What is dogfooding?
Dogfooding — short for ‘eating your own dog food’ — is the practice of a company using its own product internally, on the same terms as its customers. The term originated in 1980s software companies and is now standard practice at Microsoft, Google, Stripe and most product-led startups.
Dogfooding surfaces UX issues, performance bugs and gaps in onboarding earlier than external testing. It also aligns incentives — when teams feel the product’s pain themselves, prioritisation improves.