GetWhy, a consumer research technology company that helps businesses conduct market research and derive insights from video-based interviews using AI, has raised $34.5 million in a Series A funding round from California-based venture capital firm PeakSpan Capital.
The big Series A highlights investor enthusiasm for backing the next big thing in AI, especially companies that already have connections to big name customers — in GetWhy's case, the Danish company claims a host of big name clients, including Nestle, McDonald's, Nike and L'Oreal.
GetWhy's platform allows customers to describe what they want to do — for example, get initial responses to a new campaign concept — and the startup's AI agents create market research templates based on those questions.
A screenshot of the GetWhy platform. Image courtesy of GetWhyImage courtesy of GetWhy / Screenshot
Clients can upload the materials they want to test, such as visuals or slogans, and then get to work recruiting respondents from their target market. GetWhy can provide a link that clients can share with their own customers or target audience, or it can do this on a managed basis. The startup says it can complete this work within 24 hours.
“Our platform is integrated with a global panel of consumers and we have a dedicated recruiting team to ensure rapid onboarding,” Jonas Nielsen, chief marketing officer at GetWhy, told TechCrunch in an email. “We conduct unmoderated interviews online via video and capture consumer interviews on desktop or mobile.”
GetWhy's biggest selling point is its AI platform, Bloom, which analyzes video responses to questions and presents them as qualitative insights. The company says that Bloom's generative AI models are trained on hundreds of thousands of interview sessions.
“The AI technology kicks in when, say, 10 consumers have been interviewed,” Nielsen continued, “and it's trained to do what a human researcher would typically do: go through all the video and find quotes that are relevant to the qualitative research business question.”
Simply put, the AI looks at videos, extracts quotes, and tries to find patterns and aggregate insights.
“This process would typically take a researcher days or weeks. The AI has been trained to perform the analysis in under 25 minutes,” Nielsen added.
A sample of the insights the platform uncovers. Image courtesy of GetWhyImage courtesy of GetWhy
The story so far
With AI intersecting with nearly every aspect of society, it’s no wonder that industries known for slow, laborious processes are starting to introduce tools to speed things up. Just a few weeks ago, TechCrunch reported on Fairgen, an emerging startup that has developed a platform that uses synthetic data and AI-generated answers to improve survey results.
GetWhy was originally founded in Denmark in 2011 as UserTribe and operated as a consulting firm based on a “time and materials” business model, meaning consumer companies paid the company to conduct user research and testing.
In 2017, the company's founder and CEO, Jonas Alexandersson, brought on board Kasper Henningsen as Chief Commercial Officer, with Henningsen taking on the role of CEO the following year. Interestingly, Henningsen is a former football player who played for various clubs in Danish professional football before moving into the commercial world via work at a marketing and branding agency, eventually joining UserTribe in 2017.
Henningsen joined the company six years after it was founded, but is officially classified as a co-founder as he transformed UserTribe from a consulting firm into an AI-focused technology company that changed its name to GetWhy in January after a branding clash with another company after operating as Sonar.
Peakspan is the sole investor in GetWhy's Series A, marking the company's first large institutional funding, although the company has previously raised around $30 million in various rounds, a mix of equity (around 75%) and debt. Henningsen said the company's previous funding came from entities such as Denmark's AL Bank and the Danish Growth Fund, as well as “leading business angels” across Scandinavia.
“This brings the company's total funding to $64.5 million. [May 30]”This Series A round has closed,” Henningsen confirmed to TechCrunch in an email.