The Founders and Leaders Series – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Episode Overview

Hakan Yurdakul, CEO of Bolt Insight, discusses AI-native research, dynamic personas, and how conversational AI is transforming market research.

Episode Highlights

• Pioneer in AI Research: Bolt Insight created the world's first AI-native conversational research platform, predating the ChatGPT boom by training proprietary models on human-moderated interviews
• Human + AI Approach: How combining human expertise with AI technology creates better research outcomes, moving beyond simple correlation to understand causality in consumer insights
• Dynamic Personas Revolution: Moving beyond static synthetic personas to "live personas" that are continuously updated with fresh consumer interviews and market trends
• Corporate Memory Solution: AI agents serving as institutional memory banks, connecting sales data, historical research, and new insights to prevent repeated mistakes and improve innovation success rates
• Entrepreneurial Journey: Transitioning from 15 years at Unilever to founding a successful AI research company, with lessons on networking and moving outside comfort zones
• Future of Research: The shift from traditional qual vs quant methodologies toward hybrid, conversational research that brings human empathy back to consumer understanding

About the Guest

Hakan Yurdakul is the co-founder and CEO of Bolt Insight, an AI-native research firm. A Harvard graduate with 15 years of experience at Unilever as a consumer marketeer across FMCG categories, Hakan transitioned from corporate life to entrepreneurship to create research tools he wished he had in his corporate roles.

Along with co-founders from Ipsos and Nielsen backgrounds, he built Bolt Insight into a 60-person company serving 95% large enterprise clients across FMCG, finance, consulting, and technology sectors. The company operates globally with offices in North America, UK, France, Turkey, and Singapore.

Learn more about the impact of technology and AI on research, insights & analytics at Insight Platforms.

Episode Overview

AI-powered research platform Conveo transforms market insights through AI-moderated video interviews, delivering deeper consumer understanding at scale.

Episode Highlights

The Future of Data Collection: How AI moderators are revolutionizing consumer research by conducting natural video conversations that capture not just what people say, but how they say it and what they show

Multimodal Analysis Breakthrough: Advanced AI capabilities that analyze facial expressions, emotions, environments, and brand detection alongside transcripts—providing the 93% of meaning beyond words

Research Team Transformation: Why AI tools are empowering researchers rather than replacing them, enabling the 90% of research projects that teams wish they could run but couldn't due to time constraints

From Insights to Impact: Real examples of how AI-generated research travels directly to revenue-generating functions, convincing retailers and driving shelf placement decisions

The Talent Multiplier Effect: How research technology acts as a talent acquisition tool, allowing teams to scale expertise without scaling headcount while maintaining research rigor

Beyond "Qual at Scale": Moving past traditional research categories toward rapid iterative insights that compound knowledge across multiple studies and markets

About the Guests

Hendrik van Hove is Chief Product Officer at Conveo, the AI-powered research platform. A former McKinsey consultant who studied AI before ChatGPT's launch, Hendrik co-founded Conveo after Y Combinator and focuses on customer-driven product development.

Niels Schillewaert is Head of Research and Methods at Conveo and former co-founder of Human8 Insights Consulting. With decades of experience in digital research transformation, Niels brings deep methodological expertise to AI-powered consumer insights.

Learn more about the impact of technology and AI on research, insights & analytics at Insight Platforms.

Episode Overview

Co-founder Tanika McLeod discusses OneCliq's AI-powered qualitative insights platform and her journey from researcher to startup founder.

Episode Highlights

• From Researcher to Founder: How Tanika combined her seven years of qualitative research experience with generative AI expertise to solve the painful, time-consuming aspects of analyzing unstructured text data
• Qualitative Insights at Scale: OneCliq's breakthrough approach using unsupervised classification to analyze thousands of online conversations across Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and X - delivering deep qualitative insights without predetermined frameworks
• The Future of Research: Why AI will transform research from manually executing projects to orchestrating them, freeing researchers from grunt work to focus on high-impact strategic and creative analysis
• Startup Lessons: Hard-won insights about building true value, the importance of customer discovery, and why the fear of failure is worse than failure itself - plus the painful pivot that led to breakthrough success
• AI Reality Check: A balanced perspective on AI's potential and limitations, debunking both the replacement fears and AGI hype while highlighting the democratizing power of current AI tools
• Recent Acquisition: The story behind OneCliq's integration with Dig Insights and how it fits into their end-to-end innovation platform

About the Guest

Tanika McLeod is co-founder and managing director of OneCliq, an AI-powered platform that provides qualitative insights from online conversations at unprecedented speed and scale. With seven years of qualitative research experience combined with deep generative AI expertise from Google's accelerator program, she has pioneered unsupervised classification techniques that unlock cultural insights from social media data. OneCliq was recently acquired by Dig Insights, where Tanika continues to lead the development of innovative research methodologies that bridge traditional qualitative research with AI automation.

Learn more about the impact of technology and AI on research, insights & analytics at Insight Platforms.

Episode Overview

AI-powered research meets human expertise: Matteo Cera explores how AI moderated interviews bridge qual and quant research for faster, deeper insights.

Episode Highlights

AI Moderated Interviews (AIMIs): How voice-based AI interviews deliver insights 10-15x faster and 2-3x cheaper than traditional methods by combining survey structure with conversational depth

The Evolution of Research Methodologies: Why the boundaries between qualitative and quantitative research are blurring, creating opportunities for "Agile Quantifiable Qual" approaches

Building Trust in Research Tech: The critical importance of human relationships and trust-building in B2B research technology adoption, especially for founders entering the industry

The Future of Researchers: How AI tools will enhance rather than replace researchers, shifting their role from manual tasks to strategic piloting and insight delivery

Agency Transformation: Two distinct camps emerging - skeptics focusing on AI limitations versus progressive agencies embracing AI across their entire operations

Quality vs Scale Trade-offs: Measuring success through depth of insights, emotional nuances, project speed, and cost efficiency rather than traditional metrics

About the Guest

Matteo Cera is the Founder and CEO of Glaut, an AI-powered research platform specializing in AI Moderated Interviews (AIMIs). A former McKinsey consultant and serial entrepreneur, this is his third technology startup. Matteo brings an outsider's perspective to the research industry, having built his career in strategy consulting and tech entrepreneurship before founding Glaut in late 2023. He focuses on helping experienced researchers deliver faster, more cost-effective insights through AI-enhanced voice interviews that bridge the gap between traditional surveys and in-depth interviews.

Learn more about the impact of technology and AI on research, insights & analytics at Insight Platforms.

Episode Overview

In this inaugural episode, we sit down with Aneesh Dhawan, Founder and CEO of Knit, the AI-powered market research platform.

The conversation explores both the ways that AI is transforming market research and the crucial role human researchers will continue to play.

Episode Highlights

• The Emergence of "Researcher-Driven AI": Aneesh discusses Knit's framework that positions researchers as orchestrators who direct AI tools rather than being replaced by them.
• Balancing Efficiency with Expertise: The discussion examines how AI can handle data processing and analysis while human researchers contribute critical context, judgment, and storytelling capabilities.
• The Evolution of Research Skills: Insights into how the role of researchers is shifting from primarily analytical work to becoming translators and storytellers who create narratives that drive business decisions.
• Scaling Research Capabilities: Aneesh explains how Knit's approach makes high-quality research more accessible, potentially transforming research from occasional projects to essential business infrastructure.
• The Future of Market Research: The conversation covers Knit's vision for international expansion, new methodologies, and deeper integration with business workflows.

About the Guest

Aneesh Dhawan is the CEO and Co-founder of Knit, which recently secured $16M in Series A funding to advance its Researcher-Driven AI platform. Under Aneesh's leadership, Knit is working to reshape how organizations conduct market research by combining AI efficiency with human expertise.

Listen to the full episode to learn how the next generation of market research is evolving at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human insight.

Learn more about the impact of technology and AI on research, insights & analytics at Insight Platforms.