Belgian startup Conveo is building the first AI-powered research coworker, delivering deep customer insights at scale with AI-powered video interviews. The company has raised $5.3 million in seed funding from Y Combinator, 6 Degrees Capital, Entourage Capital, Pitchdrive, and Syndicate One to fuel its aggressive expansion across the US and Europe.
CEO and co-founder Dieter De Mesmaeker told TFN, “Fresh out of Y Combinator’s 2024 summer batch, the startup secures $5 million in seed funding less than a year after its incorporation.”
The company plans to use the investment to accelerate product development and help the company further integrate AI-driven research into more organisations, making real-time customer insights more accessible than ever.
First-hand solution to a major problem
Conveo was founded by Dieter De Mesmaeker and Hendrik Van Hove in 2024. Dieter De Mesmaeker, CEO at Conveo, previously founded Datacamp.com which he built into one of the largest edTech platforms for over 13 years. He saw firsthand how a lack of customer research could lead to the wrong investments and missed opportunities
Hendrik Van Hove, Chief Product Officer at Conveo, started his career at McKinsey & Company where he worked on AI strategy studies for some of the largest companies in the world and also did a lot of market research for Due Diligence reports. Doing many surveys and hundreds of interviews himself, he experienced firsthand how traditional research was slow, manual, and expensive, making it difficult to gather insights at scale. Seeing how AI could finally bring change, they teamed up to build the Qualtrics of qualitative research.
In his previous scale-up, CEO and Co-founder Dieter De Mesmaeker saw how businesses made high-stakes decisions with insufficient research, leading to costly mistakes and missed opportunities. Co-founder Hendrik Van Hove, experienced firsthand at McKinsey how traditional research was slow, manual, and expensive, making it challenging to gather insights at scale. Seeing how AI could finally bring change, they teamed up to build the Qualtrics of qualitative research.
Hendrik Van Hove said: “In October 2023, while still at McKinsey, Hendrik applied for Y Combinator with just the idea. No name, no logo, no demo, no customers. A YC Group partner got back to me and encouraged me to continue working on the idea and apply again. That was enough for me to quit McKinsey and look for a co-founder. I got connected with Dieter via a mutual friend, we officially founded the company in April and applied again to YC and were accepted.”
Talking about what inspired this idea, Mesmaeker said” Consumer behaviour is evolving faster than ever, driven by AI, the Creator Economy, and the rise of Gen Z and Alpha. At the same time, shifting regulations and cultural changes are forcing brands to rethink how they engage with customers. Yet, most brands still rely on research methods that cannot keep up. Traditional qualitative research is slow and costly, and it often leads to companies not conducting any research or making decisions with incomplete knowledge, which often leads to missed opportunities and expensive mistakes.”
Conveo is building the AI-powered solution, to transform the growing $120 billion global market research industry.
An AI-powered research solution
As AI capabilities rapidly progress, Conveo is building the AI research ‘co-worker’ within organisations. Anyone, from research or marketing to the CEO, can ask Conveo a question about the customer. With perfect memory, Conveo can instantly surface previous research, integrate third-party data, or launch new research in real-time. This is a game changer for customer-centric organisations, lowering the barriers to gathering insights, driving better decisions, and ultimately creating better products, and services.
By automating the entire research process, from project set-up to interviewing and instant analysis, Conveo delivers real-time insights 100x faster than conventional methods, often spotting connections humans would overlook.
Already trusted by industry leaders like Unilever, Orange, Sanofi, and Google, Conveo’s AI research coworker runs hundreds of AI-moderated video interviews overnight, in any language, and at a fraction of the cost.
What makes Conveo stand out?
In terms of competition, traditional research platforms like Qualtrics, Surveymonkey, Inca and agencies like Ipsos & Kantar are the competitors to Conveo.
Detailing on what makes Conveo stand out, Mesmaeker stated: ”Conveo’s team has both deep technical and research expertise where most other companies lack one or the other. Our research efforts are led by Niels Schilleweart, Head of Research & Methodologies, PhD, Founder of the global insights agency Human8, and Professor of Marketing at the Vlerick Business School. This is absolutely critical to make our AI agent truly great at setting up research, running the interviews, and analysing them, all following cutting-edge research methods.”
“Combining video with our natural and personalised conversations allows us to generate insights that are much richer than other platforms. People get very engaged and comfortable with our interviewer, which leads to unfiltered sharing. That’s really the gold. 93% of people rate our interviewer 4/5 or higher. And for the researcher, every data point links back to a specific quote in the transcript. That’s really powerful to truly empathise with their customers.”
“Our customer tells us that setting up a great study that keeps people engaged and does not bias responses is actually very difficult and therefore slow. With our AI research coworker, you simply tell it what your business goals or questions are, and it will help you draft the perfect research guide. This saves days in going back & forth, but it especially ensures you do great interviews with relevant analysis. A typical study with Conveo is anywhere from 30 to 300 people or more with our interviews being typically 15 to 60 minutes. Include scheduling interviews, preparing, taking, and cleaning notes, and you’re saving anywhere from 3 days if everything is perfectly planned to 10 or more weeks,” he added.
Furthermore, he said, “Analysis is also extremely time-consuming, especially when you now interview many more people. Our AI thinks for a few minutes and you get the whole analysis as soon as you close the study. This easily saves days to weeks, and we often uncover relationships or insights human researchers would miss.”
Future of AI-driven consumer research
As AI continues to redefine industries, Conveo is leading the charge in revolutionising qualitative research. By enabling companies to understand their customers faster, deeper, and at scale, Conveo is setting a new standard for market research. In a world where consumer preferences shift overnight, having instant access to reliable insights is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity. For businesses looking to stay ahead, Conveo is an ultimate AI-powered research partner.
“We don’t see Conveo as a replacement for face-to-face interviews but as a new research method combining the best of qualitative and quantitative approaches. We can now execute projects that were previously impossible. Combining quantitative data with hearing customers in their own words is super powerful in aligning our teams,” said Pieter Van Paemel, Senior Insights Manager, Edgard & Cooper.
“Of course, we were skeptical about how our customers would react to AI interviews. But after thorough testing, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive,” said Wendy Francois, Market Researcher at Orange.
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