Steve Jobs didn’t trust focus groups to inform product design. These AI entrepreneurs believe they solved the problem

In a 1998 interview, Steve Jobs was asked whether Apple had done consumer research when developing the iMac. At the time, Apple was trying to revive its fortunes after years of decline, and the iMac—with its radically different, translucent shell—was a bold gamble for a company fighting to regain its footing. The question was straightforward: How much of the product had been shaped by what consumers said they wanted? Jobs’ answer was more nuanced. Apple had plenty of research on its existing customers and watched industry trends closely, he said. But he was wary of using focus groups to design complex products. “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” he told Businessweek. 

The market research industry has evolved dramatically since then, embracing online panels, behavioral data, and AI. It is now possible to have thousands of conversations with customers at a fraction of the time and cost. But does having more customer insight actually lead to better products? 

The founders of Conveo, a two-year-old Belgian startup, believe the answer lies in using AI to identify patterns customers may not articulate themselves. That means looking across hundreds or thousands of video conversations for recurring frustrations, unmet needs, and emerging behaviors—and then giving product and marketing teams a way to act on them. 

“If you are doing a thousand interviews a month, you can start asking questions like: What is changing? What are people talking about? What are the emerging trends? What are the things that we don’t know that we don’t know?” says Conveo co-founder Hendrik Van Hove. “And then you can start using that data to inform your decision making on a continuous basis.”  

Van Hove came up with the original idea for Conveo while working........

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