Leadership, Innovation, and the AI Shift: What’s Next for the Industry

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The insights industry is evolving fast—and not everyone will keep up. This episode tackles leadership transitions at the Insight Association, the shift from AI hype to proven results, and new competitors bypassing traditional research teams entirely. From OpenAI's Atlas browser to Amazon's AI making purchase decisions for consumers, the technology isn't just changing tools—it's redefining how people make choices. Meanwhile, established players face a stark reality: innovate now or watch nimble startups capture your clients.

The message is clear: upskill, adapt, and support each other, because standing still is no longer an option!

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos.  

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Transcript

[00:02] Lenny: And we're live.

[00:04] Karen: We are. And we're ready. There you go.

[00:06] Lenny: We're ready. We were holding. It was like holding back a dog that's trying to lunge after something. We have so much to talk about.

[00:14] Karen: We are so ready to talk about things. Let's go. I feel like everybody's been talking about this news this week. I don't know if it's been in your conversations; it has certainly been in mine.

[00:29] Lenny: Every conversation, including with the key subjects.

[00:34] Karen: The subject matters. You go — you've known her longer.

[00:41] Lenny: Mel Cortright, Melanie Cortright. Mel, as I've been calling her for 20 years now, which really makes me feel old. Anyway, the CEO of the Insight Association has done just a bang-up job there and was recruited to come in as Chief Strategy Officer of Sago. Brilliant move for all involved, for what it's worth. I did have the privilege to chat with Mel when the news hit that morning, and she's really excited. I just think it's a smart, smart move. But: implications, right? Changes for the association. You want to throw your hat in the ring? They need a new CEO.

[01:26] Karen: I'm sure everybody there would be respectful of who throws their hat in the ring, but I would love to be a part of who is throwing their hat in the ring for that job. That's what I want to see. Morbid curiosity has me wanting to know who wants that job. Anyway, that's what I want to see. I want to see that.

[01:55] Lenny: I'm definitely engaged in that. I have a text string going with someone close to that, throwing out ideas. We were like, “What about so-and-so? What about so-and-so? What about so-and-so?” So yes, that conversation is happening. What I can say with 100% certainty is: it ain't me. And I don't—I mean, Karen, maybe you would be fantastic. But I hope not.

[02:26] Karen: I'm down for the salary. That's all I'm going to say, which is public information.

[02:30] Lenny: It is public information. And hey, CEOs of trade associations — it's a rough job. Actually, I'll share this. Years ago, at the ARF, Bob Barocci — the legendary CEO of ARF who really took it to all of its heights — when he decided to retire, they reached out to me to ask if I’d be interested. And I would always say, “You couldn't pay me enough to live in New York City.” They maybe could have paid me enough to live in New York City.

[03:05] Karen: I say to people all the time: GreenBook is many, many things, but we are not all in this to get super rich. This is work that we do.

[03:15] Lenny: Anyway, at that point, Gail Fugate had just left General Mills, and I suggested Gail — and that is what happened. I'm not taking credit, but I played some role in Gail taking over as CEO of ARF during that time. But yeah, it's a pain in the ass. Managing a nonprofit, memberships… it's highly political. You have to have immense political skills, which I have none of. I am so impatient with anything like that, it's not even funny.

[03:53] Karen: Smile all around. Anyway, the priority deadline is November 14th. So if you are thinking that you would like to throw your hat in the ring, there’s a search committee: [email protected]. You can look up the press release, which Karley is sharing. You can pull up the job description — I took a look at the PDF; I think it is five pages long. So, you know, like… anyway, again, I have all sorts of thoughts running through my head about, “100,000 per page — how do they break that down?” This is fun. I'm like, ooh, this conversation.

[04:42] Lenny: I'll tell you what though: they earn every penny.

[04:45] Karen: They do, they do. I know that there are plenty of people who are making that kind of money, but certainly after being as seasoned in the industry as we are, right?

[04:57] Lenny: But it is — step back — the Insight Association is incredibly influential, obviously needed. They do much good work, especially during a time of change and disruption that we're in.

[05:12] Karen: Absolutely. Well, especially — I mean, didn't she step in right in the heart of the COVID debacle? Particularly difficult and challenging time. And whoever the next one is is going to be stepping in during particularly disruptive times. So, yeah.

[05:33] Lenny: And, you know, with Sago, private-equity backed, they've been on a journey, yada yada. It doesn't take rocket science or give away anything.

[05:43] Karen: I think they scored. Because she's done the job that she's done, it feels like everything else is like, “Oh yeah, she's got that. Oh yeah, she's got that.” It just feels like she's proven herself at this point. Like, yeah, that's a really smart move.

[05:59] Lenny: 100%. Look, if you do not know Melanie Cortright, you need to find time. I have unequivocally no problem saying she is one of my favorite people in the world. She is kick-ass. She is hardcore. She knows her stuff. I've been privileged to call her a friend, and she did great there. She did great everywhere she’s ever been. She’s going to do great with preparing Sago for their next phase of whatever that is — which, of course, it's obvious where they're going. Steve — I'm sure he's going, “Ooh,” Steve Schlesinger — I'm sure it's a huge relief to have somebody of Mel’s caliber come help him and help that business. I'm not saying they need help, but there's just a lot going on, right? So yeah, fun times.

[06:48] Karen: All good stuff. So, public service announcement time: if you are — we've shared the information about that — if you are thinking, especially if you're a woman out there thinking, “Now that’s what I aspire to. I aspire to being a CEO, getting to that level,” there’s no better organization to give women a leg up in our industry than WIRE, Women in Research. Their mentor program is a great place to start for younger researchers. I've been a mentor for years now — just renewed that I'll do it again next year for somebody else. And this is the time when the applications are in. They renew the interest in the mentors, and they accept applications for the coming year for people who want mentorship. And it is not limited to people who are young; it can be anybody. If you are looking for mentorship of any kind, you state in there what kind of mentorship you're looking for. So certainly if you've been around for 20 years and you're looking for mentorship to get to a higher level, you can find a mentor that— you will be matched with somebody who can take you to that next level. It'll be another CEO perhaps. It's very well done. Anyway, Karley can share the landing page for you. This has been an application: get a mentor. I can't talk enough about that program because as a mentor — also, if you're interested in becoming a mentor, please convey that interest as well. Really what you're doing is you're committing to one conversation a month to kind of guide somebody along in their career, give them advice. The mentee leads what they want from you, really. They’re supposed to grow their skills by initiating conversation, coming up with their goals, and really thinking through stuff. Your job is almost to facilitate their learning across a year. It varies by mentor.
So anyway, highly recommend both parts: be a mentor, be a mentee. And it can be done virtually. It doesn't have to be done in person. If you're in a minor market and you're like, “Well, I don't know that I could do this,” you can mentor virtually. I mentor virtually even though I could get to New York.

[08:59] Lenny: I don't. So yeah. That is always, always a good thing. I just thought — something occurred to me I wanted to throw out real quick back to Melanie for a minute. She was in her battling, and successful battle, against breast cancer. So that's just another thing to add to that. I just wanted to acknowledge that. She's very brave in sharing all of that publicly and going through that and then going to this change. So it's been — she's been just knocking it out. So anyway, sorry, it just occurred to me. I wanted to throw that out there.

[09:41] Karen: Sure, you got that. And again, strong women are made stronger with the help of other women. And we're all elevated once we help each other — in the survivor space and in the professional space.

[09:55] Lenny: So, speaking of growing your career one way or another: IIEX Europe, call for speakers. That's all you, Karen.

[10:12] Karen: IIEX Europe call for speakers. It's funny because a lot of people are like, “Oh, that's happening now?” Surprise, because it feels like we just had our North America call for speakers — which was amazing, by the way. We had so many, so many amazing submissions to North America. I'm excited to review the European ones in the next few weeks. That call for speakers officially ends this — I think Sunday night is what it's set for because a lot of people need to work on them over the weekend. My hunch is that our marketing team will extend it another week because we've had several requests: “Please, please,” for various reasons. That just happens almost every time. So, kind of do your best to get it in by the deadline just in case I'm wrong about that, because the deadline is Sunday night. And it will be competitive. For those of you who are like, “Oh, I hope ours is selected, I hope my submission is selected,” it will be competitive based on where we've been trending. What that means is we will have more submissions than available speaking spots, and I will have to make some hard choices and hard decisions about what comes in and what doesn't. I ask people to please not take it personally. It's a numbers game. It's unbelievable how many are coming in these days. I love it; I love to look at all of them — and it's competitive. Some people ask — and I'll just do this last thing — some people have asked, “Can I submit more than one?” And the answer is technically yes. But more numbers don't mean any of them are going to get through. Really, the best thing you can do is put in the best submission you can. A strong submission is going to beat five half-assed submissions any day. So really just put your best foot forward. If you have a strong talk that's at that intersection of insights and innovation — which is what IIEX stands for — and you're pushing the envelope, if you're thinking about great things… You know the drill, Lenny. I don't mean to be preaching to you; I'm kind of talking to the audience right now.

[12:22] Lenny: Yeah, no, that's okay.

[12:24] Karen: You know, put your best foot forward in the submission. Know who IIEX is and what types of talks we feature. And yeah, absolutely.

[12:36] Lenny: And we're definitely not through the AI hype cycle yet — but we are in the cycle of proving it. And so I think that's part of the consideration set. If you've got cool stuff, absolutely, all about the cool stuff. You always get the edge when it's proven, which often is a case study, often a presentation with the client or something of that nature, right? Show this stuff in action, show the difference that it's making. Because we're just, we're in that cycle right now.

[13:10] Karen: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, speaking of cycles, let's do one more PSA. I think many of us in the industry got the email, the message from Calvin Claveria from Reach3/Rival Technologies — they’re doing a market research trends report. The survey link is out there right now. To me, it's always fun to see the results of this type of work. Also, you get to check out the platform in the process, so kind of cool.

[13:39] Lenny: There's that. Well, and related — so we are putting together the last components of the new GRIT report. All of these editions — yes, that's coming out soon. But I love these other studies that are done because we get to validate. They're generally not duplicative; we all try and say, “Okay, this is what GRIT does, this is what ESOMAR does,” whatever. Right? But there's always some level of cross-validation — asking similar things in some ways while trying to go into new territory — and collectively, that's fantastic, especially now in the era of AI. I'll be the first one to download these reports and say, “All right, let's compare. Let's see. Let's see what's happening.”

[14:24] Karen: Yep, yep. So yeah, cool. I'm sure Karley's sharing that link too. Then I just realized at some point the GRIT Forum’s got to be coming up in a couple of weeks. I’ve heard — I've not really…

[14:35] Lenny: Forum.

[14:36] Karen: Yeah, GRIT Forum’s coming up.

[14:38] Lenny: Forum’s coming up in November, where we'll talk through panels and everything about all the results. We designed this report to explore relevant topics in a different and deeper way than we ever have before. That is paying off. When we talk about being in a period of disruption — well, that has been quantified now. And I think that a lot of folks are gonna go, “Oh, okay,” from this report.

[15:17] Karen: Yeah, no, I look forward to seeing you too. Nancy — always good to see. Isn't it always good to see Nancy on these calls? And she's like, “Oh, Nancy's here.”

[15:23] Lenny: Oh, thank you, Nancy.

[15:25] Karen: So yes, thank you, Nancy. Yeah, that's going to be great. All right, so shall we?

[15:31] Lenny: Why don't you tackle this one? Because I know you were like, “Whoa.”

[15:36] Karen: I am so into this. I am so on this and I'm evangelizing at this point — and I'll tell you why. So, here's where we're going to start. Usually we start with some of this M&A activity, right? And we'll get there. I promise we'll follow the money. But OpenAI unveiled their Atlas web browser. You know, they're competing certainly against Chrome, and there’s Arc, and there’s Comet, and there are these other web browsers that are integrating some GPT technology in there. Bringing ChatGPT into your everyday ecosystem is game-changing. You had shared that somebody put on Twitter, “The internet just got hands.”

[16:19] Lenny: Yeah.

[16:20] Karen: And I've been sharing my screen with people when I'm using it because I'm all over this, and I'll tell you why. I've been literally on phone calls saying, “Watch my screen, my hands are here,” and the sidebar GPT chat is going. I get an email and I'm like, “Ooh, I need to add that person to my speaker funnel,” and it will then open up a Notion document and add them to my speaker funnel. So it is integrating across platforms in my workday with the historical knowledge about who I am. So it knows what I mean. It knows, “Okay, it's got to be in the IIEX Europe funnel,” and it knows exactly what I'm talking about because it has my historical use in ChatGPT and it knows that I'm frequently doing things in there that help me with programming details that I'm involved in. So there's no confusion — it just knows what I want to do. “Can you add an Asana task for me?” It will then leave Notion and go into a task to remind me to go back and do something else. It is doing work. The agent is at work in a sidebar. I can go into it — it’s so much better than in Gmail, for instance. We're in a Gmail/Google ecosystem here, and you can have Gemini summarize emails and it's… not great. But you can have Atlas summarize emails and say, “Who should I respond to right now?” And it will not only tell me, “These are the emails that came in this afternoon, and I’d prioritize this one because they're a GreenBook partner,” — things like that. It's so intelligent about the agentic work that it's doing. And here's the deal, here's why I'm all in experimenting and learning and evangelizing: this is what's going to be our work. This is how we're going to work — whether it's this platform or somebody else's — this is how our work will be happening within the year. You have to start to use these technologies. Now, I don't recommend going in here and giving it access to all your financial information. Don't have it doing stuff in your bank account. I'm not quite shopping yet; I don't want my credit card information here. I'm using it in an ecosystem that's very controlled to practice. I'm not going to be idiotic about how much free rein I give this system, but I certainly want to improve my skills so that I understand how to use an agentic browser.

[18:59] Lenny: Excellent. And that's you as an individual. So for our audience — remember, we've been talking about this agentic thing for a while. A while back, we did the whole post on “What is the agentic researcher of the future?” And we talked about things we were hearing about brands changing the procurement process into an agentic procurement process. There are rumors that abound of the large AI companies looking at many business processes, many companies — sorry, I'm trying to thread all types of confidentiality stuff here — but the fight is gonna be: who owns the business infrastructure that's driven by an agentic process? Insights is a piece of data that companies are looking at. Do not be surprised if you start hearing about direct investments or acquisitions from large AI companies in our space that are data-driven, while integrating processes into this infrastructure to unlock more of those capabilities. APIs on steroids.

[20:23] Karen: Yeah.

[20:24] Lenny: And I share the same…

[20:24] Karen: It is interesting that ChatGPT, which I would argue has the most individual users…

[20:33] Lenny: Yeah.

[20:35] Karen: I think the fight is still on in who wins the enterprise.

[20:38] Lenny: Well, yeah, because certainly Atlas isn't available for Windows users yet.

[20:47] Karen: The point to make is not, “Oh yes, you must use Atlas, it's the end-all.” The point is: this is giving me — or is currently giving me every day — in the search bar it'll say to me, instead of “What do you want to look up,” it's like, “You can look up something, or would you like to start your day with today’s speaker curation strategy?” And I'm like, yes, actually, that's exactly what I'd like to do today. It's that intelligence. It has said to me at the end of the day, “Would you like to review how you spent your time today?” And I'm like, I would, actually. And it knows across my platforms. Anyway, the point to make is: this is showing me how this will work at an individual level, so I can conceptualize what's going to be happening at an enterprise level. I can see all of these things that have been theoretical. I can see the agentic takeover of my screen. It is showing me its work. Every time it moves, it's showing me in the sidebar what its AI thought process is. So right now, if I’ve said, “Hey, that email that you really wanted me to send — can you draft it for me?” And then it's like, “Yes,” and then it's: “Okay, reading the previous thread,” and you can see your email scrolling through, and then it's composing a draft, and then it's putting it into the email. And then it's like, “Do you want me to hit send?” And I'm like, “No, I'd like you to put an Asana task in so I can remember that I want to revisit this tomorrow.” And then you can see it switch platforms. You're watching it happen. It's a very small window when we can watch that happening, because I'm pretty sure that will be seamless within the year. Right now we see it showing its work because it's proving itself. The updates are going to be incredible — this is so new — but it is really worth experimenting with safely so you can see what's happening. It's really interesting.

[22:56] Lenny: For our listeners, I think to sum this up: 1. The efficiency gain — operationally, organizationally, at the individual level or across the board — in just streamlining tasks and process efficiency: pay attention, because that is a competitive edge. It's certainly a financial edge as well. 2. Think: what does this look like even with our core business from a research standpoint? Researchers — as more people adopt this — buying behaviors, etc., think about the data assets that are available. What does this do to sampling when you're engaging through and plugged into an agentic ecosystem that more and more people are utilizing as their primary… It's not the phone — I mean, it's still going to be this for a while — but eventually this is just gonna duplicate that. And as we get other stuff: news, right? That's all going to change as well. So get ahead of this. These applications change not just how we go about our day in the business; they change how we go about our day as consumers, as individuals, which means they change our attitudes, our behaviors, our thinking. Everything that we do as researchers is going to have to look through this lens.

[24:28] Karen: Which is a good segue to: “Help me decide.” Let's just go there because it's right in line. We can go back to the outage. Amazon added an AI “Help Me Decide” button to guide product choices. And again, you might be thinking, “Okay…” But think about that as a brand — that the purchase decision is being influenced by an algorithm, by AI, and it is happening now. Consumers are— it’s not the same. It's not like search.

[25:03] Lenny: I mean, it's radically different. It's not retargeting. It's not any of those things.

[25:09] Karen: “Help me decide.” It's going to give you persuasive arguments for your product choices, and consumers will be led. And the thing is, purchase decisions are challenging, right?

[25:23] Lenny: Going online to make a decision during the holidays — my God — it's stressful. Right?

[25:29] Karen: “Help me decide which toy to buy for my grandson.” Of course that's going to be a thing. “Help me decide.” “Yeah, all right, I'll take your point of view into effect.” Like, what? Just think about that. If you are a brand — if you are Fisher-Price — and now Amazon is helping, their AI is going to help somebody decide whether it's a Fisher-Price product or a Mattel product or, you know…

[25:56] Lenny: And look, I think it’s all — and by the way, Tom Anderson just popped in a LinkedIn poll on “How do you spend your time? How do you actually schedule your time?” And that's — thanks, Tom — that's relevant stuff, right? Adoption here is going to shift. You're a super early adopter; I'm actually more of a laggard. I always think of myself as an early adopter. I'm a little more of a laggard in this particular area. I'm uncomfortable giving up that control. I'm also uncomfortable with just changing how I do things because I'm lazy and old. But there's no mistaking where this is going.

[26:36] Karen: Yeah, yeah. And yeah, as a consumer, you experiment as a consumer, as a person, as a professional, right? You see what's happening in your personal life and then you can start to comprehend at a B2B level what this will mean.

[26:50] Lenny: And I think that's really the point. All of this is radically different, and guys, you just have to get ahead of this. So stay abreast — that’s what we're here for — but this will have profound implications on our specific industry…

[27:08] Karen: Yeah.

[27:08] Lenny: At every single level. And Amazon, to their credit, they're equipping their delivery drivers with…

[27:20] Karen: Wait for it.

[27:21] Lenny: Yeah, wait for it: smart glasses.

[27:24] Karen: Smart glasses to help them streamline routes, enhance their safety. Now, why does that matter? First of all, because Lenny and I — we're always thinking about these AI glasses.

[27:36] Lenny: The wearables, right? Yeah.

[27:39] Karen: But for real, right? And then we just found out that this company, Sesame, founded by an Aki alum, raised a $250 million Series B to launch a beta for conversational AI…

[27:48] Lenny: Aimed at smart glasses.

[27:48] Karen: Aimed at smart glasses, yes. Natural voice interaction. I really think — I've been thinking about this a lot. Sorry, I didn't mean to talk over you.

[27:59] Karen: No, you're not. Good.

[28:00] Lenny: I mean, we talked about “agentic” and we’ve unlocked each other in many ways. Now we're getting into the — that's the agentic stuff — but actually functioning as an OS. That's what Sesame is — basically an OS for wearables. That does change the game.

[28:14] Karen: Changes the game. If they improve it for driving tech — okay, focus on driving technology. What's cool about it for a driver is they don't have to mess around on their phone. They don't have to be like, “Oh no, I have to reroute,” or, “I need to switch between mapping.” But imagine if they're then able to say, “Hey AI,” or “Hey [whatever their glasses are called], I need a reroute,” or something like that. If they're able to then get rerouted without having to use their hands — they may have some of that technology, but to be able to converse with that platform? We can't converse with our GPSs built into our phones the same way. We can touch buttons, but we can't really converse quite the same. We might be able to say, “Hey Siri,” do these things, but it's totally problematic, however it’s programmed. Conversational AI in the mix — it is designed for the conversation as opposed to retrofitting. I think it's going to be a game changer and then will lead to other use cases.

[29:24] Lenny: I agree wholeheartedly. So many problems with the early phase of wearables, which was primarily usability — you still have to use your hands, connect to your phone, different things, where it was a peripheral. These devices, I don't think are being designed as peripherals. I think they are being designed as replacements.

[29:50] Karen: Yeah, yeah.

[29:51] Lenny: So that's just entirely interesting. And all that — assuming, sorry, Amazon, you're getting it on your chin — you don't bring down the whole damned internet, which we have to mention.

[30:06] Karen: Right. So we all started — do you remember? It was Monday, friends. There was not a company that wasn't impacted. Even if your internet was good or your main sites were fine, there are some sites in your ecosystem that are hosted on web services that did not work.

[30:26] Lenny: So: vulnerabilities. We think all these cool things; we unlock all of this stuff… until whatever happened at Amazon — infrastructure comes down and challenges things. I do worry about that. I still have a landline phone — truly. I mean, redundancies are important because shit happens. The more that we engage these technologies and outsource things to them — sure, you get all these benefits — but, you know, stuff happens. So I would caution us all to continue to also think about redundancies and keep those skills in place so that if we gotta do it old-school…

[31:13] Karen: Tim was against us getting a landline.

[31:15] Lenny: Well, you know, you're talking to the guy who lives in the country, has solar panels, Tesla batteries, and a generator. Anyway, it's all good.

[31:25] Karen: It's all good. All right. All right, following the money.

[31:29] Lenny: Absolutely. I'm sorry—

[31:32] Karen: Did you read Tim's comment?

[31:35] Lenny: Tim commented — he said “Landline probably in a box somewhere,” Tim. And with all my cords, going back 30 years. No, it is actually DSL. My internet connection is DSL, so my landline is DSL on copper. We have Starlink available, but…

[31:58] Karen: You're gonna get him all riled up. All right, look, we have so much to cover. We have so much to cover.

[32:05] Lenny: We do. We do. So I've been a big fan of RealClearPolitics forever — gosh, probably 30 years. It's a wonderful site that summarizes news on different topics, etc. And I'm a political junkie. What they've done for years is averaging polls. I just think they do a fantastic job across the board. Stagwell, Mark Penn — you know, Penn, Schoen & Berland, Microsoft, the Clinton camp, etc. — took, I think, a 35% stake in RealClear Holdings. I just think that was great. They own the Harris Poll. Mark, I think at his core, is still a pollster. So within Stagwell, which is owning marketing and insights capabilities, now to own what is, you know, a political media platform fundamentally at this point — I just thought that was really interesting. And hats off, right? I feel a personal connection to everybody involved in this, even though I don't really have a personal connection — but I just feel one. So it's cool to see that that's coming together.

[33:14] Karen: I'm gonna say you're a brand fan. That's how I feel about myself.

[33:17] Lenny: I'm a brand fan, yes. Yeah. It was 538 and RealClearPolitics. 538 was okay; I really liked RealClearPolitics better for whatever reason. Yes, so fan — fan of Mark Penn, fan of Stagwell. Interesting how they built all that together. But now, all right — follow the money. We had three…

[33:37] Karen: Yeah, but even the one… Anyway, these are newcomers. And I just think — I just want to be really clear with everybody — we've got some funding going on with new people within the last year, basically, to the market. Pay attention to this. So yeah, I mean, I didn't know Estrella. Did you?

[33:57] Lenny: Nope.

[33:58] Karen: Strella is an AI-powered customer research platform, raising $14 million Series A led by Bessemer, “redesigning customer research in the AI era,” coming out of stealth. $14 million. I don't know — whoa. Okay. So check out that company. Brand new competition, and they are getting funded. Dialog AI launched an AI data research platform, announcing $6 million seed to scale.

[34:34] Lenny: Founded 2025.

[34:35] Karen: Exactly. Founded this year, 2025.

[34:39] Lenny: Scale interviews, analysis, integrations for non-specialists.

[34:39] Karen: Exactly. So what's happening? The insights industry is being — insights are going to be accessible for people outside of the insights industry.

[34:50] Lenny: And I should point out that most of these businesses that we're seeing getting these rounds — of course they're selling into the insights organization — but most of their growth is not selling into the insights organization. Most of these companies, especially some bigger rounds that I expect to see soon, it's because those companies are selling into the product team or the marketing organization, or whatever. Because insights are democratizing, and they're part of democratizing it. Here are other examples of those companies. I mean, the smallest one here: Norcy, pre-seed funding — $660,000 pre-seed. That's not a trivial pre-seed number if you've never raised before and it's like, “Hey, I got an idea, give me some money to prove my concept.”

[35:46] Karen: Yeah, yeah.

[35:48] Karen: Native research. And the tie-in, what I wanted to say is: we were talking about these three — Strella, Dialog AI, Norcy — and then we've got this new launch, a public beta of this Reading Minds. It's just a launch. I was not able to find anything on them in terms of when they were founded, what's even going on there very much — even the LinkedIn presence. I'm like, this is brand spanking new. And you go to that site, it's well done and looks sharp as can be. I'm like, what? ReadingMinds AI. So another one that's like: “Let's get into the research game because we can. Because AI has just made entry to this market very possible.”

[36:31] Lenny: Absolutely. I like ReadingMinds because my impression is they're playing it a little close to the vest — kind of non-conscious measurement focus, more emotional understanding, more of the psychological components of things.

[36:45] Karen: So no big announcement about money, however…

[36:48] Lenny: It's coming. It's coming.

[36:50] Karen: It's going to come, right? Let's watch that one and see when it pops up in our feed. So yeah.

[36:56] Lenny: You want to talk about Touchstone? I'll talk about Toluna?

[37:00] Karen: Oh sure. Just, everybody take a breath because it's not necessarily all newcomers that are doing things. Remember, Lenny and I have talked about: you're going to have all these new entrants to the market, but you have to start doing stuff yourself. So Touchstone Research launched a generative AI UX research practice — kind of what they have to do, what everybody has to be doing. They have to be launching AI integrations into their work to stay relevant. So good for Touchstone Research. Toluna is in the game, right?

[37:35] Lenny: Toluna — you know, they were early with synthetic sample. Remember, Toluna is a panel company that also owns data collection and owns consulting as well. They expanded their synthetic personas to cover 15 markets in 9 languages, really around claims testing and ideation. Perfect use case for first-party data–built synthetic personas, which we've been talking about over and over again. When we're talking about synthetic, that's what I tend to focus on — not just the hoovering in of everything online. This is purpose-built, and it takes companies like Toluna with that level of scale — panelists, people sharing their data — to build that entirely predictive layer. And you know, it's interesting: to an extent, these companies are cannibalizing some existing revenue, but they're replacing that with new subscription-based revenue. So hats off to them. The Conference Board — you know, the consumer confidence survey — now released a premium dataset, and I'm sure it's a subscription, so you can tap into all of their data that they capture historically. And what are you going to do? Build more models. Could you build personas off that? Probably. I've actually never paid much attention to the Conference Board. I know it is survey data, so I'm sure they have demographics and other things there as well. So they're taking an existing asset and now monetizing it in a new way, just like Toluna is doing with synthetic.

[39:14] Karen: Yeah. It's not the first time we've talked about those subscription models also.

[39:18] Lenny: Nope. Not at all. All right, we do have a couple of shout-outs. Meltwater — which plays in our space as well — new AI innovations aimed at smarter media intelligence. So check that out: their end-of-year, you know, feature launches. Our friends at MRII, which are partners from a content standpoint, and Cambiar — good friends Simon Chadwick and Carol — a global training offering on adopting a consulting mindset for insights professionals. Probably something to pay attention to, guys, as we define what our human value is. And speaking of value, I thought this Google introduction of Google Skills — a unified training platform pulling coursework from Cloud, DeepMind, and more to upskill users in AI and technical fields — my understanding is that a lot of it is free if you're a Google Cloud user. I love that. Yes, put that education out there, that content, because we probably all need to upskill some now.

[40:33] Karen: Yeah. I mean, if you are feeling… The only way to feel like your skills are going to keep up is if you practice them. Immerse yourself in some of this learning. Just do things. The event was really great — there were some great workshops. Our AI event — patting ourselves on the back again — had people seeing the use cases, getting immersed. I think that's why, Lenny, it was so successful: because people are now like, “Oh gosh, I have to really immerse myself.” You have to. You can't let up for a hot second.

[41:15] Lenny: My son-in-law has a degree in cybersecurity. He was working four years as kind of a level one tech support for a healthcare data company. Last week, they called everybody in a meeting — his whole team, 30 people — they're all gone. Their function was replaced with AI. So here's a young, tech-focused guy. He's getting into all of that — that function was replaced by AI, now laid off. And the conversation with him is: “Well, first go find a job. But use this time to upskill because there are gaps. You’ve gotta have AI.” That wasn't really part of his role because it wasn't something they were doing. So that's kind of a scary story, but the reality is: that is how business is going to flow. So, make yourself invaluable. And what made us invaluable yesterday may not be what makes us invaluable tomorrow.

[42:19] Karen: If AI is the train, get yourself into that conductor seat. Don't just be a passenger.

[42:24] Lenny: Absolutely. Great way to put it. And with that, that's probably how we should wrap, Karen.

[42:30] Karen: Yeah, yeah. Yes, especially because — what, it's quarter of now? We've gone over 42, which is way more. We need to get back to our 30 minutes.

[42:39] Lenny: We do, we do. We just get so excited. Yes.

[42:44] Karen: All right, friends. Yeah, we will see you next week.

[42:50] Lenny: No, it's spooky — it's our spooky show next week.

[42:55] Karen: Oh, is it next week? Is it Friday, Halloween?

[42:58] Lenny: Friday is Halloween. So we'll—

[43:01] Karen: Now we have to think about what we're going to do about that.

[43:04] Lenny: I know. I'm going to come as a… I'm a middle-aged dad. That's scary enough. I don't think we need to do anything else. Oh, and Tim said, yes, Coursera subscriptions.

[43:21] Karen: Companies are giving Coursera subscriptions. Yeah. Tim works at the enterprise level. That's actually a great corporate perk — to buy that for your teams. Yeah. All right, Tim, we've moved on. We're already talking about Halloween costumes. You might've posted this five minutes ago when we were still talking about skills, but now we're obsessing about Halloween, so it's definitely time to go. Lenny, we'll be in touch.

[43:42] Lenny: Yes. Everybody have a great weekend. Bye-bye.

[43:45] Karen: All right. Take care.

Links from the episode:

The Insights Association CEO is stepping down to join Sago 

Apply for the 2026 Mentor Program 

Reach3 & Rival Technologies are fielding a market research trends report 

OpenAI launches Atlas browser to compete with Google Chrome 

Amazon’s latest attempt at selling stuff with AI is the ‘Help me decide’ button 

Amazon will equip delivery drivers with AI smart glasses 

AWS outage 

Sesame, the conversational AI startup from Oculus founders, raises $250M and launches beta 

Stagwell Invests in Pollster and Publisher Real Clear 

Strella Raises $14M in Series A Led by Bessemer Venture Partners to Re-design Customer Research for the AI Era 

Funds and Launch for MR Platform Dialogue AI 

Northsea secures pre-seed funding to reinvent customer research with AI 

ReadingMinds launched its public beta for a new AI-driven research product 

Touchstone Research launched a Generative AI UX Research Practice 

Toluna expanded its synthetic personas to cover 15 markets and 9 languages 

The Conference Board released a Premium Dataset for its Consumer Confidence Survey®, offering more granular analytics to the market 

Meltwater’s 2025 year-end release delivered new AI innovations aimed at smarter media intelligence 

MRII and Cambiar announced a new global training offering on adopting a consulting mindset for insights professionals 

Google introduced “Google Skills”