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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