Outset is a new company that is transforming the qualitative research landscape by harnessing the power of ChatGPT to conduct in-depth interviews at scale. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Outset co-founder and CEO Aaron Cannon to learn more about the company.
Aaron Cannon’s Background
What is Aaron Cannon’s background? Cannon said:
“Michael Hess and I co-founded Outset in 2023. I had a research background – I started my career doing research and strategy consulting for Fortune 500 companies. I then led product and design teams at tech companies for the next decade. In both of those roles, qualitative research was at the core of what I did – and I was always deeply frustrated with how slow that process was and how we were forced to make critical business decisions based on data from only a small group of participants/users.”
“Michael and I met at a startup where I was the head of product, and he was the technical lead. We began talking about how we could fix this problem, and we agreed that AI could do it. He had the technical chops to build the solution I had in my head – an AI-moderated research platform – so we teamed up to make Outset a reality.”
“At Outset, Michael leads product and engineering, and I lead sales, marketing, and customer success.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Cannon reflected:
“The single best moment was when I knew we were onto something.”
“Way back in early 2023, we had just run a test project with WeightWatchers. They had just gotten back 100 in-depth interviews where AI led the discussion with participants…all in under a day. The researcher working on the project reviewed the data for the first time, called me, and said, ‘Wow – that really worked.’”
“The next week, we were working out our first annual agreement, and we were off to the races. That moment really sticks with me.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Cannon explained:
“Outset is the first AI-moderated research platform providing the scale and speed of a survey with the depth of a one-to-one interview. Designed to help Fortune 500 enterprises obtain deep, qualitative research results quickly, Outset leverages AI to conduct and synthesize video interviews to inform strategic business decisions. Dozens of enterprises, including WeightWatchers, Away and Opendoor rely on Outset to deliver in-depth data results and insights faster than traditional survey methods.”
“Regular surveys are broad but not deep – the knowledge collected is generally quantitative, not qualitative. Getting to ‘the why’ behind answers is nearly impossible. On the flipside, traditional qualitative interviews are incredibly costly and result in extremely small sample sizes. Outset combines the best of quantitative and qualitative research into one using AI.”
“Here’s how Outset works:
— Researchers prepare a research guide.
— Outset trains itself on the guide and prepares a shareable link for research participants, who can come from Outset’s own panels or are provided by the client.
— Research participants (who are usually compensated for their time) enter the interview experience using the link and meet their AI moderator, who can speak, listen, react in real-time, and dynamically ask follow-up questions. It’s like speaking with a real person – the AI moderator introduces itself and explains that it’s AI.
— The interview can last anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes, and Outset can conduct dozens or even hundreds of sessions at once.
— Once the sessions are completed, Outset synthesizes feedback and provides topline insights to the research team for further review and action.”
“In August 2024, we launched a new Usability Testing solution, addressing a critical need for product teams to test their designs or new products before launch.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Cannon and the team faced in building the company? Cannon acknowledged:
“This is likely not specific to only our sector, but with enterprises in general, there is trepidation around adopting AI tools. Procurement, operations, and legal teams often have concerns in incorporating AI into day-to-day workflows, despite the obvious value to the team.”
“We’ve taken those concerns to heart.”
“We made sure to architect our system with the most stringent security and privacy practices (Soc2 Type2 certified, GDPR compliant, etc.) and make sure that those stakeholders are part of the early conversations. We also center our AI system around real people – that means letting AI interview participants to elicit deep, thoughtful answers and then orienting our users to that raw, unfiltered data.”
Evolution Of Outset’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Cannon noted:
“AI is evolving so quickly, and that’s enabled us to rapidly iterate and improve the Outset platform.”
“In its early days, Outset was a text-based conversational interview. Now it’s become truly multi-modal. Customers can deploy video or voice interviews in dozens of languages, utilize an AI voice in the conversation, share images, videos, or live sites to test, and synthesize all that data in a matter of minutes.”
“Additionally, Outset has become a more robust platform. Customers can recruit, screen and interview thousands of participants and then run complex analyses, all through the portal itself. “
“We will continue to create a more intelligent, more capable, and more intuitive AI system to help businesses make critical and informed decisions.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Cannon cited:
“We founded the company in 2023 and got into Y Combinator’s Summer 2023 batch. We landed our first Fortune 500 customer that summer quickly followed by dozens more.”
“In the first three quarters of 2024, Outset revenue has increased by ~4x with every quarter setting new records.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Cannon about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Outset is used primarily by Fortune 500 research teams – large companies that have dedicated teams for market research, user research and customer experience research.”
“Our current customers include WeightWatchers, Away, Opendoor, and many other leading technology and consumer brands.”
“WeightWatchers partnered with Outset to better understand the deeper motivations behind peoples’ decision to get healthy. Away partnered with Outset in advance of a major new product launch to gather insights on what people want from their luggage. We worked with a global consumer packaged goods company that needed to quickly gather consumer insights from multiple countries in multiple languages – with Outset, they were able to capture 10x the amount of data in about 1/4th the time at 1/10th the cost.”
Funding
When asking Cannon about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“Outset is venture-backed – our most recent funding was a seed round from Y Combinator, Adverb Ventures, Ryan Hoover from Product Hunt, Jack Altman, and some other prominent angels. We have raised $4.3 million to date. “
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Cannon assessed:
“The research industry is projected to pull in $140 billion in revenue in 2024. Between 25 and 50% of that is qualitative research. But those numbers don’t represent the massive investment in human capital spent conducting qualitative interviews – not only do researchers spend a huge portion of their time moderating qualitative research, but so do investors, product managers, designers, and marketers.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Cannon affirmed:
“Outset is the first AI-moderated research platform providing the scale and speed of a survey with the depth of a one-to-one interview. Typically, we are displacing or supplementing traditional research methods like Qualtrics, which does very large surveys, or manual usability tests or one-on-one interviews over Zoom. All of these constrain a company’s ability to go broad, fast and deep with their research, and the latter two can take weeks or months to complete.”
“There are also a few very small startups in this space – we’ve never run into one in a deal, and we believe we are far ahead of any of them in terms of platform performance, number of customers, and ability to serve enterprise needs.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Cannon pointed out:
“Our goal is to make AI-moderated research become a critical pillar of all market and user research functions, regardless of industry.”
“In the near term, we’re focusing on expanding the value of our AI-moderated research platform to usability and product testing – a large category that is still using static survey tools – as well as pushing the boundaries of human-AI interactions with the most advanced real-time, voice and video interviews.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics to discuss? Cannon concluded:
“Something we’ve found very interesting on this journey is how much more forthcoming people are when interviewed by an AI rather than a person.”
“What we’ve learned:
– Participants said it feels like a survey because it’s async, and they can do it whenever they want, but that it was much more engaging than a typical survey.
– Many described it as a survey that listens and reacts.
– One recurring theme from the participant feedback was that they felt they could be more open and honest with an AI moderator than they would be with a person, because the AI doesn’t judge. This was especially true for sensitive topics, like anything health related. From this we concluded that Outset’s results are likely to be more accurate than traditional research methods.”
