The Business of Tech: AI is eating market research
About this episode
The episode discusses how AI is transforming market research, featuring an interview with James Donald, CEO of Ideally, a New Zealand startup that recently closed a significant funding round.
Market research has long been a privilege of the big end of town. Got $50,000 and six weeks to spare? Great, you can know what your customers think. Everyone else? Good luck. That model is being dismantled, and a New Zealand startup is doing some of the dismantling. In the latest episode of The Business of Tech, I sat down with James Donald, CEO of Auckland-based Ideally, fresh from closing a $16 million Series A that values the company at $100 million. Ideally is one of three AI-centric New Zealand startups to hit that psychological valuation milestone in the past month – a sign that our fledgling AI start-up ecosystem is gaining momentum. James is a former Shell engineer turned serial founder whose previous company, Yonder, was acquired by a US travel tech firm. Now he's turned his sights on a $40 billion slice of the global market research industry – one where 90% of spend still flows to people-heavy agencies like Kantar and Nielsen. His pitch: AI can do what took those agencies weeks to do, in hours, at a fraction of the cost, and with results in the hands of the people inside a company who actually know what questions to ask. The pros and cons of…
People in this episode
Guest: James Donald
Topics covered
- AI in market research
- New Zealand startups
- synthetic data
- cost reduction in research
- customer insights
Keywords
- market research
- AI startups
- synthetic data
- customer insights
- cost efficiency
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Ideally, Shell, Yonder, Kantar, Nielsen
Places: Auckland, New Zealand
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