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 numeral.com
Flex: Get premium banking and a net 60 day credit card at 0% APY home.flex.one/referral/bananacapital
Amplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask 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: listenlabs.ai
Careers at Listen: listenlabs.ai/careers
Sweetgreen protein bowls: listenlabs.ai/case-studies/sweetgreen
Toni Erdmann: imdb.com/title/tt4048272
Episode with Erik @ Modal: thespl.it/p/building-ai-native-infrastructure

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

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

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