Angelique Taylor of AddMaple on Asking Better Questions

What happens when a founder treats her own business idea like a research question? In this episode of the CEO Series, Karen Lynch speaks with Angelique Taylor, founder and CEO of AddMaple, about building a research technology company by testing assumptions, gathering evidence, and letting the product prove itself. That approach has paid off: AddMaple won both the 2026 Expert’s Choice and Audience Favorite Awards at IIEX North America.

Angelique shares how her background in product ownership shaped AddMaple, why asking better questions can be as valuable as finding answers, and how she bootstrapped the platform before attracting major enterprise clients. They also discuss managing risk through small experiments, representation for female founders, and why empathy remains central to Angelique’s approach to product development and leadership.

Key Discussion Points:

• Building AddMaple from a simple “what if?” — How Angelique’s frustration with slow, manual data analysis led to the idea of making complex research data immediately explorable.
• Replacing assumptions with questions — Why organizations can make better decisions when employees are empowered to interrogate data rather than simply accept static findings.
• Using experimentation to reduce founder risk — Angelique explains how small, manageable tests helped her validate demand before investing heavily in growth.
• Bootstrapping and finding product-market validation — From early free users to unsolicited enterprise interest and AddMaple’s 2026 Insight Innovation Competition win.
• Leading with empathy — Why Angelique approaches customers as people with goals and frustrations rather than prospects, and how that philosophy shapes AddMaple’s product development.

Resources & Links

• AddMaple
• Greenbook Insight Innovation Competition

You can reach out to Angelique Taylor on LinkedIn.

Many thanks to Angelique Taylor for being our guest. Thanks also to our production team and our editor at Big Bad Audio.

Transcript

[Karen] Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the CEO Series I'm happy to be hosting. It's Karen Lynch. And today I am very excited to be interviewing another CEO that I know so very well. And I'm so excited to introduce you to Angelique Taylor, who we all know as Ange. She is the CEO and founder of AddMaple. If you haven't been following this year's Insight Innovation Competition, she won this year at IIEX North America this past spring. And let me tell you, Ange first won my heart at IIEX Europe a few years back when she sponsored a seat drop and walked up to us at the Greenbook help desk and was so enthusiastic about her seat drop. I had never seen anybody actually so enthusiastic about a seat drop and wanting to get it right and not wanting to make any mistakes and wanting to make sure that she had our full sort of approval and just the most enthusiastic early sponsor that we had ever met. We were so pleased to kind of welcome her into the Greenbook community. And I am so happy to be introducing her to you and welcoming her to the CEO Series. Ange, I'm so glad you're here.

[Angelique] What a seat drop that was, Karen. Oh, I'm so grateful. Honestly, I'm so lucky because that's kind of where my outreach started was with Greenbook, you know, and meeting you. Oh, it was great. Cara, the whole team. Yeah, it's been phenomenal. So Greenbook has very much been part of my right, the product is ready, got users, now grow. That growth journey, you've been part of it. So thank you.

[Karen] Oh, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled. So for everybody listening, before we get into kind of your origin story, tell people about AddMaple to sort of set the stage.

[Angelique] So AddMaple is a tool to turn your data into something you can ask questions of. So traditionally, if you have survey data, concept test data, or a tracker study, you might have to go to someone else to ask your questions. So AddMaple takes whatever your data is, quant or qual, and turns it into an explorable workspace so that you could ask questions of your data. And the real premise is to enable organizations to ask more questions and, therefore, to rely on less assumptions.

[Karen] That's great, yeah. And, you know, it's right on trend with what we're seeing right now where we have these intelligent dashboards and, you know, the answer's right at your fingertips. So very much, you know, what the industry is demanding right now, what organizations need to rely on right now, which is, you know, information on demand at your fingertips, corporate-wide, and it lives in their ecosystem too, highly protected information as well. Right, Ange?

[Angelique] Exactly. So we have different options, but enterprises typically want us to plug in with their systems. So increasingly, we're finding MCP servers, you know, where an organization will connect AddMaple, but they have one central agentic system so that everything is connected and AddMaple just becomes the layer of exploration of their data, but they still use their AI within their ecosystem to get a consolidated answer.

So it's really exciting. And what makes me happy is to see people asking more questions than ever before, not just focusing on the answers that they were given, but whether you have junior employees or, you know, mid-level, right to executives. I think the more questions we ask, the more we validate what we really know because, you know, for me, it's so easy to rely on assumptions in my own life, in my own business, and then you add on when you have an organization. You don't even know where those layers of assumptions lie until you begin prodding, and then you might realize, oh, my goodness, you know, this one foundational piece that we assume to be true is not as solid as we thought, and then we can go back to the drawing board. So asking questions just gets me excited. And traditionally, you would have to have a quant answer the questions for you. You would have to have an analyst. You couldn't just ask a question unless, you know, you were in SPSS or another statistical tool. So, yeah, it's exciting times. More questions, yeah.

[Karen] Do you think, or let me ask it this way, how much of your background as sort of a product researcher brought you to the beginning, which is, you know, we're going to go there, but, of course, you have this background as a product researcher, a product owner. You have Scrum facilitation in your background. So that has to have been formative to where you began.

[Angelique] Honestly, yeah, I think being a product owner meant that I was responsible for understanding those business needs, interpreting business needs, but then working out what people actually wanted and then making those product decisions based off of something solid that I could reference later. And it means that you're having to essentially place bets. You're having to say, you know, next quarter, we're going to build this feature and we're going to build this feature because of this evidence over here. And then you're going to look at the outtake, the adoption, whether that's financial, you know, goals being met or just adoption goals, daily active users, but there is a feedback loop. And ultimately, you're going to see whether or not your assumptions for that new feature, for that new strategy was on course or not. So you are a mini CEO when you are a product owner. And I think what it taught me is this thing of assumptions, you know, I lived with assumptions. And sometimes you have to just, you can't test everything all the time. So you have to understand, well, what assumptions, if I just assume that everything here is based off of some degree of assumption, which of these assumptions is going to mean that this product feature is going to fail, which is the most risky? And then we prioritize testing those assumptions. We develop a hypothesis and we work out what research methodology we're going to use, whether it's an A-B test, whether it's a survey, but we need to find out, well, which assumptions are we relying on?

And we need to get comfortable saying that we are relying on assumptions. And this, in my career, it became so evident to me how humans don't actually like to call out how much we rely on assumptions. We overestimate what we understand. And there's been, you know, social studies on asking people, the more familiar we are with a topic, the more we tend to overestimate what we understand about it. And in product world, that's our users, that's the market, that's the product, that's their needs. But even from a social standpoint, if we just say, look, forget about product, forget about business, when people are familiar with something, if you ask them, for example, you know, are you familiar with a zip? Are you familiar with, you know, how a hinge works in a door? They will likely rate their understanding quite high because they're very, very familiar with that. But then when you ask someone to explain how the mechanism of the zip works, they tend to revise their understanding to a lower level because once you begin to explain something, then you realise, well, I might not have understood that as well as I did. But we don't get to do that in our business context very often because traditionally, maybe because of education, the way our system works, we tend to praise answers and we tend to really place weight on, well, this is what the survey said, this is what we believe to be true. Those answers are really valuable to an organization. But I, in my role as product owner, how to place equal weight and value on questions too because it's only when we get comfortable asking questions that we realize, you know, well, which answers do we need to re-evaluate here or under which circumstances are these answers to be true? And if this were to change, is this answer then still true? So, yes, I suppose that's where my passion for questions came in.

[Karen] Yeah.

[Angelique] Yeah.

[Karen] So let's talk about the start of AddMaple. When did it begin? Did you have a spark? Did you have an idea? Did it kind of simmer over time? Did it happen all at once? How did it all begin for you?

[Angelique] I was a product owner, right, as you said, and part of that role involved making sense of different types of data. And I remember a distinct moment where someone did a data dump because we needed to reach out to about 6,000 customers and I was given a data dump and needed to make sense of who these customers were, how are we going to contact them? And I remember just how long it took me to try and find some cohesive pattern that we could use to reach out to these people, not just the means of communication, but what was the message going to be that was going to make sense and cohesively tie this cohort of 6,000 users together? And I remember thinking, goodness me, I'm having to spend such a long time making sense of the basics. Do we have a telephone number for these people? Do we have an address? I spent such a long time making sense of the basics that I had to rush when it came to, oh, well, now this is how we're going to reach out to this segment of people. And that's where the spark started. And the question for me was, what if when I need to make a decision, a recommendation as a product owner, what if I started with summarized data so I could see every column in the data, every variable already summarized as a chart, as a table, different types of charts even? What if that was the start of my journey with any data, complex data specifically, how would that change my ability to then make a recommendation, to then be able to make a decision? Could we have a tool that could, in under five seconds, turn raw data into charts and tables, even if you have complex data structures, concept tests where you have randomization and so forth? Is this possible? 

So it started with that question. Is it even possible? And if it could be possible, how would that change the nature of work? Because then we begin with understanding the shape of that data. We see what is in it. We don't need an analyst. We don't need a weekend. We start and we see what's in it. And then we can start using that data rather than getting stuck at summarizing only some columns because who has time to do all of it? So that's where it started. But then it took some years, Karen, because I was still in the thick of it. So I have kids also. So, you know, I was very distracted with work and making sense of different data types and running my own research and product. But that question, I just couldn't let go of that question. And I kept on seeing how long people take, even just to make basic questions, even, you know, in terms of workforce planning, you know, just basic, you know, you would imagine that it's really simple to slice and dice data by role, seniority, location. But just how long something as simple as that takes became a question that I couldn't let go of. And then I started thinking, the question went from is it possible to how would it change how we work to well, let me create something small, a small version of this that uses complex enough data. Because frankly, if it was too simple, then I would not have faith in it. If it was, you know, well, let's just summarize something that would take me five minutes to summarize anyway, then I wouldn't have confidence. So what was the most complicated data type that I could test the concept on that gave me confidence in the ability to build an algorithmic programmatic approach to solving complex data? So what's the most complex and yet the most contained version?

Where can I start? And I started then with surveys and then built something out for service with the most cleverest people that I knew. And then from there tested it with just anyone who needs to make sense of survey data from scratch. And then essentially it was free for a long time, Karen, just so that I could get that feedback. And once we hit about 65,000 data sets and the feedback was consistently good, people were consistently amazed, then we started working out, okay, well, now let's work on a monetization growth strategy. But the first was to prove the concept.

[Karen] Yeah. When did it really click for you? Like that, you know, this is something that is really, you know, a saleable business idea. Like, did it take, you know, like, was it halfway through that process, that journey where it really was like, oh, I'm going to do something with this? Or was the entrepreneurial spirit there right from the beginning? Like, did it go from kind of a what-if concept to a, oh, this is happening, you know, over time? Or did it really just hit one moment? Like you're like, oh, I got this.

[Angelique] Oh, that's such a good question, Karen. I don't know how much of this is also being female brain where we may evaluate a little bit differently, but I've been like, I feel sorry for AddMaple, right? Because AddMaple has constantly had to prove itself to me. So, you know, so the first moment where Maple convinced me was, and that's the thing, you know, I wanted evidence all the time and still do, Karen. I want to constantly go back to that question, you know?

[Karen] Yeah.

[Angelique] So, but the first moment for me where I was like, oh my goodness, was I got an email from the research manager at Greenpeace to say, oh, I've been playing around with a free version and this is amazing. Please, can we get the whole organization set up? Please help me. I've tried all the tools out there, you know, Displayr, Crunch.io. I've tried all the tools and there's nothing quite as fast, as complete because we also do the automated stats. We show you where the patterns are. So there's nothing quite as fast and as comprehensive as AddMaple, could you help set us up? So that was the moment when I realized, you know, he'd found the tool on his own. He tested the tool with serious files, large SAV files from SPSS. The tool had proven to him its value and then it was just for us to onboard. And that was the moment when I realized, oh, okay, without any handholding needed, the tool proved the value to a client who was actively, you know, a research manager who was struggling with, you know, evaluating tools. And we all know how hard it is to evaluate tools. And without us even being involved, he had picked AddMaple because of its performance. So that was where I realized, okay.

[Karen] I just had this analogy. So, you know, you mentioned AddMaple proving it to you and you had mentioned being a mother before. And I just had this moment of a child on a swing saying, look ma, no hands, or on a bike saying, look ma, no hands, which is the, you know, the metaphor for a child who starts doing risky things on their own and the mother just standing back saying, oh, wow, you know, that's happened. So this moment that must've been like, oh, wow, you know, I've done it. Almost to your own disbelief. So what a wonderful story to share. Like it or not, you did it. Like it or not, you were an entrepreneur.

[Angelique] It was a moment, you know, because I couldn't believe it. And when I got the email, I first had to double check. Is this a phishing email? It's just surreal. And there's been multiple moments like that.

[Karen] Yeah, I love that. I love that. And it's funny because I think that there are some people, you know, we can talk about others in the industry who show themselves all the time, who are like right out the gate. They're like, I have this drive. I have this ambition. I'm going to create something. And we all know who those people are, right? They come out of school or they start off early in their careers and they're just hungry to create something. They have that ambition and that tenacity. And those are great qualities that entrepreneurial spirit and drive and hunger, which I keep repeating, but there's that. And then there's something else, which is a little bit of kind of curiosity and perseverance and problem solving, which is another part of a founder's journey, right? Which starts with the what if question. And the way you're saying you just, you didn't let it go. And that's something different. And I like that you've called that out because I think there is that other part of the founder's story that just grabs a hold and holds on. And I like that we talked about it because as you and I discussed at the beginning of this, I like to speak to other someday CEOs who might be listening, who have that idea, who haven't acted on it yet, but the idea just sits on their shoulder and is like now maybe tapping them saying, see, see, it's not too late to get started on it, right? Exactly.

[Angelique] As you say, see, see, it's not too late to get started. And you can start in a way that you let the idea prove itself to you. You start in a way, because there are some people who are able to start their journey in one particular way. And we often see those stories written about, and they perhaps have one path where you have an idea and perhaps you don't even need, you almost don't even need to prove yourself in a way. It just seems from what we read that it's so easy. Now, I'm sure if I were to speak to some of those founders, they will say, no, no, no, it never was that easy. But the story that we see written about is, before you know it, they've raised X amount of millions and it seems such a linear journey and it seems so easy. But then, especially if you start this a little bit later in life, you have to consider other things, right? You have to, and if you're a woman, I don't know, I haven't done the research, I don't know. But for me, I was a little bit more risk averse and wanted to just find concrete ways to find those early users so that they could really prove that it's worthwhile. And now that I'm having investor conversations, investors can't actually believe how far AddMaple has come without any funding. No funding, no angel funding, no funding whatsoever. 

But it is because of that approach of just, what’s the smallest thing I can do to just test the idea with someone who doesn't know me and therefore isn't going to tell me what I want to hear. What's the smallest thing I can do to prove whether I can do the next thing, to prove the next thing up the cycle? And it's just this foundational piece and you keep building upwards and you keep building upwards. And before you know it, you know, household brands will be the ones coming to you to ask for help because you've built something that you yourself have validated the real need for, not just something that you yourself needed. Because I'll be honest, Karen, I did worry. What if no one else cares about, you know, what if data is so utterly boring and no one actually wants to mine data? What if, that was also one of my questions, what if people just don't want to go to the data? What if they are completely content with not exploring data? Because that is a plausible reality that people don't want to ask questions. And so far, thanks also to AI, I'm realizing no, no, no, no, people have way more questions than they do answers. And I don't think questions are going away anytime soon.

[Karen] I know. And you often have to balance all that with what if I am wildly successful? Right? You have to, if you are out there listening and all of the negative what ifs are creeping in, you also have to put the what if in there, what if I am wildly successful? Because that is also a possibility.

[Angelique] Exactly.

[Karen] You know, because it could be, you know, if you're living in that world of what ifs. I think that, you know, right now, I want to move on and talk about kind of like what you're working on, what you're excited about, and more about what it is to be a founder and a CEO. But I just want to kind of pause to, okay, like we've gotten you to, you have founded AddMaple, what are some of the lessons you learned along the way on that journey? And I do want to kind of ask about risk, because I think some people might have heard what you just said about risk and not know what the lesson in that is. So let's start with that. What's the lesson you learned about risk? And maybe there are other lessons that you learned as well.

[Angelique] I love what you said about what if you are wildly successful, because you do need to start with, what if this thing that I want to do would help someone else so much so that it could become a valuable tool or platform or service that would really help people? And what if I find the people who need this? What is actually holding me back? What am I afraid of? And it's okay to call those out. It's okay to have those discussions. What am I, you know, what is making me not take the step? And what could I design to just let me dip my toes in? What could I design that just feels like a no-brainer that enables me to give me just that confidence that I need to then go and do the next thing? So what I learned about risk is if you know the outcome to something, Karen, if you can see the outcome that if I do this, I'm going to, you know, reap this award, then it's a no-brainer and you'll just do it because you've already seen the outcome. The thing is at the moment of making that decision, we don't yet know the outcome. But you can design a test to help you evaluate what you want to do that takes away some of that risk overhead. 

You can design a test, something small that you can do within your realm of possibility before you've even mentioned to your friends and family, perhaps your partner, whatever your life circumstance is because let's face it, we only see founders and if you look at the big guys out there, they all look a particular way, you know, and because you might not see yourself in the examples out there, it doesn't mean that you can't do it. But just design something small enough, doable enough, that you cannot not do it. What's the thing I can do that I cannot not do that is easy for me to do to just see whether there is some life in this concept that I have and then you've promised yourself that it's small enough that you should do it and then you've got to do it. And that's the thing that I did, you know. And I started just with the community actually. I didn't know the community members that well, so it wasn't friends and family. And as we stand now, I still haven't mentioned to some of my friends and family what I do. Some of my closest friends know, but I still, you know, but I designed a test and then I found a Slack community that's close enough.

I was part of that community for years, so I was part of it for years, close enough that I'm familiar with the rules and that whatever, but distant enough that I would get genuine, honest feedback and put it out there and didn't beg for feedback, didn't just thought, okay, I'm just going to let it fly. Like you mentioned with your child, I'm just going to put it out there and observe. And observing isn't scary because if you just have your research hat on and you say, look, I'm not personally attached to this. I haven't told my family, my friends. I'm not personally invested in this. It could go either way and it's okay because I promised myself, what's the minimum thing I can design to test this? I've designed the test that I cannot not do. Now I'm going to put it out there and I'm just going to observe. And it's amazing what happens when you create movement. Once you move, things move with you. Honestly, so just do that and do it in a way that feels right for you. You don't have to start off with raising millions. You can start off however you want and don't compare yourself to others either. We say it to our kids, don't we? But then we end up, yeah, just don't compare yourself. Don't compare your journey. No one, you know, just, yeah, think about what you want to do, why you want to do it, design your test, and then you've got to do it.

[Karen] I love it. I love it. So this is something we talked about on the pre-show. We've talked about before in the scope of life lessons or lessons from this journey to entrepreneurship and to becoming a founder, the unique lessons to the someday female founders out there, right? We've touched on it. We've talked about it. And it's hard to say don't compare yourself to others necessarily when there are so many more male founders in our industry and the female founders can't help but say, I don't know that I can do that as a female founder. There are so few female founders to look at and to take inspiration from. So what advice would you have for the other females that are listening who don't have many of you to look up to?

[Angelique] I would say here numbers could be our friend. So perhaps not numbers in terms of the amount of female founders, but numbers in terms of where women show up, we have increasingly shown our ability to show up and to show up strong. And just because this particular area is lacking for us does not mean it is because of ability. And just like we handle other things, other areas, I would say look at areas where you feel women are strong and use that, use that evidence to fuel you and don't hold back just because there aren't enough of us because goodness knows I think it will become far… How can I put it? Don't necessarily step out just because you want to prove something to yourself. That's a good reason. You want to prove something to yourself. But also consider you could encourage a female who could become a great founder, who could invent something that could truly change lives. You could be an example that when that female looks to, well, who can I look to who has potentially gone before me? You could be that person that would have stumbled across their path. So, yeah, do it for yourself. Do it for perhaps, you know, I often do things for my daughter, you know. I often think, hey, you know, oh, do I want to do this? Do I not? What do I want her to be thinking? Huh? What do I want? I always want her to think, no, there's no limit. There's no limit. And that kind of just forces me, okay. Well, you've got to live it. So, yeah, do it for yourself and do it for the other females in your life and those who you know and those who you don't know.

[Karen] Yeah, yeah. It's so funny because the team at Greenbook, the women on the team, they're always like, does your daughter know how hard you fight to get women on stage or, you know, get women on the shows? And I'm like, she has no idea. So, I'm like, but I have to hope that it's, you know, I put it out there in the world and at some level it'll come back to her. So, and then they met my daughter last year and they gave her an earful. So, I was like, you know, well, thank you. Thank you all for telling my daughter some things that, you know, she wouldn't listen to me for because, you know, we just have to hope that our daughters collectively get the lessons that we're all trying to teach them. So, I'm with you.

[Angelique] But you were one of those females for me, Karen, honestly, you know, like when I met you, yes, you mentioned that, you know, Amsterdam in Europe. Yes, I met you there. But that's not where our relationship stopped. You know, I reached out to you because, you know, I saw you. You're a female in an industry. You're a leader. You're knowledgeable. You understand the ins and the outs. And I reached out to you and I said, oh, hey, Karen, could we have a virtual coffee? And it was the beginning of our relationship. And I just think, you know, I wish there were more women like you because just that contact. And then from there, you introduced me to some amazing women. And from there, it's one connection after another. And it's also a little proof point in your back pocket to carry with you. And you helped with that so early on. So thank you for that.

[Karen] Well, you're welcome. If you know anything about me, I get a little, I start to blush and then I get a little like this. So we're going to move on, but you're welcome. But let's move on before I get emotional. What I want to talk about next is— thank you. I want to collect myself because it means a lot to me. Anyway, let's talk about where you are now. So we're going to fast forward through some of those origin stories. And now you have this company. And you've got some proof points. And now here you are. And now you're doing a seat drop at IIEX. And you're getting some momentum here. And you're doing it by yourself. And you don't have this early funding. And these early days, what is it like to be a founder with a company in these early days? There are hard times. And then there are wins. Some struggles you can share? Some wins you can share? What's it like in the early years?

[Angelique] I mean, honestly, you know, they say that your highs are very high and your lows are very low. And the early days are tricky because you have those high moments. But they are so rare. And especially if you're doing this in a constrained way, like I did, your low days where you're questioning and looking for proof points, well, that's the majority. And all you need to do, or all I did, was try and write down those wins and review those wins every day. There's no reason you can't review those wins every day, multiple times a day. But the early days, especially if you're doing it bootstrapped and growing organically, are hard because our industry understands one type of success story. Our industry doesn't necessarily understand female founder, doesn't necessarily understand bootstrapped, doesn't necessarily understand the type of tech that I wanted AddMaple to develop and the approach that I wanted AddMaple to take. So there were just a lot of new things, you know, about the product, which meant I did feel very lonely in those early days. I remember arriving at IIEX in Amsterdam and not knowing anyone and thinking, how am I going to get through this day? And I remember thinking, I know, I'm going to wear the most brightest, pinkest dress. So that at least I can start conversations. Someone can come up to me and say, that is a crazy dress. And at least then it can give me an excuse to connect with a human who I would have seen walk around and it can give me an excuse for a conversation. And it did work. You know, I did have some conversations just through that. And I suppose in those early days, that's what you have to do is just find, you know, how am I going to find those early users? How am I going to just think of something that you can do that is doable for you and just do it. And one thing will lead to another, will lead to another, will lead to another. And that's how I started. But yeah, those early days are very, very lonely. Yeah.

[Karen] Yeah. Well, if those of you listening are not quite getting a feel for it, this is another reason why when Ange walked away with the, you know, $10,000 check at IIEX North America this past spring, she also won the Audience Favorite award. So you charmed a whole room full of people at that point as well. So, and it was one part maybe pink dress this year, you brought chocolates. You certainly work your way into a lot of people's hearts. I'm excited to, by the way, share, I did receive your email, yes, to sitting with us for a founders panel at IIEX West this year, you will be joined by the way, I'm telling you this for the first time, Dana Kim who founded highlight, who was also I think our 2020 or 2022 Insight Innovation Competition winner, so another female founder. And we are going to be joined by Alfred Whalforss who is the founder of Listen, who is one of our most successful, more recent winners. They are the title sponsor at IIEX West. So it makes a lot of sense for Alfred to be joining us.

Listen, you know, has received a lot of funding right now. So it'll be very interesting to get, speaking of that entrepreneurial, young entrepreneurial spirit. So that'll be an interesting balance. And we're working on getting somebody from Zappi who was one of our earlier winners. Steve himself cannot join us. We'll see if we can get somebody from, who kind of has that context from the early days. We'll see. If not, we'll get another founder perhaps. So we're going to have a kind of founders panel talking about this in person as well. So I'm excited for that to kind of have this conversation, both men and women talking about some more of this. We’ll dig even deeper. So I'm so glad you're going to be joining us for that. What's next for you, Ange? Is it still kind of kind of moving forward? Are you thinking about, you know, kind of the next layers and a little bit deeper, different product features, or are you just still growing? Are you scaling up? What are you most excited about for AddMaple?

[Angelique] I mean, the win at Greenbook has been phenomenal for our platform. So that's been phenomenal because as soon as we won, you know, IIEX North America, we had inbound interest from household brands. You know, that I'm sure most people on this podcast would have heard of and we've closed some of those now. So that's phenomenal because you know, these cycles take a long time, but we haven't stood still since the win. We developed, and I don't want to be too technical, but we developed a new feature where if you can imagine data tables from before. So you have your survey with your product test or your tracker, and you create your data tables, your banner. 

But imagine if your banner that, you know, what if you could have your data tables ranked according to research questions that were asked in the survey from questions where your subgroups differ the most to the questions where your subgroups differ the least to help you find that data story. So we now, you know, you build your banner, whether it's gender or you know, gender, age group, whatever you're interested in, you build it, select what your subgroups are made up of. And then we give you the questions with the biggest groups at the top. And then the questions where they are kind of similar at the bottom top, you find the stories. That's a new feature. And we are also providing some services because increasingly we find that the enterprises that work with us have some really specific niche needs. And also Karen, I'm a bit of a people's person. So it gives me an excuse to kind of work really closely with our teams. But this is something that we are increasingly offering because as much as AddMaple is a flexible platform, there are those unique needs. And we're working with our team at Indeed on some specific needs that they have, building something out for them, which I'm very excited about and can't wait to tell you more when I'm permitted to. But working also really closely with our in-house researchers to get the system working just as they need it so that they can, you know, in truth to AddMaple, ask more questions and get those answers across all the various data points that they have. So we have a research repository. That's something that's not too new. We've been working on that for a while. It's in spirit of our ask any question, quant or qual, bringing it all together. And that's something that we're also very excited to be releasing. Yeah. And to see in use.

[Karen] Yeah.

[Angelique] Yeah. So we're just super exciting.

[Karen] I imagine your clients just love the enthusiasm you have for everything you can do for them. You know, if they ask about their levels of customization and you approach each of them with the same level of enthusiasm, they must love that.

[Angelique] It's such a privilege to get to do this. You know, it is such a privilege. And yeah, that energy is there because, how cool. How cool to be able to get this opportunity. Yeah. And to build a tool that an entire organization can then use to query their tracker and their, you know, wave on wave study. I mean, what a privilege, right?

[Karen] And that brings up, this is how I want to end, actually. This is not something I thought about ahead of time. So I hope that you don't mind being put on the spot there, but the idea that it's a privilege and that you've shared that makes me think you must have other sort of business philosophies that you work from. Other kinds of points of view that you, you know, or beliefs or maybe even mantras or, you know, kind of business values that you have that steer you when you work. And that might be really helpful to share as we think about the next generation of leaders that are coming through. Anything you can share that would be, you know, potentially inspirational to others before we wrap.

[Angelique] I don't know if this is because my personality type is ENFJ. And therefore it means that empathy is something that I can't not do. But something that always guides me is just trying to imagine that you are that person with that need and you're experiencing that frustration. You're experiencing, you know, you want to grow your career. Let's imagine you are Head of Consumer Insights at a brand and you're trying to grow and you're being held back. And the tools just keep on putting obstacles in your way, approaching people as people with dreams, with life goals, with ambition rather than as a prospect or a lead or, you know, starting all the time, imagining that you are that person because we've all had different roles before we've, well, many of us have had other roles. I've had other roles. I think that helps me approach a new feature, or a new direction, or a strategy from an angle of the person rather than the potential paycheck. And I think that keeps AddMaple a surprising tool because prioritizing the person in the process constantly and the person as a person, not the person as a prospect does mean that you make different kinds of decisions. And I think then you build a tool that is surprisingly useful to people because you approach it from that point of view.

[Karen] Yeah. Yeah.

[Angelique] Yeah. Finding the person, whatever title we have, you know, consumer, you know, and we can so easily lose the person and no amount of persona study or, you know, digital twin… If we can't identify with the person, we need more research or more strategy, but it does need to begin with the person. And if we feel that we can't have empathy with the person, maybe we need to switch to a different industry, right?

[Karen] Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that's beautiful. I think that's beautiful. And if I think back to when I was a qualitative consultant, my best client relationships were the ones where I was definitely on that kind of deep first name basis with those clients. And when I thought of them, I was thinking of them as the person and how I was helping them in their careers. And so that definitely resonates with me. I'm thinking about their names and who they are and how I can make their lives better. And, you know, certainly I think as qualitative researchers, we, you know, we do, we think about respondents and participants and we dehumanize them a bit in so doing. So that was certainly something I preached, but now that I know your Myers-Briggs type, it all makes perfect sense to me why we are the way we are because we are the same. Of course, of course. Soon as you said that, I was like, oh yes, now it all makes sense because we think the same. We should have known. We should have known.

[Angelique] We should have known.

[Karen] What fun, just absolute serendipity. Ange, that is really all the time we have for this today, but any final word that you would like to share with our audience before we sign off?

[Angelique] If you're listening to this and you're a fellow founder and you're investing in our wonderful industry, making research better for organizations, thank you to all the founders out there. Thank you for making our work better and bringing the people that organizations are trying to serve, bringing those people closer to decisions. So thank you.

[Karen] Yeah. Well, what a beautiful note to end on Ange. Thank you for what you're doing, and for your time today, and for a great conversation.

[Angelique] Thank you, Karen. Thank you for making it happen.

[Karen] My pleasure. Emma, thank you for setting it up as our producer. We appreciate you and for Big Bad Audio for cleaning us up and for all of our listeners. Thank you for tuning in episode after episode. We really appreciate you and we'll see you next time on the CEO Series. Bye-bye everyone.