Daniel Erickson, CEO of Viable: $9 Million Raised to Build the Future of Customer Feedback Analysis

In today's episode of Category Visionaries, we speak with Daniel Erickson, CEO of Viable, a customer experience platform that’s raised over $9 Million in funding, about why an automated software tool for conducting true analyses on your critical data could change everything about the way a business makes its decisions. By taking the power of natural language processing technology to the next level, Viable promises real-time updates about current trends in your market, explanations about why that might be, and even advice for the future to help guide your sales strategy and product development in the right direction.

We also speak about Daniel's career trajectory from engineering to the boardroom and the lessons he had to learn along the way, why a pivot away from pre-product startups to in-market enterprises was the key to Viable’s profitability, and why they have decided not to build analytics tools, but to build out a truly automated analyst itself.

Topics Discussed:

• Daniel’s career from an engineer to CEO, and the lifetime business skills necessary to make the transition
• Viable’s original value proposition, and why it ultimately had to pivot away from pre-product startups and shift to where the real money was being made
• Natural Language Processing and the power of cutting-edge technology in improving the capacity of our automated analytics
• Why unstructured responses present a challenge for analysts, but also a golden opportunity to understand internal market trends
• How Viable managed to secure a market fit despite introducing a new category, and why they might not need as much market education as you’d expect
• Why, regardless of where you sit in the corporate hierarchy, the ultimate truth is that the customers are always your boss.

Favorite book: 

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones