After leaving Runkeeper in 2014 as the company's vice president of user experience, Tom Boates is in startup territory again with the launch of his new startup called Brilliant.
Boates officially launched Brilliant last week as a new way to provide app developers faster and better customer feedback through an in-app surveying tool for measuring an app's net promoter score. We recently asked Boates, who was at Runkeeper (acquired by ASICS this year) for five years, about how he came up with the idea and what his next steps are.
Dylan Martin: How did you come up with the idea for Brilliant?
TB: I have done (and still do) some design consulting under the business name of Brilliant By Design, which is a related but ultimately separate venture. It has certainly helped me get a clearer picture of how common of a problem customer development is across companies of all sizes and in all industries.
I got the idea for Brilliant while working at Runkeeper when I saw just how many questions we had about our customers behaviors and how resource intensive it was to get timely and reliable answers. While doing customer development on how other companies felt about the problem and how they were solving it I found that everyone I talked to agreed on how valuable research is, but there were two common themes for why they rarely got to it:
Self-service research tools like SurveyMonkey make it really easy to send out surveys, but unless you know how to craft a survey (what to ask, who to ask, when to ask it, what answer options to provide, etc.) it’s hard to trust the results, making it a waste of time.
Hiring someone (outside contractor, research firm, full-time employee) to ensure you get accurate results is cost prohibitive for all but the biggest companies with the deepest pockets and longest development cycles.
Since speed has become the most important factor for many product teams, research often gets pushed to the side (or worse, done poorly and inaccurately) but not because it’s not valuable. It’s because it’s still too costly (both in time and money). I felt like there had to be an opportunity there to provide near instant results that were also trustworthy, and Brilliant is my attempt at solving that.
NPS (net promoter score) is the first survey type we decided to offer because we believe it is the most impactful and useful out of all the other survey types we considered. Over time, we hope to add more survey types and open things up for more custom surveys, while still ensuring accurate results every step of the way.
Introducing Brilliant from Brilliant on Vimeo.
DM: Do you have any customers yet?
TB: We have worked with a handful of paying customers (most notably Runkeeper) during our private beta period gathering feedback and working out any kinks. For the partners who were already collecting NPS data, they love that all of their data is collected in a single dashboard and that we can prompt the happiest customers to rate the app in the app stores (thus boosting their rankings). For the partners who are new to collecting NPS they have loved how quick and simple the NPS survey type is compared to other customer feedback surveys they have tried, as well as how actionable the data we collect is.
DM: What is the goal of Brilliant?
TB: The ultimate goal is to develop a shared understanding of human behavior. In business, but also in life, I believe it is crucial to try and see the world as it really is instead of only focusing on our individual interpretation. Human beings have all kinds of cognitive biases that skew how we see things and this selective vision often causes us to see opportunity where there is none, or coincidence as proof of future success. Tons of research has been done over the years to better understand human behavior but unfortunately it is extremely scattered and unreliable. I want to not only continue developing that understanding, but make sure it is collected in a central place and shared with as many people as possible.
DM: Do you plan to raise funding at some point? Have you spoken to any investors yet?
TB: No current plans to raise funding, but I’m not against considering it if it was the right decision for the business. I have spoken to investors but only for feedback and advice and not for possible investment.
DM: Are there any alternatives to what you're providing? If so, what makes this better?
TB: There are a few alternatives focused exclusively on NPS collection and many others on more broad surveys. Main differentiators beyond the 3 reasons it is designed for accuracy:
Integrated Surveys. Many competitors provide their own destination sites to send people to or conduct surveys through email which have low response rates. Our surveys are integrated directly into the app/website for the best response rates and contextual relevance.
Brilliant is what I would call an “Opinionated Research Service.” Based on decades of best practices in the research field as well as our own personal experiences, we believe there are certain ways research should be conducted and we aim to provide a service that has the necessary guardrails in place so that novices don’t have to worry about getting answers they can’t trust from a self-service research tool.
DM: What are your next steps for Brilliant?
TB: Grow the user base and continue talking with companies who have experienced similar pain when it comes to conducting research so I can better understand what the needs are and provide the best solutions for them.
This interview has been lightly edited.
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