Building Got Easy. This Startup Solves What to Build | Alfred Wahlforss, Listen Labs

Alfred Wallforss is the Co-founder of Listen Labs, the AI customer research company.

Companies like Microsoft use Listen to run AI-powered customer interviews, and Alfred talks about how they first landed them as a customer at a pitch competition.

We talk why startups should pursue enterprise customers early on, why 85% of survey answers are random clicks, how AI is changing the $140B market research industry, leveraging VC’s for customer intros, how to stand out when recruiting as a startup, and hiring for obsession.

Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude for supporting this episode

Numeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.com

Flex: Get premium banking and a net 60 day credit card at 0% APY https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital

Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.com

Timestamps:
0:14 Listen: AI customer research tool
7:30 Fraud is a big problem in customer research
9:06 The $140B customer survey industry
12:08 Why running customer surveys is so hard
16:03 AGI will never replace humans
18:25 Surveys vs interviews
21:13 Importance of emotion in data collection
22:54 Using AI interviews to get product feedback
26:15 Building digital twins creates better data
32:22 Outperforming generic AI tools
34:17 Sweetgreen’s Max Protein Bowl
36:09 Jevon’s Paradox in customer research
40:37 Quantitative vs qualitative
42:38 Landing Microsoft as an early customer
44:50 Targeting enterprise customers from day 1
48:05 Building a VC customer intro leaderboard
51:53 Recruiting with billboard games
57:20 Hiring for obsession
1:02:07 Alfred’s favorite movies
1:03:53 Listen’s custom agent harness
1:06:24 Velocity Fellowship for Swedes moving to SF
1:08:34 Growing up with entrepreneurial older brother
1:09:46 No shoes in the office

Referenced
Try Listen: https://listenlabs.ai/
Careers at Listen: https://listenlabs.ai/careers
Sweetgreen protein bowls: https://listenlabs.ai/case-studies/sweetgreen
Toni Erdmann: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4048272/
Episode with Erik @ Modal: https://www.thespl.it/p/building-ai-native-infrastructure

Follow Alfred
Twitter: https://x.com/itsalfredw
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wahlforss

Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

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Видео Building Got Easy. This Startup Solves What to Build | Alfred Wahlforss, Listen Labs канала The Peel with Turner Novak