Nihal Advani - Founder & CEO of QualSights | Consumer Insights and Market Research

Welcome to success story the most useful podcast in the world. I'm your host Scotty Cleary the success story Podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network as well as the blue wire podcast network now the HubSpot podcast network has incredible shows like the Martek podcast hosted by Benjamin Shapiro the Martek podcast is all about maximum value in 30 minutes or less the Martek podcast shares stories from world class marketers who use technology to generate growth and achieve business and career success all in your lunch break if you Like any of these topics you're going to love the Martek podcasts some of the topics are zeroing in on the ideal product price point Identifying loyalty plays for smart marketers finding the line between sales and marketing and SaaS Extending the lifetime value of your customer if these are topics that are interesting to you go check out the Martek podcast hosted by Ben Shapiro wherever you get your podcast Today my guest is Nahal Advani. He is the founder and CEO of Qualsites. Nahal is a product and marketing expert He spent his teenage years as an internationally ranked tennis player However after a college internship at Google he followed his passion for technology Upon graduation he joined Microsoft where he spent time in various marketing and data roles on high profile teams such as search or Bing display and Microsoft media network He left Microsoft combined his entrepreneurial spirit and passion and interest in seeing and understanding the world by launching Qualsites which is an immersive insights platform they work with fortune 1,000 fortune 500 fortune 100 They help companies understand human behavior authentically and efficiently at scale So we spoke about his entrepreneurial journey leaving Microsoft to start his own company his first version of Qualsites Was actually a travel software company and pivoted and he iterated a couple times before he got to Qualsites So we spoke about his first version of entrepreneurship leaving Microsoft hiring a dev shop some lessons learned there Moonlighting at Microsoft so that he could bootstrap the business All these great entrepreneurial stories and some ideas and hopefully insights for you If you're going to start your own thing How you can do it and not get screwed by your dev shop not worry about Funding or financing you're going to find money He built out a company properly from the ground up without any outside capital at the beginning We also spoke about some of the things that Qualsites does which is Consumer insights and market research they do this for some of the largest brands in the world So some thoughts on consumer insights how to get consumer insights how to apply them some market research trends as some of the largest Companies are looking for in consumer behavior So if you do have customers if you do have a CPG startup or you have a CPG company He works with some of the largest ones in the world So he has some great ideas on what you should look for and how you should be Using an understanding consumer data and consumer behavior Then we spoke about some lessons that he's learned building Qualsites some of the innovation frameworks that he uses for his R&D teams Considering the fact that before Qualsites there was a couple other companies he built out Although he pivoted a few times each one of those companies was successful in their own right So he has a great framework for innovation We spoke about some product development best practices that have set Qualsites ahead of the pack We spoke about financing and fundraising He's only taken on 3.5 million in 10 years So how did he do that? How did he build his company without much external capital and then Lastly, we spoke about how Qualsites achieved that hockey stick growth How did they find that product market fit and how did they scale? So let's jump right into it. This is Nihal Advani. He is the founder and CEO of Qualsites You Sure, yeah, I mean, I've always wanted to start my own business right so in college I dreamt about a lot far about a gazillion ideas Every single day I was running something down But then I decided I wasn't ready yet and I went to to Microsoft and said I was an internet Google To try to Microsoft when I graduated and kind of said I'd kind of learn the ropes You know go to a bigger company kind of get more experience under my belt and then kind of start my own thing So five years into Microsoft is when I quit and now it's kind of funny because we started off being very different from away today We wouldn't even call the same thing. We were called georama And we were travel startups so I quit Microsoft to launch a travel startup and today as you know, we're called Qualsites And we are an insight to consumer insights, you know software so Quite a big pivot along the way in fact a couple of parents along the way, but yeah Well, I am so you you were you're you're like you're an engineer, right? That's you were working at Microsoft. No, oh, you're not. I was always a techie kind of guy, but I was never I wanted to do a you know a double major in computer science So I was in college, but I was a tennis player and so I only could choose one I pick business Very good. Okay, so you got so you okay? So you were in very technical companies, but you weren't technical yourself So you're non technical co-founder So what was the you mentioned like Qualsites has gone through all these different iterations and all these different versions So what was the the first company you started why why did you go into travel? What was the logic behind that and how did you feel comfortable jumping ship and going into a company that you've in an industry You've never worked in before Yeah, yeah, it was a squatted just I mean my family's always been a big trouble family We've traveled a lot ever since I was young, you know, we took a couple trips a year and Something those just ingrained in me. I love traveling Even as I grew up by myself and being here And I just thought you know, hey, you know, why not combine both my my entrepreneurial kind of itch as well as my my passion for traveling And kind of build something that didn't exist and so if you think of you know It's honestly, I don't think it still exists right now, but It's hard to make money doing that hence we pivoted But if you think of you know travel in the space you've got true advisor that's fantastic at travel planning However, it's fantastic at travel planning when you know where you want to go So tell you great amount of things on what to do You've got of course, you know the all kinds of booking engines and the you know meta search engines and stuff And then of course you've got these social platforms that help you share a trip But there was no company at least then and perhaps even now it helps you kind of find where to go really well It's Google it's your friends. It's you know, things you've heard it so there's a lot of this back-and-fold searching or discussion And that's how you're finding out is you know with other kind of mediums I'm sure but For us it was a recommendation engine that was built based on high-level criteria saying okay I want to go with my friends. I want to go to a place that has adventure and nightlife. I have a budget of X. I want whether or why Where can I go and so that kind of high-level recommendation engine that help people kind of plot things in a map See where they could go visually then dig in to see the things to do and then also book it So our trademark at the time was plan book share was really all three things But with the unique spin being on a the fact that it was you know more like at the higher level of the early stage of the journey And then be having an all-in-one platform to kind of do it all in one place And so that's the kind of opportunity we saw and it was really my passion that Decided like is what kind of drove me to doing and when you started this So you're building out a recommendation engine, which I'm sure is not an easy task. So Even getting started in this walk me through the leaving of leaving of corporate moving into startup. Did you Like did you bootstrap? Did you go find funding? Did you have some money saved you hired a developer? I think that point in somebody's life is one of the most interesting points because how people tackle it Is it's a very everybody tackles it differently, but walk me through your sort of startup journey into this Yeah, I was quite tricky. I mean I start off while while moonlighting at Microsoft right so my own free time at nights I would kind of do this and While I was technical in that, you know I'd done some stuff even just at Microsoft build like visual basic tools and stuff or excel Like I just figured it out because I had that information. I was still not a coder like that would code this thing myself So I had to find people and so I found a couple folks out in India in the beginning and kind of worked with them And they were full time on the company. I was part time. So it's kind of funny now when we celebrate anniversaries They're like one year ahead of me. It's got a strange Because it took me a year to quit Microsoft, but I funded it myself So I self-funded I was something I was lucky in my last call rows of Microsoft had got some nice bonuses saved up And so kind of use that To kind of initially fund the business and then the day I quit it was basically in 2012 I actually Adjust raise our first 250k from friends and family and that's what allowed me to quit awesome And so it was a combination of good shopping for a little while building the product on the side and then Taking the jump when I had some initial investment. So you didn't even you didn't even go for a technical co-founder You fully outsourced you hired. How did you not get screwed by the developers that you hired not being a developer yourself? So interesting enough and I first started this very few people noticed I started off with a contract like a outsource kind of firm for the first couple months And you know, I had heard good things about them and they were good in certain ways But in other ways they weren't and so very quickly I started to realize that like this is moving kind of slow At least I feel it's moving slow So I hired a guy full-time directly for a company who was in the same city to go and oversee them and see like hey Are they gonna be any good or do we need to bring this in house and fairly quickly? He realized and he confirmed like no, we got to bring this in house And so within three months, I believe it was we switched to kind of having a whole in-house operation It was my people working directly for me With people I trust and you know, obviously that's how we kind of avoided any of the the challenges There's a lot of people face sometimes people get lucky and they do well with that kind of model other times They have a challenge because for as a startup you're like a tiny Kind of fish, right as if someone's a dev shop on the other end They have all of these deals some of them hopefully big ones for them But then when a startup comes into the small kind of idea they're gonna put there typically You know lowest developers on it and not really pay back as much attention to you because you don't you know make that much money for them And that's where we luckily found that quick and switched to having our own fully in-house operation Which is what about us to be successful very very smart I've never heard of somebody doing that I've heard of a lot of people getting screwed by dev shops But I've never heard of somebody hiring somebody in the city where they're at to go like audit the dev shop That's very good That was my last try right I wanted I still wanted to give them a try and they also were taking a bag like wait You're gonna have somebody come sit with us and like yeah, I mean either that or we we kind of part ways now and so They allowed it and you know luckily we found out that you know It was the right call to just move it in-house and I'm so glad we did you know We've that's been a major advantage for years now to have our own tech team and have a such a strong tech team It's an argument against the gig economy For sure a little bit at least Okay, so okay, so you quit after you quit after a year you joined and then So what happened with that company? Why didn't it work out because it sounds like a great idea You're right. I don't even think it still exists So was it like no product market fit was addressable market too small What like what was the life cycle of that company? It was the problem was the revenue model per se right so we actually at one point had a couple hundred thousand users We won tech branch a couple time I mean we were starting to get kind of known again smaller not known right But it was it was in terms of usage It was growing in terms of platform was really cool very different visually very different results completely Interactive on a map even back then in 2012 However, it was really how you made money. So of course if you had millions of users someday You have other types of revenue opportunities like advertising but really the the call revenue model for us And us being a Chicago company not a well, you know Like we we've over the course of company not raised some money, but not raised too much You know, so it was not something where we had both loads of cash We could go out and market the heck out of this thing And so we were doing as much cooler marketing efforts as we could And if you think of travel in general the way you make money and less again You know a big company with lots of millions of users and can do advertising is booking With booking you've got the speeders and the bookings and the cracks of the world And it is a company you know, it's commodity at this point like people are always price comparing I'm sure we all do this all the time And so when you're looking at even though we were actually behind the scenes working with Expedia And working with several other APIs they can have a prices and keep them as low as pretty much anyone had As a new user who didn't know the startup and was looking at let's say a $200 hotel room On Jirama versus the $200 hotel room on Expedia booking They're going to pick Expedia booking more likely because Those are brands that they recognize those are brands that they've actually You know can perhaps have better support and all of those things And so we were getting a lot of people planning on our platform But then going somewhere else the booking And that wasn't really working well for us revenue-wise and that's why we delivered it Understood and and what were some of those guerrilla marketing things That you were doing that were obviously not spending millions of dollars in ad money Walking through some of those and which ones worked which ones didn't You know, it was interesting. We actually did a lot of social back then This was like earlier days of social combat now and you didn't have many of the platforms you have now But our Facebook was something we tried we actually won in travel. We won the best social media Start up in travel award. I remember I think it was my skift We also won cranes the Chicago's best social media startup award like so we had some interesting things with Facebook Which was essentially we tried a bunch of different types of posts But what we found was a way to kind of get like a daily dose of inspiration Was you combine a great unique picture right we had curators that would find these cool pictures and kind of show people But you asked them a trivia question And when you cut like we tried so many different variations different things But the thing that was very clear like data was way better was if you asked them a question of like Can you guess where this is for example? And then show them a really cool picture that inspires them at the same time the The likes and the comments and stuff that interactions were off the charts And so that allowed us to get some really nice usage from folks Like that who found us on Facebook and then kind of Got to our our platform and we did other sorts of things as well But that was I think one of the interesting ones very interesting Okay, so as this was growing but obviously and you won awards you were in you got some press and some PR But it didn't really work out so I can still see though that this is like the the roots of of Consumer insights like you're getting information you're figuring out and this is you know the the It qualsites is not that far away from how it started really if you think about it like You think about it not when you just say it right up front it sounds like wait what yeah If you think my original passion right it was all about helping Myself as well, right? I was I was one of the prospective users But also helping just people in general see and understand the world. Why do you travel you travel to explore the world Right to see other things three new things that expose new things and also understand country understand other humans and behavior and all those kinds of things And so I always had that passion and then we pivoted we actually pivoted two times But you get here. So we had a travel startup then we actually pivoted to virtual travel Which is another thing right within travel before we went to insights, but all of these three things were You know what is connected by you know what is virtual travel? This is this is like pre-metaverse so I don't I don't know what virtual travel is It is so funny right people talk about I mean metaverse is a bit different, but So this is pre-miracat pre periscope pre-Facebook We actually now finally got a pattern on this just last year seven years later Where we were the first to kind of do Allow somebody to travel somewhere virtually without physically being there So the way it worked is you had guides local guides whether it was actually official tour guides Which we had many or whether it was you know Just locals in the city or even travelers in the in a city happening to be a travel We allowed them to share their experiences live So not recorded videos these were live videos. That's why it was pre-all of like live is such a big thing now And today's world, but in 2014 when we were doing this it wasn't a thing And so we basically allowed people to virtually and remotely not just see what's going on somewhere else through somebody else But it was all mobile by somebody who's walking around in that city and you could also kind of tailor your experience by saying Hey, can you turn left and show me this so can you kind of do show me that or whatever it may be right? So it was a very interactive experience And it was really unique in that our goal was you know when we realized okay Why were it was hard we realized the whole financial model would work and Even though we had users and stuff But then we were like you know, who are companies in in the travel industry that have actually broken out Kayak was one you know for years before we started was while they started out at Kayak and Airbnb Like a new way of you know searching for for stuff and then with Airbnb a new inventory source And we're like what can we do if we try to stay within travel but be truly unique and that's what we came up with were like well, you know Folks like you and me were privileged in that we have got to see you know quite a bit of the world and etc But there's so many other folks out there in this world that actually would want to go places But don't get a chance to go or don't get a chance to go as much whether it's because of financial reasons or sometimes It's logistic or even physical reasons and so that was kind of that that There was super exciting because we were doing something truly incredibly unique And we did it beyond be to see be very quickly realized be to see was going to be hard Because we had the same challenges amount. I we had some interesting ideas amountization in fact Amazon by the way recently just started a Thing that is almost like an exact thing of what we were doing in 2014. It's kind of funny Amazon travel I think they're piloting it you know how they're pilot different things. We'll see how it does But point is um We had different ways to kind of tip guides and have private tours and stuff like that But we realized you know This is going to be a very strong thing for B2B and that's where we started to B2B We work with tourism organizations like state of Illinois, state of Michigan What clients of ours for example we worked with A very very different hotels for things like site inspections So going to see a hotel for like an event per se or even like things like we have work with a wind farm in Australia for inspections and the wind farm So all kinds of reasons we even work with NASA for virtual filters for kids Who couldn't go there and they wanted like uh, you know You know for crypto NASA all even museums you have many museum clients So it was really unique and we started to make some money there But they're too because we had all of these different industries right we had tourism we had government we had education we had Others um that we were like this is great. There's definitely something here. We've got strong tech But we haven't really found product market photo found that one industry that we can really own We're trying to be jack of all trades and that's where we made that final pivot Uh to call science okay, that makes okay, so But but you pivoted the call sites, but You could have just why did you not just double down on one industry? Why did you choose to pivot the even like the brand like the company name that's that's major Yeah, so when we were looking at these and we were doing a few different things right so we were doing these few different verticals I just mentioned uh this one time one of our advisors connected us to this other Potential investor and within a day he gave us you know 25k check because he was like you know what I'm a researcher And I think your your your technology could be interesting for research for ethnography for helping people understand consumer behavior without physically visiting a home I'm like, oh, that's pretty interesting. So that's how kind of the idea popped into mind In 2017 when we realized like listen We were kind of doing this and just like not going the way we wanted to but I mean it was not going bad But it was not going great We're like we need to figure it out and we need to kind of hone in on one vertical We've got into fine with startups out of the valley and And that journey what we did was like unlike other stuff We were kind of a little bit later stage going to find startups considering we had a great product and all the stuff We had some revenue, but we didn't have the right market and so we used that program single-handedly focused We took seven different verticals including insights being one of them at the time To then kind of do some real tests and real some real market testing in conversations and a whole bunch of things that they tossed there To determine what market it would be that we would focus on and insights was thrown into the hat because that one investor One's dropped a check really quickly, but like I don't see something here, but just try it out And when we did those tests like we did up for example email kind of not email marketing But like almost like sales email sequencing. That's quite common nowadays But like automated sales emails to kind of see what message is working and it was a night and day with compared to other industries Like insights folks really it was resonating our message was resonating We spoke to a whole bunch of industry experts got some more investors It's part of that like we just talking to people and they were really excited about what we're doing There's something here and they've got real money these CPG companies for example and farmer companies have real money They were real pain point that we can solve about being able to do research more efficiently at being doing deep research And that's how the whole Final change came to kind of hone in into insights. Okay, so then okay, perfect So then that brings us up to the qualsight so what so like elevator pitch what does qualsight actually do for a company? Yeah, so what we are is basically consumer insights platform that allows them to understand consumer behavior But in a much more authentic way than before in that these brands can see consumers how they cook of clean or shop or eat While they're doing it now initially when we got into it We were doing it live because we'd build a super strong industrial gateway technology But over time what's happened is we've gone beyond just live people can do recorded at their own time They could do not just videos, but also photos audios all these different moments that they can capture That allows brands to basically set up these tasks and activities for consumers to do They go out and do them at their pace. They picked based on for example their demographic Psychographic behavior or Data and once they're in a project instead of going to a focus group for example The typical way to do quality of research was to go into a focus group Facility and kind of talk about you know certain things But that was all based on recall right. It's like saying hey, you know three weeks ago last week When you went to stop what did you notice first and why you have no memory because you don't you know Whole that kind of information with this. It's all as it happens behavior focus contextual And along that ability to capture data more in the moment It's all about analyzing that data much faster because that's another challenge with qualitative or unstructured data Is how do you analyze that quickly Quant on the other hand quantitative like surveys are very structured super easy to analyze and scale calls hard Through suite of AI tools. We're helping that process also be very efficient And so in a nutshell, we help brands capture that data Analyze that data and present that data all in one place with a variety of different methodologies to get deep in all that I think it says incredible So then what what are some some learnings that have have you pulled out of looking at doing this research this way What is what are some things that brands have discovered from consumers that For example, they wouldn't have been able to know without qualsites I mean, there's a tremendous amount of things we work with many fortune thousand brands on all every week for a head multiple times a week On a variety of different projects. I can't obviously disclose specific Yeah, we've helped with things like you know new product innovations. We've helped launch new product innovations We've helped I can give you an example like there was a brand again. I can't name names, but Fortune you know 100 brand that basically had an anti-dandruff product that was looking to kind of Will they build new innovations to kind of focus on heavy versus light sufferers of dandruff, right? But they didn't prior to that they hadn't kind of distinguished those So they didn't realize how a heavy dandruff sufferer versus a light dandruff suffer perceived their brand or perceived their category right and so using our platform We're able to kind of get into the minds of consumers by having again two groups of consumers one with light one with heavy dandruff and seeing how their flare-ups were different Getting a diary on their day to day over seven days a variety of different activities on what products to use How they use them how often they use them so on so full And based on that understanding then launch different messaging to the do different groups to try and see what resonated well And based on that feedback Optimize their messaging and then launch those innovation So that was an example of how they improve messaging through understanding consumer behavior and perception We've done many things where we've even had an interesting project I remember quite fondly is we had you know This serial brand again top, you know fortune 500 serial brand that was basically looking to launch new serial But they wanted to kind of talk to kids And typically if you do an interview with kids a I mean there's legal stuff you have to have parents around and all that's fine But if I'm a stranger interviewing a kid That kid's gonna you know obviously very likely not be that Genuine with me you're gonna be shy or nervous. So whatever it may be because they don't know you But with our app it allowed the parent themselves to kind of sit next the kid and show them these concepts And have them react to these new potential animations. These weren't even real They were just ideas on a on an image basically different kind of images and The kids of course found it more like like a game and they were giving their candid thoughts And it was like beautiful to see and that allowed them to actually build and iterate on a new product So those are just a couple examples where we have many more things that we do even install or post use like consumption and so on And and as you obviously you're you're now heavily involved in this industry So what are some like what are some trends like what do what do companies actually pay attention to in terms of like Their consumers and the behavior what matters to companies now or what rather said differently what should matter if you If you aren't looking at these things or certain consumer trends. What should you start looking at? Yeah, I mean, I think as time goes by more and more companies are realizing how important it is to truly understand That consumer and their customers behavior right Not just in the traditional ways. Yes, you know surveys have been around forever and those are used quite heavily But much beyond that because a survey gives you like the what yeah, but it rarely gives you the why right it gives you Structure data scalable data, but it's not really giving you that much depth and context So to answer the why there's no better way than talking to your consumers Talking to your consumers. However is the expensive time consuming you know painful process They were intensive and that's where our platform comes into help you understand the consumer behavior understand their minds Without necessarily spending that much time and effort because it's so efficient in terms of how you capture and how you analyze that data And so in terms of trends one big one of course the last couple years has been the pandemic right how do behaviors change? You know, and what what behaviors are here to stay post-pandemic now that we are you know, hopefully seeing You know some light at the end of tunnel here. It's like what are the behaviors that stick You know, and we've actually done something to even internal studies on that where you know We people have including myself developed all these quirks. Yeah, like I still don't press an elevator button on my finger Always use my elbow. It's just a thing that's that's it's a funny simple example But what else do I do do I clean more right do do people you know do some things with whatever it may be Different for each industry, but what are these behaviors that are here to stay That we've picked up over the last couple years because things are so different And that's a very important thing for for brands to have that pause on I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot now if you're tired of slowing down your teams with clunky software Processes and marketing that's difficult to scale HubSpot is here to help you and your business grow better with collaboration tools and built in SEO Optimizations hubspots here and platforms tailor-made to help you scale your marketing with ease Integrated calendars tasks and commenting help hybrid teams stay connected while automated SEO Recommendations intuitively optimize your web page content for increased organic traffic Ditch the difficult and dial up your marketing with tools that are easy to use and easy to scale Learn how your business can grow better at HubSpot.com now Let's I want to I want to pivot a little bit and speak to some of the lessons that you've learned in building out the company as well So this is this is incredibly interesting and obviously this can be incredibly useful for brands But this is something that I don't think really existed before you created it like I've never heard of another company that does this So you I understand the how the company sort of came to be and and and the story behind the company But when you're building something in relatively I guess new industry blue ocean. I don't know what the best word for this particular tool is but How did you How did you Innovate? How did you how did you R&D this? How did you create this so that it was useful for brands? What's your process of iterating and improving and optimizing the actual tech behind Behind qualsites Yeah, that's I think our biggest strength honestly that is our biggest trend. That's why we're here today It's where and we've done it multiple times. I had in all three things We had three unique products that had some you know underlying connectivity between them but completely different focuses and industries and We still manage to be unique every time and be ahead of the competition and that's because You know, we do ourselves. I mean, uh, we always know we can do more But when we got into the insights industry and then those sales tests back at final startups We started to learn and listen to our clients obviously. We had an idea of what would be valuable So we kind of started with that and told them what we had and then kind of listen and we put our product out there We had them tried and we listened to feedback very very very much and so we monitor how people are using the platform But more importantly ask like more than anything else. We're talking to our clients and encourage them Encouraging them to always give us feedback and we till today we are pushing updates to apply from twice a week So we're very fast in terms of how we iterate and so we're always improving Sometimes of course there's these major updates other times it's smaller ones But it's always we always kind of staying ahead of the game always trying to think of what's next And a big big part of that has been really listening to our clients and at the same time not really looking at competitors You know what we try not to do is not look at what else is out there right We actually And this is something I've I've found it has worked at least well for me personally is both times it was industries I had no connection to right. Yes, I had some passion But no connection to But as I spoke to people right and in the case of call sites, we can speak to customers I was not a researcher, but I kind of glean so much that there's many times in the future people ask me like oh you must be a researcher I'm like no, I'm not wrong. You know, I'm just a good listener But we listen and Kind of take that in but we don't have the biases like if I was a researcher I think I wouldn't be able to have done this as well because then I would have kind of been blocked in some ways Okay, this is what's normal. This is what's possible. I had no such baggage with me And so therefore I could go into an industry Understand what clients need and build something because we had a very strong tech team and product is our strength And then see how it works and then keep building and then you know once we had a certain stage look at competition See like okay, where are we compared the rest and we were almost always ahead And that's really where it was really cool to be able to do that Just purely based on customer feedback and our own kind of ideas and talk to me about Product development talk to me about some of the best practices that you've implemented because obviously Product development has been key to your success And this is something that I think you sort of shown again and again, but How do you how do you develop this product so that it does serve the needs of your customer? You said feedback loops are obviously important, but some other good like product development learnings Yeah, for us, I mean we're always A, we're listening to customers like we talked about but B We are also monitoring how customers use things okay to then come up with what's next We're also always trying to figure out how can we do something better right for example if you think of AI Over the last few years if you 10 years ago, right if you try to kind of do what we're doing today Probably couldn't do it well at least the other part A because you know, maybe the smart for penetration wasn't so high and then B In terms of the AI piece that was actually something that AI is kind of progressed so much over the years And so kind of keeping abreast of the latest technologies keeping abreast of what we can do kind of to move the needle Every single day or every single week Is another key part of this to kind of understand okay? Now that technology is getting better we can help them take this unstructured data and do this and this and that with it To actually make it much more fast for them to analyze that data and we've kind of been able to use You know piggyback off You know for example a whole bunch of innovations in AI. Let's talk about for example NLP has been a big thing natural language processing Of course has continually kind of improved and you've got the big five You know companies kind of working on it So it's it's rare that you'll see a young startup that will come on and beat them at the core of AI So therefore we didn't go after the core of AI instead we took all of their core AI capabilities Combine them and added our own flavor and kind of fit in the gaps And that's what for example allowed us to have the best in class AI capability Without having to spend billions of dollars that we obviously did have To build a homeschool and how do you how do you you mentioned one thing that was very interesting as well So the the monitoring of how people actually use The tools that you build out. So how do you monitor them? Is there is there widgets that you you build out? Or is it something that you've coded you know internally that tracks user behavior within the app? How do you actually how do you actually get that data? Yeah, we have a bunch of ways to track data with the app to see what's what's Most popular use features and what's not you know Always room for improvement even there But we have kind of done that there's also ways for example on an app that we track actually We screenshots of what help people are using our app and so we see then and it's not even screenshots actually It's like basically videos but we and of course any any private stuff is kind of Taking away like if they're putting in like an email for example But otherwise it kind of shows the entire floor of using the app and that allows us actually in two ways one is if there's a bug We can check that and say okay. Hey, where did they get stuck? Is this a user error? Is it a bug or something else? If someone complained, let's say someone reached out about like some support question But it also helps us understand okay Maybe people are missing this new feature that we have there or You know, this can be optimized and so on so being able to actually see it Even in those kind of ways is quite useful beyond you just looking at the data and then how did you actually as okay? So now you have a great product How did you actually find that product market fit? How did you close your first customers for qualsight? How did you scale the company? Was it was it Pure sales and marketing did you go raise more money and then you reinvested that what was that sort of what was that process? Yeah, no, we were very very scrappy So 2018 is when we pivoted officially to qualsight we changed the name I think even like September 2018 But we pivoted to insights in early 2018 And that first year was honestly all about Just getting our name out as much as we could and we didn't really have much money to do so But we were like preaching on using our network and kind of getting a bunch of calls And we kind of used those calls against the learn, you know, how our product stack the stuff and what else we could do And in that first year because we came in as this live video technology when we would show clients our tech They would just be blown away. They were like, wow, we've never seen anything like it where people can be like walking around And you can kind of see them and kind of be there without being there was like so far ahead Which was a good thing but also a bad thing because most of the time they were very excited I mean all the time they were excited most of the time the reaction was Oh, this is amazing never seen anything like it. Let me think about the right project and the next time we have the right project We'll get back to you So what we realized after enough of those folks saying this is amazing But we have to wait for the right project. We're like we're too ahead of the game It's something that people are interested in they aspire to but this is not something this feels niche right now It's too far ahead and so what can we do to kind of really kind of Be better and that's where we realize is unlike in quank you've got qualshiks You've got survey monkey. We've got big players Including some startups that are doing really well and catching up In qual on the other hand in our industry. Yeah, there's a few startups But there's no clear leader there's not one company that anyone can tell you is the leader in qual And we're like wait a second. Why do we want to be this live video qualitative ethnography kind of leader Which we already were instantly because there was nobody there still isn't but How can we kind of really own qual how can we be the qualtrix or survey monkey of the qualitative industry And that's where that 2018 late late in 2018 early 2019 We started build horizontally and add the recorded videos and the photo was in the barcode capture the screen capture All of the methodologies we knew that were important to have a one-stop shop toolkit for any quality researcher to just have one platform Because the market is fragmented you have startups doing one little thing doing it well But doing one little thing and therefore as a client as a brand you'd have to actually end up going to multiple vendors to have these deep insights We said why not have it in one platform and then there's all these benefits to mix and maximize methodologies in one place Plus have all the AI to help it analyze faster So we built like the ultimate tool in learning from customers Even customers who didn't buy from us or didn't buy from us yet When really back in in 2019 and that's where we started to kind of get more clients pick up And it was all through either just switching outbound cold which worked really well We practiced that and finally startups and they taught us that and worked really well initially it's harder now Because most people are doing it right so there's a lot much more noise But we also you know got lucky at a couple conferences and events We met some really solid clients and then they become my accurate clients And so that's how to all begin and then of course it started to snow welcome there Did you uh so that's actually very interesting so would you actually recommend that to to companies because you almost You you you built this leading product in a certain niche and then you almost went into more competitive industries Just so it would be easier to sell like it's almost the the opposite of what most people I assume would think oh I want to go into blue ocean. I'm a leading product and I'm so innovative No one's ever done it before it seems so this seems like such a great idea. There's no competition So you actually built out a course set of features that In fringe on a whole bunch of other companies that were already in very well-established markets And that's actually how you got momentum It is because we were able to kind of take for example an interview right an interview and focus over you ask me like I think those are nice For certain things but for many of the behavioral insights that we encourage our clients to get to get these deeper more authentic insights Those are not the right tools at all That set up that from does offer and is used for interviews and focus groups but many of those clients are bought in to start with that where they're like Oh, I could use like a zoom or any other kind of tool nowadays right to like to do an interview But they doesn't have research features like a back room and all the stuff that they would need so we we beat out The standard tools with that however where we really get them is like did you know you can analyze this data so much faster without AI So then they'll look at IA and they'll be like wow. Yeah, man. This is so much better than my handwritten notes and all other You know older processes I shouldn't I used to do and now like oh and now like a couple weeks or a few months later Did you know that you could also do this without even doing an interview and actually see somebody cook? Or seeing somebody open your product and unbox and use your product or whatever it may be Without having to do an interview because they could do it in their own piece And you can have many more consumers So a larger sample size and analyze it as fast because now you know how good it is They're like yeah, so you kind of get them in on where they are And upgrade them to what the future is that we already had built and so that's sort of been our strategy And sometimes you go that way other times you've got companies who are super ahead of the game And they get the cutting edge stuff and they'll come right there But many of the companies still need they somewhere within that spectrum and so our offering Supports any any company regardless of where they are and that's very smart And after after you obviously you took this to market And then you started to build out all these incillery features that will actually allow you to Capture more customers and actually and sell Did you go and raise more money or did you just did you just grow with your own revenue? No, no, we did at the last couple years we've been going with our own revenue. It was just great, but Prior to that. Yes, we did so we haven't in the grand scheme of things since 2012 It's gonna be in two months. It's gonna be ten years. Which is insane. It isn't Just about 3.5 million You know, not uploading a turnaround, but essentially so that's You know what we did so we were very capital efficient while we'd raise 3.5 was or ten years That's it's not bad very You know, yeah exactly. It's very capital efficient for what we've been doing very good Okay, and where do you where do you want to take this like what's the what's the end goal for you as an entrepreneur? You're ten years in at the long time for an entrepreneur. So where do you want to go with it? Yeah, persistence has been also a big you know advantage of ours You know, it's been required of course, and it's something Something I'm proud of right But we knew like it's we wouldn't have been this persistent if we didn't know we wanted something and now finally The results have shown, you know, where the fastest going company in Illinois. We are 222 in the ink 5,000 and you know things are going really well We've had 20 20x cold in the last three years in terms of revenue Um our goal though is we're not you know, we weren't one of those where I didn't if I wanted to kind of Try and flip this we had great IP all along the way that I could have you know sold for a decent sum and at least for personally But you know quite set But that's not what my goal with this is money has not been the primary factor of course Money helps and that's a byproduct Bigger vision here is to kind of build a product that truly makes an impact in this world really You know, it's cheesy, but in our industry to kind of really kind of change the way people build like I'm all about innovation Right, that's my biggest passion is is tech innovation and if we can help clients in variety of industries Help be better innovators which then in turn helps consumers have better products That would be the ultimate goal and that success for us and of course the byproduct of doing that Would result in great value to all of our investors in ourselves But the primary kind of driver is that um and and future predictions for consumer insight trends in the next five to ten years How granular are we going to be able to get in terms of what we can Understand from a customer like it's all it's it's very it's very topical now like how much data we can get from people So where do you think this is going? Maybe in the future one out this close mocus we have already the next innovation that good is To another one It's within of course that now we all we're not pivoting anymore, but within our industry it is It's funny you use the word granularity because that's the word we use you know we end the scene right now I still in settlement with it. It's just a whole new level. Let's never been remotely seen before and so we're super excited about but it's something where unlike Like the Facebook kind of model right where you have you know the social media platform and all these users and you get data and then Of course the issue right now is a how much data are you collecting and then be You know getting paid for your data and these companies are making billions off of you Our goal is very different our goal is people and we already like people get paid to do this research studies They get paid quite handsomely actually way more than a survey would give you the surveys are you know sense This is you know people would make significant money working, you know And a platform where they get selected for projects that is and so helping people make money for that data But them sharing data that is not private per se it's like You know those things that I'm willing to share because it's you know how I use certain products So how I you know do a certain activity at home or how I shop for certain products It's just kind of understanding my mind and my behavior in a non-intrusive way and making money As a result and so therefore I think there's a people believe without going into technical details. There's some really interesting things That are going to come both from us and I think in the industry is a whole that take advantage of that and be on the right side of the whole privacy equation Be on the right side of the paying consumers for their data equation and at the same time bringing value to clients to understand behavior and Health sense building by the products that help everybody who uses this works Sorry about that. No a few things a few things to close out just so I I want to get some of your your socials in your website But then I want to do some rapid fire questions as well But before before we go into that Just some closing thoughts anything else that you wanted to to bring up about qual sites or or or anything that you've learned from your experience building out And pivoting three times and all these different entrepreneurial lessons floors yours I think the thing I always recommend you know younger I got a lot of help along the way right so much advice so much help and it's it's great You know to have that and I think the thing I personally learn and I always like to share is there's like the three piece Is what I call it? Of an entrepreneur of you know of this journey one is passion right so pick something you're passionate about If you don't you're not going to survive 10 years no no chance right And and sometimes you need to survive 10 years or many more right so that's important so that you're excited about what you're doing For the long term For assistance right you're gonna have a lot of things in your way a lot of ups and downs You know we ourselves are for example multiple times in the courses this last and years got down to a last you know A couple thousand dollars in the bank right and so You'll face some really crazy challenges and some you'll get a lot of nose But you have to say persistent through that as long as of course you have a strong belief in your product And you know you've you've got something and then finally I think the bigger pivot the third p pivot Is another important one like there's where it's rare to find companies today who start doing this And by the end of their journey stay doing that It's almost always some sort of whether it's a drastic pivot like ours or it's other kind of iterations It's rare that you start with something you stick with that and so your ability to learn Your ability to kind of adapt to the market to sometimes even cannibalize yourself Is going to be very important to kind of stay ahead of the game and so those are the three things very smart All right, so where do people go and connect with you all of your social your personal socials or the website You know all that stuff while site socials any links you want to draw Yeah, so for me it's LinkedIn, you know, so nihil ad money is you know you're all slash nihil ad money Is me on LinkedIn and then of course wall sites is everything qualsize you got LinkedIn you've got Think we're doing some stuff finally on Twitter now. We're not as active yet But yeah, those are perhaps the two most Easiest ways to find the companies. Okay. Let's do a couple rapid fire. So The biggest challenge that you've overcome in your personal or professional life What was it? How did you overcome it and what did you learn from it? You know, it's actually one that happened just past year and it was both It was actually lost RCTO This past year due to due to COVID, you know, in May and so I was a terrible time very tragic. I was young and The entire team kind of went to this and for me, I mean for four or nine years of the 10 He was my my colleague and friend My first call in the morning my last call in the night and so very, very tough and you know The team just really got together and you know, we could we didn't have much control over what happened Obviously we tried everything we could to get into the carry needs, but you know What had to happen happened and now we kind of re-energized to kind of do this not just for all of our Own ambitions and goals, but also for him and it's been amazing to see the team to come together and really have You know an additional like trying force behind them and kind of just do this in his honor Yeah, that's not so sorry about that But glad to hear that the team got through that. Okay, that's that's not easy Especially for you If you had to choose one person obviously there's been multiple to pick one person who's had an incredible impact on your career Who was it and what did they teach you I say for my but advisors mean I've had many people have impacted me in many ways But one of our advisors Mohan Sonny He's actually one of the top professors at Kellogg. I think he's a associate dean of innovation now at Kellogg and He's been my advisor some of the early travel days And he's kind of really hooked up. He's one of those like really big thinking guys like I'll take maybe like a few weeks to come up with something really nice I'll start to talk to my about if you'll get it in like two minutes like you'll get there He's like a different level and It's just amazing to be able to ideate with folks like that. We have some amazing advisors including him involved and To build the idea from him learn from him and he's been really really Generous with his connections. He's helped us bring on investors, you know He's introduced us to masters and to do such a clients because he gets so many folks that he you know come to him and learn from him And so I think all around he's one of those advisors that has kind of helped us in every way possible and I strongly encourage start-ups to to get active advisors and you know advisors like that are willing to to waste You know, so that you yeah perfect. No, I agree A book or podcast you'd recommend people go check out. It's had an impact on your life You know, I actually do don't read full books. It's kind of funny. I mean, I'm very crazy I work ours, but what I do do is this I've called Blinkist where it's basically an audiobook, but it's also 15 minutes, you know eight to 15 minutes and so using that I do a bunch and The recent one I thought that was really great was bloodscaling So yeah, very good. There you go If you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing what would it be? Quit faster Start faster. I while I there was a lot of benefits and I really enjoyed Microsoft. I have great things to say about them If I had to do it over I would do it faster So that would be my advice for myself and then last question. What does success mean to you? Yeah, I think we covered some of that, but it's really for me It's like I really want to make an impact in this world. I want to you know build an innovation that kind of helps Companies and others that to me is successful where We can be recognized for all of our great tech and innovation that helps other companies Innovates that's the number one driver for me You