AskPeople — AI-Powered Customer Interview Platform
A startup founder needed to validate a business idea through 100+ customer interviews but couldn't afford a research team. An AI platform was built that conducts deep interviews, analyzes responses, and delivers actionable reports in days instead of months.
The Challenge
Validating a new business idea requires talking to real people. Not five or ten, but fifty to a hundred potential customers who can confirm whether the problem is real and the solution worth paying for. For an early-stage founder working with limited resources, this presented a serious obstacle. Hiring a research agency meant spending tens of thousands of euros and waiting months for results. Running interviews personally meant weeks of scheduling, conducting conversations, transcribing recordings, and somehow making sense of it all.
The founder needed a way to get research-grade customer insights without the research-grade budget or timeline.
The Solution
An AI-powered research platform called AskPeople.ai was built to solve exactly this problem. The platform works in three stages.
Research planning. The founder describes their business idea and target audience. The system generates a tailored interview plan with key questions and hypotheses to validate, ensuring every conversation drives toward actionable insights.
Intelligent conversations. Each respondent receives a unique link and engages in a natural dialogue with the AI. Unlike rigid surveys, the system follows up on answers, asks probing questions, and adapts the conversation based on responses. This produces the depth of a real interview at the speed of a form.
Automated analysis. After interviews are completed, the platform compiles findings, identifies patterns across all responses, and generates a visual report with charts and clear conclusions. The technology stack includes Next.js on the frontend, FastAPI for AI orchestration, Supabase for data and authentication, and Stripe for subscription payments.
The Result
What previously required months and a dedicated research team now takes days. The founder can validate business ideas with real customer feedback before committing significant investment. Responses are automatically structured into clear conclusions rather than raw opinions. The platform supports conversations in any language, adapting to each respondent automatically. Professional-grade research reports are generated without needing a single analyst on payroll. The platform turned customer research from an enterprise luxury into an accessible tool for any entrepreneur with an idea worth testing.