You can build it and see if customers start pouring in. Or you can do a bit of market research on the front-end to make sure what you're producing will be a hit with your likely audience.
Of course, that type of research, often involving surveys, can be time-consuming and expensive.
Austin-based startup Knit says its new AI-powered tools can expedite the process as well as do it more affordably. And investors see a lot of potential.
The company on Sept. 18 announced it has raised $9 million in fresh venture funding to help it hire additional engineers, customer representatives and salespeople, as well as iterate on its platform.
The round was led by Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund. Meanwhile, new investors Osage Venture Partners, GFT Ventures, Visible Ventures and Massive Ventures pitched in, along with existing backers Silicon Road Ventures, Felton Group and Alumni Ventures.
The new funding follows a pre-seed round in 2020 and the company's participation in Techstars' Farm to Fork accelerator. It now has raised about $14.5 million.
The investment also comes on the heels of several years of increasing traction for the startup, which was initially developed by its co-founders in a dorm room at the University of Virginia before transitioning to Austin in early 2019.
Some of the best evidence of that traction comes in partnerships with big name brands, including T-Mobile, NASCAR, the WNBA, Mars Wrigley, Overtime and JBL. In addition, the company was one of Austin Inno's 2021 Startups to Watch.
"We're seeing that in today's digital-first world consumer behavior is just changing so quickly, and what we're finding is that it's really difficult for brands to keep up with this change in consumer behavior," co-founder and CEO Aneesh Dhawan said. "We found AI to be a really great tool to help these brands run research quickly and in a more affordable manner than traditional research."
Knit's platform uses AI to learn about a company's market research processes and apply those frameworks in creating new market surveys. Then, with survey results in hand, the new data is used to generate detailed reports that help companies make key decisions. Knit describes as researcher-driven AI.
Dhawan, who co-founded the company with Chief Technology Officer Raahish Kalaria, said a lot of companies are developing DIY tools with AI to supplement their existing research methods, and many agencies are launching their own AI tools.
"It's a really busy landscape, and people are building some really great things," he said. "I think at the end of the day, there's a couple areas where we've really focused our platform, and that tends to be where we've built best-in-class technology, and I think that's where our customers find the best value."
That includes both creating a robust platform that can answer simple questions and produce complex reports, as well as bringing in additional data sets used in market research.
While Knit's core product is decidedly tech-driven, the startup's approach to meeting new customers is all about in-person connections, Dhawan said.
"I think the reason we've been so successful is in a world where, post pandemic, we're moving away from the in-person connection, we're going and spending time with customers in person," he said during a break from a conference the company was presenting at with Mars. "We've actually really leaned into it."
The startup's team, which has an office at the Industrial co-working space at 3rd and Congress Avenue, has grown from roughly 10 to about 50 in the past couple of years. It operates a hybrid model, with about 10 team members based in its Austin headquarters.
Dhawan said employees frequently travel to spend time with customers.
"We spend a lot of time in-person with our customers at these events and visiting their offices, and I think what that gives us is a lot of clarity and deep empathy into how they think about running research and what challenges they have today, and a lot of that is captured in the product that we're building and how we're thinking about building it," he said. "So we just want to make sure that, just like our AI, the researchers are at the center of it."
