#161 - John Papadakis, CEO at Pollfish - On leveraging technology to turn the tables in Market Research

This podcast interview focuses on the story behind Pollfish – and their approach to reinvent market research for a new era by shortening cycle times to get faster, high-quality feedback from customers. My guest is John Papadakis, Founder and CEO at Pollfish

John started his career as an Android developer. He’s passionate about platforms and businesses that scale and has always had a particular focus on the mobile domain. In 2011 he co-founded Pajap, a service which allowed to create native Android applications that didn’t need update or installation, thereby combining the best of native app world and web app world

In 2013, he founded Pollfish, a platform that provides brands a revolutionary way to learn, communicate and interact with existing and prospective customers.

That inspired me, and hence I invited John to my podcast. We explore their journey to create a new category and the challenges to grow customer trust by establishing a large enough audience of close to a billion consumers. We also discuss his secrets of growing the Pollfish business – and how simplification and trust in people have been a great asset in that.

Here are some of his quotes:

Essentially, Pollfish started because we had apps, and we want to monetize them. But advertising didn't work for our apps. And we were thinking: ‘There must be a better way to monetize those apps, and that way to be less intrusive since we don't want to spam our users.’

So, we created the Pollfish library first, and we saw that people responded to surveys within the app. In a few days, we had hundreds of thousands of people.

So, the company started from a need to monetize, and from the opportunity that the mobile app ecosystem (in 2013) was a new distribution channel for market research.

It's a two-sided marketplace: you need supply and demand. And you've got to have both. So, we started with the supply, focus there for a couple of years, and then we launched Pollfish as it is today to solve the father decision making problem.

During this interview, you will learn four things:

1. Why – if you want to boost momentum - it’s key to focus your go-to-market on your core strengths and true values – and avoid anything that’s outside of that scope
2. How smart packaging can enable you to change perception and with that open complete new market opportunities
3. Why your customers don't want to worry about ‘figuring your messaging out’. They want it simple – so simple they can share it with their boss.
4. Why throwing way an impressive KPI sheet and focus on just 2 numbers gave focus and boosted creativity amongst all staff

For more information about the guest from this week:

• John Papadakis
• Website Pollfish