QUANTILOPE - Peter Aschmoneit, Co-Founder & CEO. How do you scale from start up to 200 employees in consumer insights? Using generative and synth AI; new approaches to brand tracking; does SaaS really work in research?

What if you could run a conjoint study in a matter of hours rather than weeks?  How would then take that initial breakthrough and scale to a global business working with the likes of Pepsi, OMD and T-Mobile with  repeat, contracted revenue and long term relationships?   

Enter Peter Aschmoneit, co-founder and CEO of Quantilope,  the consumer intelligence company that's shaking up the industry. An accomplished CEO, CMO, and board advisor with a rich history in global food companies like Unilever and Danone, Peter brings his unique blend of expertise to the table as we pull back the curtain on Peter and Quantilope's journey so far, including: 

-  Moving from client to agency side
-  How tangible values help company's scale
-  Whether consumer insight companies can really be a VC proposition
- Shaking up the world of brand tracking
- The important of financial transparency
- How Quantilope implements a SaaS based approach
- Using AI as your co-pilot
- How to manage work-life balance

As well as Peter's book recommendations:

HOW BRANDS GROW: WHAT MARKETERS DON'T KNOW - Byron Sharp
BETTER BRAND HEALTH - Jenni Romaniuk
OBVIOUSLY AWESOME - April Dunford

All episodes available at https://www.insightplatforms.com/podcasts/

Follow FutureView on Twitter at https://twitter.com/FutureView7

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:09

The startup journey is not a steady journey, as you probably know. It's an up and down, up and down. Hopefully, in the end it shows a positive growth. But there's some bummers here and there that if you talk about transplantally, you get the full backing from the whole company, and that's very important to us.

Speaker 1: 0:36

Welcome to the first episode series three at the FutureView podcast, which I'm delighted to open with what I think is a great conversation with Peter Ashford Knight, the co-founder and CEO of Quantalope. Now, quantalope is a consumer intelligence company that has consistently ranked among the 15 fastest-growing technology companies in Germany. Peter himself is a highly experienced CEO and CMO with many years of experience as a board member and board advisor within leading global food companies such as Unilever and Danone, technology companies and consumer good startups. We get into a whole range of areas here Does Sars really work? How to use culture to scale, shaking up brand tracking, how to effectively use AI and, of course, a few things you may not know about Peter. Let's get straight into it and the interview with the very engaging and knowledgeable Peter Ashford Knight.

Speaker 1: 1:23

Peter, first up, thanks so much for joining today. Really really delighted to have you on episode one of season three of the podcast. Awesome, great to be here. So lots and lots to talk about. Initially, I'd like to start with something of an icebreaker, which is the question of us, lots of guests, and quite often there are some surprising or illuminating factors to it. So what's one thing that most people don't know about you or they might find surprising. Not necessarily Deeper Stock is secret, but just something they wouldn't be able to find out through a basic Google search or something like that.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Yeah Well, surprising, surprising about me, let's see. So well, you know that today people know me as a professional founder and CEO and what they find out when they work at Quattilo, at our company, well, they will find out that I'm also a passionate baker.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Really A passionate baker.

Speaker 2: 2:22

So bread, no cake, just bread. It fits to a German, I guess. So we're all about bread, and I have baked since centuries, when I was a baby, so that's my big passion. I have, besides leading that company, so from time to time actually, we are organizing a breakfast session for a German German style dinner which is called Abendbrot in our company.

Speaker 1: 2:49

Evening bread. My German is good enough to be able to recognize that Correct.

Speaker 2: 2:55

So and that's where people like Moinlobe experience it, right, so they have to eat all my rolls or my croffins or my brioche or my bread. So coming together and enjoying good food in our offices is actually a big part of our culture and people love it.

Speaker 1: 3:14

It sounds fantastic. I had a friend of mine was actually doing a low carb, gluten-free diet in the UK. She's German and she was saying her German friends and said well, what do you eat? So I can't know, is there anything to eat? Yeah, how would that work? But it sounds fantastic and actually part of a great culture for you guys and without you know, teeing it up too much or too easily for you, I was on the website and I was looking around and I watched your ninth anniversary video and everybody's talking about the culture, but particularly this event in Barcelona. They said it was so amazing. So what happened? I'm intrigued to know.

Speaker 2: 3:53

Oh yeah, yeah, that that was actually the most memorable thing for our people, and I love our retreats as well, and this was actually already the fifth global retreat we had, where we're bringing everyone in the company together right to a super beautiful spot on this planet and then they just connect, work together, have fun, eat, dance, and that really creates strong bonds, right. So, and and now, as you noticed, the last retreat was something really special. It was September last year, so a year ago 2023, 2002, actually Barcelona, as you said, super beautiful location just outside Barcelona. There were 200 people in one room. Everyone felt it really goose bumps atmosphere. It was magic, super high energy and for me, actually was a proof that we actually have the strongest culture on this planet. So it was something that that really showed that we have a strong culture here.

Speaker 1: 5:06

Yes, I was going to ask how many people. I mean 200 people is a lot. So I mean we'll get onto that in a second about how you, how and why you started the company and how you've grown it out to that sort of scale. But also to talk about culture and sorry I told you we might go off schedule a little bit. I mean, what is quanta lobes culture and how do you perpetuate it through the organization? I mean, a lot of companies talk about culture, but I'm kind of interested about how you'd instill it across a business that's really grown as successfully as you have.

Speaker 2: 5:36

Yeah, I mean culture is a super strong part of our business and it's a guiding principle for all our behavior. And then, leading to the Archdiaut come. So the culture in quanta lobe, the values let's start with the values can be described as code. We have code values, so C, o, d, e, curious, open, doer and empowered. And to those four values there are certain behavior connected that we make obvious, that we talk a lot about that. We also hire through, right, so we look at those values when we hire people, so, and then we make sure it's it's really guiding our behavior Because we think those values lead to good behavior and then good behavior leads to a good outcome.

Speaker 2: 6:25

Right, that's all the principle, and you don't find it on the walls, actually, as at some companies. You really find it in routines. We do, we talk about that. So in a daily standup, right. You find in a lot of stories that are told about the company, how the people were hired, how the people act, how you get feedback and all that. And you find also in the artifacts, right, so, how our offices are structured. I mean there's open doors policy. Nobody, no one has their own offices and stuff. So you find all that really coming together in everything we do right, so that makes it really a strong part of the of our business.

Speaker 1: 7:07

And so, to this point around, not just being some words up on the wall, that can kind of become meaningless. Are you able to give a couple of examples, peter, as to how you implement it from an operational perspective?

Speaker 2: 7:17

Yeah, I give you. I give you one example about my favorite value that is open, right? So openness, and that obviously has directly connected to feedback, right? So? And I talked about about routine, stories and artifacts beside having those values, so routines, so we do have routines in our company that really push the openness value. So, in every one of one, feedback, giving feedback, giving feedback towards each other, is a big component. We have 360 feedback included in our L&Ds, so in our learning development talks that we have two times a year, so it's really included in those routines. And then stories, if you think about or if people talk about.

Speaker 2: 8:12

So what do you remember about Guailo? What were the things that, for example, peter did last time? Well, they probably remember there was a big session about lately, about ask me anything, right? So we have an open session where people are just asking questions and we transparently communicate back and give them answers and all their questions. Every month we have a company update where we transparently talk about all the numbers, all the wins and challenges that we have. So we're really making this a big topic. And then artifacts we talked about the office. So if you would come to the Cointelub office, you're going to find a very open atmosphere right, where you have a large lobby where people come together, a big kitchen where people are coming together having good chances to meet, no separate individual offices. So it's all in there, right. So you take one value and you want to define it over all those things routines, artifacts and stories Interesting.

Speaker 1: 9:22

And I assume the kitchen has freshly baked bread, sometimes from the CEO, obviously. Now, peter, tell me if this is too probing a question. But openness, does that apply to how you're doing financially as well? Because you're a venture backed business? Obviously you're a private company and I know this is something that founders have wrestled with, or CEOs actually in other businesses, as to how open to be about how the company is doing financially.

Speaker 2: 9:54

Yeah, we are very open with our own employees. Right, we're still a private company, so we're going to publicly communicate our numbers, but we're very open towards that, towards all employees. The company update is truly one element of that, what we talk about. So, what are the results? What is the forecast that we have towards the quarter? What do we have to do to achieve those numbers? Where's the company financially? So, actually, yes, we're very open to prevent all the surprises. Right, because the startup journey is not a steady journey, as you probably know. Right, it's an up and down, up and down. Hopefully, in the end, it shows a positive growth. But there's some bummers here and there that if you talk about transplantally, you get the full backing from the whole company, and that's very important to us.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Yeah, I'm with you on it. I think it makes a lot of sense. The pushback I've sometimes heard from some others is that it can make it seem like the only thing the company cares about is money.

Speaker 2: 11:06

For my opinion, the financial performance of a company is just a kind of a means to fulfill the vision and the mission right. So the vision is always put on top of everything we do here at Gwennie Loeb. In our vision we want to free all marketing decisions from gut feeling. So we're the data-driven guys that bring really the data to the marketing decisions, and we know that there are still a lot of marketing decisions out there that are taken by gut and not by data and led by gut and not by data. So that's our vision and the vision always comes first.

Speaker 2: 11:44

But in order to fulfill that vision we need to be financially show a good performance. So it's very much connected. But the vision and the content is always on top and we communicate that. I'm going to also, I guess, should talk a little bit about that structure that we have there. When we formed that, we call it belief. That's a vision down vision, very long term down to daily and then in the end measured quarterly OKRs. So we formed a role, management and measurement structure on that in our company.

Speaker 1: 12:21

Yeah, I'd love to get on to that in a second. Why did you create this amazing business? What was the founder story.

Speaker 2: 12:28

Actually, the word needs more founder stories, I think, and we have a very special one, let's say. Going back, so, as you said in the introduction, I got a great marketing education in big corporates. So I was in consumer goods, started at Unilever, a great company, worked for Battoli, olive Oil and Lipton tea and iced tea leaf tea, iced tea then joined Danon, the dairy company, was there for seven years in five countries and then became the CMO of the biggest spice company in Europe so it's called German company, called Fuchs, and I loved that job and so I worked in marketing for over a decade and so I had a great time in marketing is really where my heart is. But then in 2014, actually it was that hot summer day, remember in August 2014, when I was that CMO actually, tom and Lucas, my two cofounders, came into my office. Tom and Lucas just finished their PhD in marketing science and they came with an automated specific pricing analysis called Conjoint. Right? They might be familiar with Conjoint, so they wanted to show it to me to get some feedback. What they've built there.

Speaker 2: 13:56

Now, conjoint's about finding the optimal marketing mix, right, what's an ideal claim, what's the ideal size, what's the brand, the price, obviously, and I used that many times at Danon in my daily work and I used to getting results in six weeks, usually right. So I briefed it to an agency and six weeks later I got two PowerPoint charts back. But this time now, when Tom and Lucas came, that was different. So what I did, I gave the stimulus to Tom and Lucas and they entered it into their tool and three no-transcript. They came back and said, hey, we're ready. Then say what it's crazy. So I expected results in weeks, right, not days. And then it became even better because, despite or I didn't get any PowerPoint back, I got a dashboard with an analytics tool on top so I could play with the data and I could see, okay, what happens if I would increase the price, what happens to market share and play around with the data. So it was mind blowing for me.

Speaker 2: 15:10

So that day, actually, I had to discuss with my family first, but that day I took the discussion to decision to leave the corporate train and with the idea to democratize all advanced analytics, all advanced market research, all what brand managers need to inform marketing decisions. And we have then quickly found together and built the platform for two years, launched our SaaS product in 2016,. Found the product market fit in Germany, took us around two, three years, and then launched into the US in 2019, and then continued to really scale very quickly. Most of us are under speed pressure and the numbers of decisions, the number of decisions that require data, is increasing at the same time, but the time that you have to take those decisions is decreasing. So it's more and more, but in shorter time. But, on the other hand, one thing that must not happen is that we provide insights and data that is not correct, right, leading to wrong decisions, go, not deep enough. So a substance of the insights we call that substance is, and remains, super important, and that's the area of tension that we're going.

Speaker 1: 16:34

Yeah, I think it's a really, really interesting area and, by the way, I love that as the foundation story. So you were pretty much holy crap, this is amazing. Yeah, when the guys brought it to you, let's go and do this. So, peter, one of the things that I always wonder about is the balance for SaaS platforms between TrueSaaS. So it's genuinely self-service. You've empowered the client, it's fast, you've made sure the data is accurate and then managed service, in the sense that they now need to make decisions. And how do you ensure that they're, in effect, making the right decisions, that they should be confident about the data and the implications of it?

Speaker 2: 17:15

Yeah, in fact, the question is does SaaS really work in insights Right?

Speaker 1: 17:19

Yes, that's a good way to put it.

Speaker 2: 17:23

And you see our model and ask so how can this be done? For insights, and it's actually. It is one of the trickiest challenges that we solved over time, I have to say, on our way, and personally I'm super, super proud of what we established here. It's basically two things that are helping solve those challenges. First thing is making a product that is really easy to use. And it's very complex what we do, but we make it easy to use. And now everyone's talking about that, but AI is making that even easier now, even stronger. It's very easy to use. There are a lot of co-piloting already in our app. So, despite the complexity of the research, it is super easy to use. And imagine just dragging and dropping advanced research methods into the survey. So it's all there. You have your guidance, You're going to be led through the approach. So that is a big component. The product itself is a big component of that.

Speaker 2: 18:34

The second one actually is empowering our clients. We need to empower our clients and we do that through two things. One is we're having a great online academy where they can have certificates about methods, can go deeper, learn more about those methods, how they're going to be applied in Quantilope, and the second one is our brilliant customer success team. We do have a great customer success team that's empowering our clients to be able to do more and more themselves over time. So that's the winning formula. So having a great product that is super easy to use and have a customer success team that is able to empower our clients to do more and more themselves over time. But in fact then every client would start differently. So some just need an hour on boarding and they're done and they're ready to go, and some will get some great empowerment over longer time. So, introducing new methods, onboarding new users especially in enterprise clients there's new users coming all the time, so we're very close and empowering them that they can use our app. So from my perspective, yes, SAS can be done in Insights.

Speaker 1: 19:53

I'm interested to know how far it goes in terms of so you've got a customer success team. They're helping the client, they're ensuring that they're running it the right way. So do you then help provide analytics and presentations, for instance, on top of that, or do you generally leave it to the client? Because I imagine you've sat in a CMO position and ultimately the CMO probably wants a very succinct summary. Do you go to that extent in terms of helping shape the deliverables, or is it really all about empowering internal teams?

Speaker 2: 20:27

So, again, there's very different clients, so, and you have those full DIY clients that we meet every year when we have a customer event or something else. You have clients where we sometimes assisting their research, and we have also clients that, at least for a certain time, use our customers' success to really help them. Setting up reports. It's not going to be the typical 200 pages PowerPoint report. It's rather going to be a dashboard in our app that they can be. All the slides can be exported to native PowerPoint, but actually it is a process with our clients.

Speaker 2: 21:16

So there's different needs. Also, we can be very flexible and, hey, I need support, I need full support of the Coeneload team. Now for the next project, we can be very flexible on that and supporting you fully and manage that project even for you. That is not the very typical case, but it can be done. And now it is with the advance of AI that we just launched our co-pilot on the IEX AI conference. Now, actually, you see that a summary as you're talking about a summary for the CMO can actually be done on the push of a button. So you're having your final dashboard, you prepared it and the CMO just wants to have a summary. Well, you push that button and you have an executive summary in a matter of three seconds.

Speaker 1: 22:05

Fantastic. And do you find that the executive summary needs to be tweaked a little bit? It has to be adjusted. So how does that component work? Because every CMO is different, is there an iterative component to the executive summary as well, whereby Quantalope is produced using an initial suggestion of the executive summary and then the internal client can go back and go? Actually, our CMO tends to prefer it presented in this way, and so then you start to build that into the tool. Does it work like that?

Speaker 2: 22:38

Yeah, absolutely. With Quantalope you're always very flexible. So you have two parts of the app in the end Once the analytics section, where you're searching for the right insights, and also the AI helps you there finding the right insights, and then you put together a dashboard where the main insights are presented and that could differ from target group to target group. So maybe the CMO needs one certain dashboard, but other R&D people need other. Certain slides, facts on the dashboard right and derive from that content. Then the AI will help you to, on the push of a button, create a summary that is derived from the content. That is great for that person.

Speaker 1: 23:23

I got you. Got you, Peter. What type of clients would you say are called to load sweet spot?

Speaker 2: 23:30

Yeah, so you should have people that care about insights. That's the starting point, right. And then obviously the bigger the company is, the more structured that department also becomes. We usually our best clients, are somewhere, I would say, between 500 million of revenue and then everything go into very big right to billions of revenue. So that's, when we talk about our ICP, our ideal customer profile that would be that segment somewhere 500 million revenue and above. But I would say, as soon as you have insights, people caring about data driven decision making, then it's a good fit.

Speaker 1: 24:16

How is the likes of the GPT series and other AI models out there? How have you been able to implement those in a practical sense?

Speaker 2: 24:25

We're using AI across our app today. We are using it since almost the beginning. So five years ago we used mainly machine learning to automate some of those methods and to replace the kind of the old statistical algorithms with machine learning algorithms, so replacing, for example, a regression analysis with random forest. So we were using that. We use that for many years now to make our methods more robust, more handy, more easy to use, prevent mistakes and really use that in and out. Now, today, with Genitive AI, the game is completely new again and I guess many of us are using AI in their daily work.

Speaker 2: 25:22

We're using GenAI and Sint AI in our app nowadays, so we're using that as a co-pilot overall our app. So it's a few examples on this. We're generating stimulus as input for studies. If you think about setting up an implicit system, one study with us today we can generate stimulus for that easily and push up a button. And for other methods as well, we're helping now our researchers to find the right insights, also at a push of a button. We're writing action titles. So the GenAI is investigating the data on the slide and is writing action titles to that slide. So you have a commented slide on a push of a button.

Speaker 1: 26:13

Yeah, it sounds fantastic. What does Sint AI stand for? I'm sorry, I don't know that phrase.

Speaker 2: 26:21

So Sint is AI. So imagine, from Genitive AI you're going to create things. You're going to create things from usually large language models. Sint is AI is synthesizing data to an outcome. So taking that and bringing that to outcome, synthesizing data. So in fact, actually in B2B, I see a really big future for that part of AI where Genitive AI there could be questions about okay, is that really good content? Can I trust that content? Is chat GPT lying, Just making things up, Well, hallucinating as they do?

Speaker 1: 27:04

H hallucinating?

Speaker 2: 27:05

absolutely so. And with synthesizing AI, there's a big use case that is not really deeply explored yet with B2B software. So we're fully exploring this use case for the means of our app.

Speaker 1: 27:21

Yeah, that's fascinating. It gets into that idea, doesn't it Around? You need AI to control the AI. In the end, yes, which gets into a whole philosophical discussion still goes, which really would be a very different podcast. Just going back to one of the comments you've made as well, Peter around how you generate, how you're using Gen AI, for instance, around system one testing and that type of thing. So are you saying that you'd use the AI to come up with kind of concepts on the fly, on an iterative basis? That what you mean?

Speaker 2: 27:55

Yeah, that could be that. The implicit system, one testing that example, going back deeply into this is you're setting up different. It could be values, could be functional benefits for a category. You're searching for category functional benefits, you're searching for characteristics and you have to come up with a list. And usually you want to brainstorm a list, involve your clients or involve your colleagues into that and come up with a list after a few hours. So now, with the Gen AI piece, that's been our app it's just a push of a button and you have okay, here's the first 10 values that you should test against your airline brand, your beer brand. So, depending on the category that you're in, it's going to tweaking those values. Here's the nine best functional benefits that you should test and you need more? Just press another button. So it's creating that stimulus for testing then, and it's very connected and specific to the category that you're in.

Speaker 1: 29:06

Yeah, I can really see that. So, in effect, what you're doing is as you say. It's that co-polluting approach is. You're taking the sort of thing that a more experienced researcher might have had in their head going. I've seen over the years that this is what's important for this brand and this category, and actually the AI is going. I'll do it for you. I can go into the data and I can tell you what's the most important. Here's your starting point. That's correct. That's 100%.

Speaker 2: 29:36

It's really supported. You should really see AI now as a co-pilot, helping you, making you more efficient in many ways through the workflow of your in this case, quantitative research process.

Speaker 1: 29:52

I know we're kind of geeking out, so really kind of getting into some of the details and methodologies, but I'm also really interested in the brand tracking component as well of what you're doing. But I've seen so many brand trackers that, honestly, are hopeless. Well, they're not hopeless that's unfair but they're slow and they don't move that much. What are you doing in that space? Because I saw you've got some interesting ideas there around mental availability and category entry points and that type of thing. How does that all work?

Speaker 2: 30:24

Well, let's go into detail there and I agree most trackers out there are basically not actionable. Some people are producing hundreds of slides costing a fortune and then in the end no one really does something with it. What we did is we took the work of Byron Sharp and Jenny Romaniak to provide and they basically provide some great research over the last 10 years or more. Even they came up with a concept of mental availability and category entry point as two of their concepts. For everyone who's not familiar, mental availability just makes the point that you as a brand have to make it easy to come up in consumers' mind in buying situations. Make your brand come to mind easy and often in buying situations. That's the mental availability concept. In those situations, when you're buying a category, there might be very different thoughts and influences that consumers have when they enter a category. Let's say you're buying a beer, a very different beer brand might come into your mind. When you're buying a beer for a beach party or is buying a beer for a pub-like evening, one might be a very Corona beer, for example, or those more Mexican-style beers. Pub-like might be Guinness. I guess what's coming up a lot. We have to understand that there are different category entry points for consumers. So thoughts and influences when they approach a category as a brand. You have to be mental available on those different category entry points.

Speaker 2: 32:13

We're going in our brand tracker first set up a study that finds out what are the relevant category entry points in that category. Then we are tracking to see if you are mentally available on those as a brand and see how competitors are changing and being mentally available on those category entry points as brands. It's very actual and super relevant. You see the influences of campaigns, you see the influences of competitors. You see very detailed things coming from those brand trackers. The big thing here is evidence shows that actual market share you see the impact of and mental market share are highly correlated. So there's that connection. So if you're doing well on your mental availability on the relevant category points, you're going to have a great market share. So you can use it really as a leading instrument to guide your marketing strategy and it's very impactful because it's so down to earth.

Speaker 1: 33:24

Yeah, that's really interesting. So if I play it back a little bit, Peter, so there's something of a foundational study whereby you're identifying the relevant category entry points. Let's use beer as an example, which might be hanging out with friends, going to the beach, going to the pub, watching football at home, whatever it might be. So there's a foundational study that would establish what those category entry points would be for beer drinking. Is that right?

Speaker 2: 33:50

That's correct. We're going to set up also with the help of AI. The AI can brainstorm for us. Here we have an AI that is generating category points for you on a specific principle that came also from Geno-Romaniac, and so this AI will help you identifying those. And we're going to test then the 20, 30, 50 category points and determine what is relevant for you in that category. It's a very category perspective on that tracker. So you start with the category and say, ok, what are the relevant category entry points? Where do we have to be good at? And we do that also with the help of our implicit system one methods.

Speaker 1: 34:36

And so then that's showing, in effect, the market well, showing the category entry point, showing the market opportunity for you as beer brand X against that. And then you're also then tracking so I'm just playing this back to make sure I'm clear on it the mental availability in relation to the category entry points, the market opportunity, how your competitors are performing, and if you get it right, you're saying OK, physical category entry point for us are groups of friends watching football at home. We can own that market opportunity, we believe. But we need to have the strongest mental availability in relation to that category entry point amongst our competitive set.

Speaker 2: 35:22

Yeah, that's right, that's a good start. And you want to own different, the most relevant category entry points. So you want to own most of them, or you want to be mentally available on most of the category entry points, I see.

Speaker 1: 35:38

And then you're also tracking the competitors and so they're running ad campaigns and then you're saying, oh no, we were so strong, but that campaign for Heineken or whatever is really, really resonating. We need to do something about it in terms of they now have stronger mental availability.

Speaker 2: 35:55

It's that type of thing 100% correct. So you really can connect it back to your marketing action and the competitors action as well, as you said.

Speaker 1: 36:03

Peter, I'm conscious of time as well and I also wanted to tap into your experience, if it's OK, in terms of the financial component of setting up the business as well, Because you made a brave step, as you said. Like you consulted with your family. You said let's do this. You built a platform and you needed to raise money in order to do that. So could you just talk me through how the fundraising journey worked and whether you'd have any advice for other founders or early stage companies who were looking at sources of funding as to how they should think about that?

Speaker 2: 36:38

Yeah, sure, sure, yeah. We are a VC backed company, so we have several rounds, had several rounds of funding. But for every founder out there it's a big question If you want to bootstrap your company or want to take VC money and bootstrapping usually means a little slower growth but obviously not giving up shares and VC money can put you on a fast track, but you shouldn't be scared or risk averse. Also on that journey and I have to say, looking back, I love the way how we did it so far, but I also did a lot of mistakes and had a lot of learnings on the way, so it was also ups and downs. And so what are the thoughts?

Speaker 2: 37:29

Well, first of all, my big learning is the product market fit. It's a concept that is out there in software and it's not easy to really understand if you have product market fit. But there's one rule you shouldn't invest a lot of money into your business if you don't have product market fit yet, because you can waste a lot of money and time there. So what does it mean? Have I built something that people want? Have I truly built something that people really want? And you can ask clients so how would you feel if you could no longer use our product, so you really have to go deep into the product.

Speaker 1: 38:13

I see, which actually is a research technique, by the way itself, isn't it around some deprivation type of questioning? And so I was going to say so, how do you, did you set certain milestones then, where you'd go? This represents product market fit of whatever. It is, a certain number of clients, certain percentage of which are coming back and signing up to ongoing contracts. Was there a? Is that type of thing? Was it?

Speaker 2: 38:38

So it's a mix, I would say, between general KPIs and interviewing individual clients. So, feeling it, and it's different, I guess, if you're a, not an enterprise company we're an enterprise B2B's ass, so we're having bigger contracts, so fewer clients. It might be different if you sell subscriptions for $10 a month, so it might be very different and you have to rely on just general KPIs, not go into interviews. But what we do is we definitely have a mix. So and we talked about that, we talked about or you talked about that churn right, do people renew their SaaS license Is a big KPI that we track. So there's cross retention, right, so it corresponds to churn, and there's also net retention.

Speaker 2: 39:32

So the clients that you have are they using you more? Are they buying more of you over time? Also really interesting and relevant metric to track already in the beginning, right, because you might also haven't, in this early stage, just haven't really identified your ICP, really. But there are some clients, a group of clients that really loves you, right, and can we focus on them then? And what do they want? So tracking good clients versus not so good clients is also an important thing here, and then, as I said, interviewing those clients. So what we did is trust them. You All right.

Speaker 2: 40:15

We did a lot of interviews in early days with that, those questions so how would you feel if you could no longer use Quanylobe? And getting honest feedback on that? But also, we used a lot of interviews in a job to be done manner. So what is what job is Quanylobe doing for you? How? What are you Quanylobe hiring for? Basically right. So it's those kind of things that you need to really be close to clients and understand. And it's again, it's a mix between KPIs and individual, individual client interviews.

Speaker 1: 41:01

I'm just interested because people talk about product market fit quite a lot of early stage companies and you, and it can mean different things. So it's just interesting to hear what you have, how you defined it. Were there any other thoughts or advice for entrepreneurs who were on this journey?

Speaker 2: 41:18

So one to other thoughts here you need to invest time in being, if you want to go on the VC route right, if you want to go on that route, you need to invest time in being really good and pitching. So I would now reflect that I would invest time and money also in being trained in better communication, in better Q and A'ing right, so answering questions, tricky questions from investors in a good way. So I guess there's not only a few people that are born as natural talent and doing this. You need to push yourself to become better. And then again, talking about the VC journey and how you enter an investment round, it's for me, my advice is you have to push yourself to build a huge funnel of investors.

Speaker 2: 42:13

Fundraising is a full-time job for a period of time and now, with all the video opportunities that we have, not having to have personal meetings all the time you can really build a big funnel of investors. But now, in those times, in those tough times of having inflation still on, recession and the financial market still down, you also need to build a big funnel right, because I saw many deals go nowhere when founders thought it's almost done. You really need to build and also sustain a big funnel of investors over time. It's a full-time job and you have to be aware that in this period of time you cannot so much care about other things while you're fundraising. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:07

I think it's very sage advice. So one thing I've heard about the sector as a whole, though, is some skepticism amongst VCs that the market research sector can support a VC case. What I mean by that is that if you've got a VC fund and they're looking at the prospects for each investment to have the potential to return their fund of whatever it is 100 million, 200 million or whatever the size might be and just the outcomes aren't great enough, within a classic conception of the market research space and consumer insight space, I guess you would not agree with that.

Speaker 2: 43:46

What would your response be? Yeah, yeah, I mean a lot of people are wondering about that. Is this sector good for VC? Can it return good money? Right, and it can tell you it's the same as on any other category as well. So they are winners and they are losers.

Speaker 2: 44:03

And in our corporate deaf work. So when we think about M&A, I actually do see a lot of companies that made a lot of mistakes on their way. So it might be because they were just very focused on the research, didn't think about the business model. Might be other things, but the two common mistakes I see is that most of them, or some of them, missed to build a true recurring revenue model, and it's then not a VC case. So if you rely on your old project work, it's probably not a VC case, not going to expect great returns. And the other mistake I see is that, well, some tried it and burned so much money without having that good product market fit or targeting a rather niche addressable market, so then it's going to be a high burn and low return case.

Speaker 2: 45:03

On the other hand, I see some great winners in that sector. Right, I mean we was wasn't still long ago that confirm it sold Zappy did a big round, isabella still remember that sold to Medaille. And so different P rounds, different access we saw. And if I look at our company, well, we're grown over 50% year on year in the US right, and we're cash flow break even at the same time. So I'm all in, never sold any share because I'm truly believing in the great future of that company in that sector.

Speaker 1: 45:43

Yeah, and clearly you've done a great job. I also had a thought about the question of recurring revenue and just picking your brain a little bit. How do you think about that? Or how do you find investors think about it? Because obviously there's recurring revenue which is genuinely contracted, as in we will spend this much with you each year. And then you've got the category that I think a lot of research companies are in, whereby there's reoccurring revenue, as in it's a certain client that you can show a track record over a period of years and a sort of a consistency and a rationale behind why they're spending that money. How do you think about that?

Speaker 2: 46:25

So in my opinion, we then coming back to that is that in the attractive sector we have to be compared to other sectors, and that's where it comes to real recurring revenue in the business. So I don't know of any highly valued software company that doesn't really have true recurring revenue, and so I would go back and say, okay, how can we make it as a company, as a startup, also happen that we do have true recurring revenue? So it's a really important metric for me. It makes also life easier. It might be a little bit harder in the beginning. Getting the product market fit and the business model market fit might be a little bit harder, but then it pays out later. I truly believe in that.

Speaker 1: 47:18

I think it's something that agencies have found really difficult, though, about getting clients to sign up to genuine contracted revenue without giving away the secret source of your revenue, your chief revenue officer or whatever it might be. How do you get them to do that?

Speaker 2: 47:36

The answer to that is very easy it's a consumer intelligence platform. So we deliver a platform to our clients that they can work with every single day and in fact, if you think about our user base, 30% of our users are using us daily. So there you see that obviously you need a contract for that. To work with you daily, you need a contract for that. So also, tracking is another thing that, in fact, is, in nature, recurring. So all those things are helping us to be truly recurring.

Speaker 1: 48:18

You're now 200 employees. What are the key inflection points being for you along that journey? And again, any advice to others around this about building out an organization across. You. Start with whatever 10 people and it's quite a core, cohesive team. You get to 50 and you're like oh, this is getting pretty big now. How do I manage this? And then you're 200. Obviously, you're at a much, much bigger size and potentially quite a difficult size to manage. So how have you managed that process and what would your advice be in doing so?

Speaker 2: 48:50

Yeah, I mean, we had the same journey. We were 14 at our first retreat in Denmark Still remember that in 2016. And also people said, hey, we don't want to be more people, it's okay with that group. And then next week we were 40. And again people said should we be more? It's so nice here to be at that size. And in the end, yes, we're almost 200 now. So what helped really with that is scaling our strong culture. It helped a lot.

Speaker 2: 49:25

And if you would think about inflection points, there were inflection points everywhere, constantly. So there's not that one. I see with some people say, with 120, it completely goes. It's different. It was different from 40 to 60 or from 60 to 80 and 80 to 100. So what we do is we are always building things for one year. We're always building things for one year, whatever it is the organization, the processes, the meetings, the meeting cadences. So just don't pretend it's made forever and be clear that everything will change again soon. And if you have that mindset of building things for the next year, then it's much easier from my point of view. And also your leaders and everyone in the organization need to have that mindset, because then it might be a different role the year after, because the organization has changed completely, and it did. It changed completely many, many times over those now almost nine years.

Speaker 1: 50:33

And so, in terms of that annual planning, do you do that as part of an organized process towards the end of each calendar year? Is it something like that?

Speaker 2: 50:43

Yeah, so we do at Quinlope, have a framework that's called our belief, and it starts with a vision that doesn't change it didn't change an inch for now and there's a mission and there's a culture, the strategy, the roadmap and the OKRs so it's all lined up and, if you think about that, it has a very long term to a very short term, from why to what.

Speaker 2: 51:13

And the strategy is a piece that is kind of in the middle, that is there for one year, so it determines our plan for the next year and we have a process to set up that strategy and we're in the middle of it for next year at the moment and then you're going to derive a roadmap and the OKRs then is very much under what do people do every single day? And the OKRs are changed then per by the quarter. So every quarter we review OKRs and set up a new OKRs based on the learnings that we made. So it's a very organized and consistent process, from the why to the what and from the why. Do we do that? Again back to the strategy.

Speaker 1: 52:02

I could probably ask you questions all day and pick your brain as to how you're doing this, but I'm conscious that I've taken a lot of your time and so, if it's OK, I'm just going to ask a few quick fire questions. One line is to get your initial responses First. One might be a little bit cheeky what makes a good client. Or you can answer it the other way around, if you want what makes a bad client?

Speaker 2: 52:24

Well, a good client is aligned with our vision and a bad client, I would say, treats us as an agency.

Speaker 1: 52:31

OK, and so what's the vision that the good clients are lining with?

Speaker 2: 52:36

Reeling all their marketing decisions from gut feeling, so being really true to deliver data to all their marketing decisions.

Speaker 1: 52:45

Gotcha and then how does a bad client just treat you as an agency or as a vendor?

Speaker 2: 52:52

So if a client would ask us for a one-time project, then we would say we're not the right company to do that. For you To adopt Quantalob, you have to have the mindset of using a consumer intelligence platform and to be much closer to your consumers every single day. Gotcha.

Speaker 1: 53:12

That makes a lot of sense. What does success?

Speaker 2: 53:14

mean to you. For me, success means to see a motivated team that has fun working, that is performing well against the goals. So it's a big team sport we're in, so I love that team performing. I love to look at happy faces, smiling faces that love to work for Quantalob, so I love that element most. I'd say.

Speaker 1: 53:41

How do you maintain work-life balance aside from baking bread?

Speaker 2: 53:46

Yeah, the fact is, the more I bake, the more I do need to make sports. So actually running and biking every morning for 45 minutes is my method there. So I do that six times a week Running, biking, running, biking, running, biking, and I love that. It's getting me into my mental state I need.

Speaker 1: 54:10

So you break them up, you alternate on different days to you, because otherwise the knees get a bit worn out, I imagine, if you're running too many days in a row.

Speaker 2: 54:18

That's correct. That's exactly what I do. I alternate on both, on those two things.

Speaker 1: 54:23

What's your favorite almost impactful book or recent book, or could be piece of media. It doesn't have to be a book.

Speaker 2: 54:29

Yeah. So as a marketer I would really recommend books from Byron, sharp and General Maniac, so how brands grow, and better brand health, the new book of Jenny. So I really like those and read them. Like many times as a CEO for our company, I think still again, the marketing heart is coming through. Positioning is very important for you as a startup. Positioning is one of the core disciplines you should master. Find your product market fit. It's back to that and there I can recommend a book that is called Obviously Awesome, april Dunford. She's an expert in positioning BWB SaaS startups, so I would really recommend that book.

Speaker 1: 55:20

Peter, thanks so much. It's been such a pleasure talking to you. I've learned an enormous amount and hopefully we might even be able to do it again at some point. There's certainly more questions I'd like to ask you. I'm conscious, but we're at time.

Speaker 2: 55:31

It was a big pleasure. Henry, Thanks a lot for having me on your show.

Speaker 1: 55:38

So great to talk to Peter. Quantalope is clearly one to watch, and Peter is a particularly thoughtful and insightful leader in this space. If you'd like this interview, please do follow Bright Reviews, give ratings and all that good stuff. I also wanted to give you a little bit of a preview for season three. We have a whole range of great interviews coming up, including perspective and research, buyers and clients, senior agency execs including their founding journeys methodological specialists, finance and tech gurus, and the next couple of episodes will be featuring Tom Weiss, cto of Marketcast, talking about full funnel measurement and providing something of a primary attribution techniques. You should know what that is if you don't. By the way, then we're also going to zoom out and look at the market as a whole, in particular, m&a, and what buyers are looking for out of insight agencies and platforms, with Tony Wolford from Green Square. Thanks for listening and see you next time.