Outset

Outset is a San Francisco-based company of about 30 people that builds an AI-moderated qualitative research platform. The team operates at speed and ships constantly, working from the premise that artificial intelligence should deepen human understanding rather than replace it - a belief that extends to the company's view that research deserves a seat at the table. Backers include Y Combinator, 8VC, Radical Ventures and M12, Microsoft's venture arm.

Customers include Microsoft, Nestle, Uber and Hubspot, alongside firms in technology, consumer goods, mobility, marketing software, market research and brand strategy. Enterprises are adopting AI-moderated research as a new standard, and the company reports 8x year-over-year growth.

The product is a platform for conducting in-depth qualitative interviews at scale. Its AI interviewer leads natural, human-like conversations, asks follow-up questions and adapts to responses in real time. Findings are then synthesised automatically into actionable insights, aimed at getting to the “why” behind the “what”. Teams have run 100 interviews in days, and a single researcher has conducted 75 interviews overnight.

Technical work spans AI conversational agents and moderation, natural language understanding, real-time adaptive dialogue, generative AI and automated synthesis of qualitative research. Use cases include shaping product roadmaps, exploring new markets and evaluating brand positioning.