agencies.
Timelaps
@handuo Thanks so much for the question! Very happy that you share our vision. Turn around is actually one of Timelaps' key differentiators - consulting firms / agencies usually take weeks of discovery meetings to get onboarded (I have led them) and months to see results, while Timelaps onboards in days.
Our vision for the future is a self-service SaaS tool that takes hours to get started & shows real-time insights.
How does Timelaps specifically measure "brand growth" metrics—such as mental availability or penetration—in real time to validate that marketing efforts are driving long-term commercial value rather than just short-term engagement?
Timelaps
@mordrag Hey Denis, right question to ask :) In short, we use a validated set of questions and metrics tailored to each category that surfaces the moments (category entry points) that brands need to win to grow share long term vs short term. We do this alongside the tried-and-true metrics marketers know: awareness, consideration, usage/buying, and associations. We track and report on these continuously amongst a representative set of people in that category. Because we have 1. Measures validated to track actual market share 2. Do this continuously - we're able to map the effects of marketing efforts on key brand growth metrics. Happy to do a demo and discuss more.
Timelaps
@mordrag Hey Denis, thanks for the question & support :)
@mordrag Great question. Measuring brand growth in real time sounds tricky.
Curious if Timelaps relies more on survey signals, behavioral data, or a mix of both?
Timelaps
@mordrag @farhad_asbaghipour Hey Farhad, we use surveys, intentionally so. Because by the time behavior changes, it's too late. We measure what's in people's heads: awareness, salience, and the Category Entry Points where your brand does or doesn't come to mind, before it shows up in your sales data.
Continuous consumer surveys give you a rolling read on perception rather than a point-in-time snapshot. The "real-time" caveat is fair, brand moves slowly by nature, so the value is in the trend over time, not the overnight number.
I believe most Brand Tracking Reports are still delivered via Slide Decks and that dashboard are expensive add ons. Timelaps seems to have made that a non-issue? And Research-Grade - so not just a basic brand funnel?
Timelaps
@elna_pretorius Hey Elna, thanks for the question! Yes, you are spot on! Slide Decks are useful, but often get tossed aside and go obsolete quickly as they capture only a snapshot (and often using data collected from months ago). That's why Timelaps is a living dashboard that's updated in real-time, continuously.
Research-grade means classic + modern components. Timelaps includes not only the classic brand funnels, advertising recall, positioning, demographics, etc., but also moments, associations, and word-of-mouth. Moments in particular are super useful as they highlight the exact moment(s) you or your competitors win / lose consumers.
@elna_pretorius Good point. A lot of brand tracking reports still end up as static slide decks.
Curious if Timelaps replaces those reports entirely with a live dashboard or if teams still export insights into presentations?
Timelaps
@elna_pretorius @farhad_asbaghipour Our goal is for our dashboard to be the only place people need to go for all their Timelaps insights. That said, we will offer export into the marketer's preferred format.
Parallax by Gradient
Congrats on the launch! Brand tracking has historically been a very niche space. It’s mostly been accessible only to large consumer companies because of the high cost and complexity. So it's super helpful to have a very professional report at a fraction of the traditional cost. But I'm curious how do you ensure the quality of data over time, especially if companies are using the data for long-term brand tracking?
Timelaps
Thanks! @joysong_j We do that in a few ways 1. We make sure the people we get insights from match the category 2. We do extensive quality screening before, during and after data collection 3. We ensure measures remain consistent across time so any change we observe in brand health is real and not because of some quirk in the measurement.
What a beautifully designed dashboard. I love how it makes complex market research look so approachable and calm. Question for the makers: how long does it typically take for a new brand to set up their first tracker and start seeing those real-time insights roll in?
Timelaps
@white_devil22 thank you! Set up is super quick - we can have you up and running in a few days before we start collecting data, and the first results are available shortly after.