Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Hunter Thurman, the President and Founder of Alpha-Diver, as her guest today. Hunter has been in the insights and strategy world for the last twenty years. Some background for Alpha-Diver In 2011, Hunter got to a point where he felt dissatisfied with how he was doing insights and research and translating it into a strategy. (Subsequently, he learned that his approach had been model-free. And the industry had also been operating in a model-free way at the time.) Ar...
Mar 09, 2021•29 min
Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Kristin Luck once again as her guest! Kristin is the founder and managing partner of Scalehouse Consulting, and Kristi and I are both advisors at Oberon Securities, on the investment banking side. Where the industry is, as related to the impact of Covid The abrupt impact of the pandemic on the overall economy brought the industry to a near standstill last spring. It is unlikely to return to its 2019 turnover levels until 2022. ESOMAR Although ESOMAR initially pred...
Mar 02, 2021•20 min
Sima Vasa is excited to have Bob Qureshi join her today. Bob is the co-owner and managing partner of i-view viewing facilities in London. Bob talks about the history of his business In the 1960s and 1970s, most of the qualitative research in the UK took place at the home of the recruiter. Over the years, specific facilities for research were being built in the US. Then, in the 80s, that also started to happen in the UK. A game-changer In 2010, Bob looked at the UK facilities and saw that they we...
Feb 23, 2021•29 min
Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Tim Clover as her guest for today’s podcast. Tim is the CEO and Founder of Glow, based in Australia. Tim is originally from the UK and has been living in Australia for the last ten years. About Glow Glow is an online research platform, and people often compare it with SurveyMonkey on steroids. For Tim, it is about a lot more than just creating surveys. It is about the whole workflow for research. Some background As a kid, Tim was into engineering and finding out h...
Feb 10, 2021•29 min
I am happy to welcome Ken Roshkoff, the CEO of AMC Global, as my guest for today. Ken’s father started AMC Global Ken’s father started their company in 1979. He was a true researcher who loved working with data, doing analytics, and working with project staff. The competitive component Ken always loved the competitive component, so he spent much of his childhood focused on sports. He loved tournaments and competing, so he knew that he would eventually embark on a career with competitive elements...
Feb 02, 2021•23 min
This is the first episode in our MRX Podcast Network series. I am excited to kick this year off with an episode focused on perspectives and thoughts related to our industry for 2021. A year like no other 2020 has been a year like no other. As an industry, we collaborated, we called on each other for help, and we were there for each other, both personally and professionally. That was an important statement, and it showed me that, as an industry, we are resilient, we can adapt, we can pivot, and f...
Jan 19, 2021•21 min
I am excited to share some news with you today. Some of my fellow podcasters and I came up with the concept of an MRX Podcast Network. The main mission of the podcast network is to be able to podcast on a topic on our respective podcast channels, and provide multiple points of view, perspectives, and formats on how we address the specific topic, and give all our listeners in the industry a broader perspective as it relates to that topic. We are starting this year with what we think that 2021 hol...
Jan 12, 2021•12 min
We are excited to welcome Steve Schlesinger, the CEO of the Schlesinger Group, as our guest for today’s show. Join us today to learn about Steve’s journey. You will hear the story behind the Schlesinger Group and find out how it got founded by Steve’s mother back in 1966. Steve’s mother’s story The Schlesinger Group was founded by Steve’s mother in 1966. A few years before, she started looking for a part-time job, and a friend of hers who was working for a company in New York City, got her a job...
Jan 06, 2021•28 min
We are excited to welcome Dave Shanker as our guest for this episode. Dave is the CEO and Founder of David Shanker Consulting. Dave’s journey Dave’s career spans more than thirty years, and he has mostly been involved with market research, running different market research agencies. He has also been involved in startups and has had a family business along the way. Dave’s leadership style People have often told Dave that he is authentic and that he wears his heart on his sleeve, so what you see i...
Dec 22, 2020•23 min
I’m happy to welcome Rebecca Brooks to the show. She’s the founder and CEO of Alter Agents, a full-service, strategic market research consultancy reimagining research in an era of shifting decision making. Rebecca has enjoyed an amazing trajectory to her successful career, and her work has never been more relevant and necessary than it is in today’s world. About Rebecca Rebecca fell into market research without intending to make it her career, but she quickly fell in love with this kind of work....
Dec 15, 2020•22 min
Sima’s goal for this two-part podcast series is to help senior leaders understand the mindset and psychology of sales. She would like to help sales leaders understand how they need to think about sales as a profession, how sales integrate into an organization, and the psychology behind what makes a salesperson tick. So many companies struggle with one of the biggest components of scaling their businesses, which is sales. That means getting a balance of the right personality and the right leader ...
Dec 11, 2020•27 min
One of the biggest components for scaling any business is sales, and yet so many companies tend to struggle with it. It involves finding a balance between the right personality, the right leader, and ensuring that there’s lockstep with the product. Adam Jolley is joining Sima in presenting this two-part podcast series on sales. Much of the sales piece tends to be forgotten in all industries, and there are no white papers or conferences just on sales. Adam feels that people don’t even want to tal...
Dec 08, 2020•34 min
We are excited to welcome Tim Hoskins today. Tim is the President of Quester, an insights and strategies company. He is joining us today to talk about his journey and driving business results. Tim’s journey While in college, Tom needed a job, so he answered an ad for a lead-generation specialist at an information security startup. He worked there for two years while he was in college, and then post-college, he got hired by the same company and started as a sales rep. In the startup world, you ge...
Dec 01, 2020•22 min
We have the pleasure of welcoming Mark Simon, the Managing Partner for Hawkmoon Advisors, as our guest for today’s podcast. Mark is joining us to talk about his journey and share his experiences with the kind of work he has been doing to help small businesses scale, grow, and reach their goals. He also talks about what ten-million-dollar companies need to be thinking about if they want to scale. About Mark Mark disappeared off the research industry radar for a while after leaving Toluna at the e...
Nov 17, 2020•24 min
Today, we have the second part of the podcast series Data Gurus for IEX. We have been focusing on the concept of the last mile. In our industry, the last mile relates to empowering and getting the insights and value that clients want to get from research. Today, we invited Paul Gaudette, the co-founder of Dig Insights, to give us his perspective on how he looks at his clients from that perspective, to be able to empower and enable his client base to garner the value they need. Bio Paul Gaudette ...
Nov 11, 2020•23 min
Nicole Schmidt and Chuck Mitchell are joining Sima today as panelists for a webinar on the impact of Covid 19 on middle-market firms. People have been impacted by Covid 19 all over the world. The purpose of this webinar is to provide context, perspective, and some key takeaways for executives to consider as they plan for the future beyond 2020. About Sima Sima Vasa is a Senior Advisor at Oberon Securities. She has over ten years of entrepreneurial experience, operator experience, running a busin...
Nov 05, 2020•41 min
We are excited to have Danielle Blugrind, a Senior Consumer Insights Manager at Roku, joining us today. In today’s episode, Danielle talks to us about her journey in the field of market research. She discusses the difference between the client and the supplier sides of the industry, company culture, creative solutions, pivoting, how traditional survey research compares with big data, and how things have changed in the research space since Covid. Danielle’s background Danielle has a background in...
Oct 27, 2020•27 min
We are honored to be part of the special video podcast series for IEX, which is part of the Data Gurus platform. We are focusing on something a little different today, related to trends in the market research or analytics space. We have Anthony Franklin, the CEO of Infotools, joining us from New Zealand to talk about data visualization, data processing, and his experience. Ant’s story Ant has a degree in social science. He married a New Zealander in London, thirty-two years ago, and they decided...
Oct 20, 2020•23 min
We’re excited to welcome Michael McCrary, the CEO, and Founder of PureSpectrum, as our guest for the podcast. Michael helps to solve business, economic, and even social issues with the valuable data and insights that he provides for companies and organizations. He is joining us today to talk about his choice to take the risk of becoming an entrepreneur, rather than remaining a wantrepreneur. Michael’s bio PureSpectrum is a modern-day sample automation platform based in Los Angeles, California. I...
Oct 13, 2020•26 min
Ravi Parmeswar is a VP at Johnson & Johnson. He's in charge of global strategic insights and analytics. He has significant experience in CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods). "The Chinese proverb 'May you live in interesting times.' we certainly are." - Ravi Parmeswar The Changing Face of Analytics Ravi's responsibilities take global strategic insights and analytics to drive insights from any source. It's a global responsibility across all of the consumer business at J&J. In the last 3 years, t...
Aug 13, 2020•16 min
We are delighted today to welcome Christa Chaffinch, the Qualitative Research Manager at Comcast Business, as our guest. Christa is joining us today to talk about quantitative research Christa’s bio Christa has a background in psychology, sociology, and new product development. She has a master’s degree in creative writing, as well as an MBA. About ten years ago, she started her career in market research, where she uncovers insights in customer experiences and journeys, product messaging and pos...
Jul 28, 2020•30 min
We’re delighted to have Mike Berland, the CEO, and founder of Decode_M, joining us on the show today. Mike is with us today to talk about data collection, analytics, and momentum. About Mike We currently live in a world that runs on data, and Mike holds the belief that everything is knowable, as long as you know where to look. Mike is the former chair of the Gotham Chapter of the New York City Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), and he is a Commonwealth Scholar from the University of Massachus...
Jul 14, 2020•13 min
Today, we’re excited to be interviewing Vivek Bhaskaran, who is the founder and CEO of QuestionPro. He's here today to share his experience bootstrapping QuestionPro. About Vivek Vivek grew up in India. After completing his primary education there, he left the country and moved to Russia, where he lived from 1995 to 1997. When he left Russia, he moved to the United States, and there, he obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Brigham Young University in Utah. Founding QuestionPro A...
Jul 08, 2020•28 min
We’re delighted to have Tony Bevilacqua joining us today! Tony is the CEO and Founder of Cognitive3D, which is based in Vancouver, Canada. About the previous company that Tony founded Cognitive3D is the second company that Tony has founded. His previous company was focused on revenue optimization, and it had a very heavy analytics back-end, so they made a lot of decisions which were based on collected data, and the company helped its clients build a better revenue optimization. With his first co...
Jun 30, 2020•26 min
Ben Smithee is the CEO of The Smithee Group, a digital marketing agency based in New York City. On this episode, he sits with Sima Vasa to talk about what they do, how they do it, and how millennial research has affected the marketing sphere. “I think there’s a new shift… marketing in the moment and not for the moment.” - Ben Smithee Ben Smithee - The Smithee Group’s Pedigree His full-service digital marketing agency focuses a lot on small-medium businesses but still serve large enterprise compa...
Jun 23, 2020•19 min
We’re very happy to welcome AJ Keirans, the Vice-President of Business Development at Disqo, as our guest for today! AJ started at Disqo three months ago. Joining them was a logical decision for him because of where he is currently at in his career, and he is very proud of the unique and special work that they are doing. Why Disqo is different The business and events industry is changing and there has been a lot of consolidation taking place within the industry recently. At Disqo, there are only...
Jun 09, 2020•17 min
Today, we’re excited to have Adam Breslawsky joining us! Adam is Managing Partner, and he’s also a member of Oberon’s management committee at Oberon Securities, which is a middle-market investment banking firm. Adam is an investment banker by trade. He grew up and gained his early experience in product groups like mergers and acquisitions, and underwriting high-yield bonds, at large investment banks. Having worked with companies across the industry spectrum, he finds the current environment to b...
Jun 03, 2020•28 min
We’re very happy to have Adam Jolley joining us today. Very soon, Adam will be starting with Survey Monkey, which will be a huge and exciting change for him. Adam’s career path up to now has been an interesting one. He started in sales, for a small EMI market research company that had only six employees. After ten years in sales with EMI, he went into leadership and became the president of the company. That was a great achievement for Adam and it allowed him to learn a lot about all the other pa...
May 26, 2020•34 min
Today, Jacqueline Rosales, the Chief Operating Officer of SoapboxSample, joins Sima to talk about market research, entrepreneurship, COVID-19 research, and cannabis. Jacqueline heads up multiple research divisions at the ISA Group, including SoapboxSample and icanmakeitbetter. SoapboxSample recently celebrated eight years. About three or four years ago, they made a strategic decision to acquire icanmakeitbetter because their focus was on digital agility and that could help Soapbox to stay flexib...
May 19, 2020•23 min
Dan Foreman joins Sima for today’s episode, to talk about his journey, as an entrepreneur, into market research. He is currently involved with the Zappy Store, Course 5i, Borderless Access, Dalia, Bakamo Social, Veylinx, MindProber, and Haystack. Dan consciously chose to join the market research industry when he was midway through university. He was doing a degree in psychology at the time, and he liked what he had seen in a presentation given at the university by someone from a market research ...
May 06, 2020•18 min
