New Tech Founder Spotlight: Jim Longo, Founder of Discuss.io

Each week in the New Tech Newsletter we feature a Spotlight Q&A with founders, angels, New Tech alumni presenters, and other people or companies in our community we believe you’d like to learn about. This week we spoke with Jim Longo, the Founder of Discuss.io!

What problem is your technology helping to solve?

Understanding consumers’ experiences in better and faster ways so that organizations can make evidenced-based decisions with the Voice of the Customers (VOC) in mind. Giving CX, UX and insights teams easier access to customer and user feedback not only improves customer experiences, but it empowers organizations to better understand their audience and empathize with them. We do this through a people experience platform that is video-based with AI-powered insight extraction features so that teams can go from conversations to insights quickly and at scale. 

How does your technology solve that problem better than other options?

We’re unique in that we were built by researchers for researchers and our clients inform how we iterate our features to better serve them. We’re not just a medium for having a live video-based conversation, like Zoom or Teams — everything is built-in: from pre-research session capabilities and a full respondent hub, to unique ways to engage respondents and easily capture “aha” moments. And most importantly, our platform automatically analyzes and provides reports on those qualitative insights. 

In addition, our translation services support rich conversations in over 100 countries, and we’ve made it easy for global CX, UX and insights teams to use since we’re GDPR compliant and ISO27001 certified.

Most importantly, we’re trusted by our customers because we’re dedicated to their success. We offer recruitment, moderation, transcription, report writing, and many other services, along with a variety of on-demand best practice guides and marketing assistance to guarantee successful research projects. 

What’s the most innovative or interesting thing about your technology?

We’re excited to have seen a change in our client base over the years, with a variety of industries and people within organizations that are now leveraging our platform because of the ease of use — teams from product to marketing to e-commerce to customer success are all leveraging it. With all the changes in the past few years, it’s become even more necessary to democratize insights across an organization, outstanding customer experience demands it.

With our platform, teams from across the spectrum can more quickly capture people’s thoughts, emotions and experiences through rich conversations, leading to more empathy and understanding. 

What do you love the most about being a part of the (Northwest) tech community?

The tech community in the Pacific Northwest is much more tight knit, small yet lots of talent. Because of this, companies are just more connected with employees; they’re more aligned with their core values and priorities like diversity, equity and inclusion. While bigger markets like the Bay Area which can feel more ‘boom and bust’ with more churn. 

Is there any funny story or specific moment that made you start this company?

At our first pitch event, we came in second because they told us that it just wasn’t possible to scale qualitative research — they told us that it takes too many humans to do focus groups and technology just isn’t there yet. That just made us dig our heels in and make it happen. 

 

To learn more about Discuss.io visit: www.discuss.io.

Reach out if you’d like to recommend a startup, founder, angel, accelerator, or New Tech alumni presenter for us to spotlight for the PNW tech community!

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