MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stunt to scal

📌 MAROKO133 Eksklusif ai: Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stu

Alfred Wahlforss was running out of options. His startup, Listen Labs, needed to hire over 100 engineers, but competing against Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million offers seemed impossible. So he spent $5,000 — a fifth of his marketing budget — on a billboard in San Francisco displaying what looked like gibberish: five strings of random numbers.

The numbers were actually AI tokens. Decoded, they led to a coding challenge: build an algorithm to act as a digital bouncer at Berghain, the Berlin nightclub famous for rejecting nearly everyone at the door. Within days, thousands attempted the puzzle. 430 cracked it. Some got hired. The winner flew to Berlin, all expenses paid.

That unconventional approach has now attracted $69 million in Series B funding, led by Ribbit Capital with participation from Evantic and existing investors Sequoia Capital, Conviction, and Pear VC. The round values Listen Labs at $500 million and brings its total capital to $100 million. In nine months since launch, the company has grown annualized revenue by 15x to eight figures and conducted over one million AI-powered interviews.

"When you obsess over customers, everything else follows," Wahlforss said in an interview with VentureBeat. "Teams that use Listen bring the customer into every decision, from marketing to product, and when the customer is delighted, everyone is."

Why traditional market research is broken, and what Listen Labs is building to fix it

Listen's AI researcher finds participants, conducts in-depth interviews, and delivers actionable insights in hours, not weeks. The platform replaces the traditional choice between quantitative surveys — which provide statistical precision but miss nuance—and qualitative interviews, which deliver depth but cannot scale.

Wahlforss explained the limitation of existing approaches: "Essentially surveys give you false precision because people end up answering the same question… You can't get the outliers. People are actually not honest on surveys." The alternative, one-on-one human interviews, "gives you a lot of depth. You can ask follow up questions. You can kind of double check if they actually know what they're talking about. And the problem is you can't scale that."

The platform works in four steps: users create a study with AI assistance, Listen recruits participants from its global network of 30 million people, an AI moderator conducts in-depth interviews with follow-up questions, and results are packaged into executive-ready reports including key themes, highlight reels, and slide decks.

What distinguishes Listen's approach is its use of open-ended video conversations rather than multiple-choice forms. "In a survey, you can kind of guess what you should answer, and you have four options," Wahlforss said. "Oh, they probably want me to buy high income. Let me click on that button versus an open ended response. It just generates much more honesty."

The dirty secret of the $140 billion market research industry: rampant fraud

Listen finds and qualifies the right participants in its global network of 30 million people. But building that panel required confronting what Wahlforss called "one of the most shocking things that we've learned when we entered this industry"—rampant fraud.

"Essentially, there's a financial transaction involved, which means there will be bad players," he explained. "We actually had some of the largest companies, some of them have billions in revenue, send us people who claim to be kind of enterprise buyers to our platform and our system immediately detected, like, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud."

The company built what it calls a "quality guard" that cross-references LinkedIn profiles with video responses to verify identity, checks consistency across how participants answer questions, and flags suspicious patterns. The result, according to Wahlforss: "People talk three times more. They're much more honest when they talk about sensitive topics like politics and mental health."

Emeritus, an online education company that uses Listen, reported that approximately 20% of survey responses previously fell into the fraudulent or low-quality category. With Listen, they reduced this to almost zero. "We did not have to replace any responses because of fraud or gibberish information," said Gabrielli Tiburi, Assistant Manager of Customer Insights at Emeritus.

How Microsoft, Sweetgreen, and Chubbies are using AI interviews to build better products

The speed advantage has proven central to Listen's pitch. Traditional customer research at Microsoft could take four to six weeks to generate insights. "By the time we get to them, either the decision has been made or we lose out on the opportunity to actually influence it," said Romani Patel, Senior Research Manager at Microsoft.

With Listen, Microsoft can now get insights in days, and in many cases, within hours.

The platform has already powered several high-profile initiatives. Microsoft used Listen Labs to collect global customer stories for its 50th anniversary celebration. "We wanted users to share how Copilot is empowering them to bring their best self forward," Patel said, "and we were able to collect those user video stories within a day." Traditionally, that kind of work would have taken six to eight weeks.

Simple Modern, an Oklahoma-based drinkware company, used Listen to test a new product concept. The process took about an hour to write questions, an hour to launch the study, and 2.5 hours to receive feedback from 120 people across the country. "We went from 'Should we even have this product?' to 'How should we launch it?'" said Chris Hoyle, the company's Chief Marketing Officer.

Chubbies, the shorts brand, achieved a 24x increase in youth research participation—growing from 5 to 120 participants — by using Listen to overcome the scheduling challenges of traditional focus groups with children. "There's school, sports, dinner, and homework," explained Lauren Neville, Director of Insights and Innovation. "I had to find a way to hear from them that fit into their schedules."

The company also discovered product issues through AI interviews that might have gone undetected otherwise. Wahlforss described how the AI "through conversations, realized there were like issues with the the kids short line, and decided to, like, interview hundreds of kids. And I understand that there were issues in the liner of the shorts and that they were, like, scratchy, quote, unquote, according to the people interviewed." The redesigned product became "a blockbuster hit."

The Jevons paradox explains why cheaper research creates more demand, not less

Listen Labs is entering a massive but fragmented market. Wahlforss cited research from Andreessen Horowitz estimating the market research ind…

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🔗 Sumber: venturebeat.com

📌 MAROKO133 Hot ai: MacBook body, iPhone power: $599 MacBook Neo features A18 Pro

Apple has introduced the MacBook Neo, a new entry-level laptop that reshapes the lower end of its lineup. With a starting price of $599, the device becomes the most affordable MacBook Apple has ever launched at retail.

Apple has previously offered lower prices through special retail deals.

For example, the 2020 M1 MacBook Air dropped to $699 during a long-running Walmart promotion. However, the MacBook Neo is the first model to debut officially at such a low price point.

The company appears to be targeting students, everyday users, and the education markets. Apple is also offering a $499 price for students and teachers, pushing the device closer to Chromebook territory.

Bright colors, light design

The MacBook Neo stands apart from other MacBooks with its vibrant color palette. Apple offers the device in Silver, Indigo, Blush, and Citrus.

These colors echo the playful designs of the early 2000s iBook G3 and resemble the vibrant finishes used on the modern iMac. In contrast, MacBook Air colors remain relatively muted.

Apple says the aluminum laptop weighs 2.7 pounds. The company has not revealed its thickness yet.

Despite the lower price, Apple did not scale back the display significantly. The laptop features a 2408 x 1506 resolution screen with brightness reaching up to 500 nits.

Apple claims the display is brighter and sharper than most laptops in the same price range.

The screen uses thicker bezels instead of the notch design found on MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models.

The laptop includes a 1080p webcam, side-firing speakers with Dolby Atmos, and a Touch ID sensor.

However, Touch ID only appears on the $699 configuration, which also upgrades storage to 512 GB.

iPhone chip inside

The MacBook Neo runs on Apple’s A18 Pro chip, the same processor used in the iPhone 16 Pro lineup. This marks a rare reversal of Apple’s chip strategy.

In recent years, Apple placed Mac-class chips inside iPads. Now, the company has placed an iPhone chip inside a MacBook.

Apple says the A18 Pro still delivers strong everyday performance.

The company claims it is up to 50 percent faster in daily browsing tasks than a leading PC laptop powered by Intel’s Core Ultra 5.

Apple based that comparison on the Speedometer benchmark, a browser-focused performance test.

Battery life reaches up to 16 hours, according to Apple. That figure trails the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

Still, the laptop should handle common tasks comfortably. Apple positions the machine for web browsing, document editing, and general productivity.

Cost-cutting tradeoffs

To reach the aggressive price, Apple made several compromises.

The MacBook Neo uses a mechanical multi-touch trackpad instead of Apple’s haptic trackpad system. The keyboard also lacks backlighting.

Port options remain limited. The laptop includes two USB-C ports and a headphone jack placed near the front speakers.

Unlike the MacBook Air, the device does not include MagSafe charging. That means users must charge through one of the USB-C ports.

The A18 Pro chip also limits external display support. The laptop can connect to only one external monitor.

Memory may be the biggest limitation. Apple lists only 8 GB of unified memory with no upgrade option.

Storage choices include 256 GB or 512 GB, with the larger option costing $100 more.

Apple unveiled the MacBook Neo just one day after refreshing the MacBook Air.

The updated Air now starts with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage for $1,099.

That pricing gap leaves the Neo as Apple’s most accessible laptop for new Mac users.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com