Our Endless Curiosity: Unlocking the Huge Potential of ResTech

Episode Summary

Ever wondered what ResTech is all about? Does it aim to replace research services or satisfy the already existing needs of the market? Boy, do we have a guest for you!

Jeremy King joins our host Patrick Comer to discuss the tech in ResTech. He is the founder and CEO of Attest, a SaaS technology company that lets people do research. His goal is to make customer research simple, easy, and accessible. “It should be just as easy as surveying your existing customers. Why not? Why shouldn’t it be? You should be able to learn about your competitors’ customers.”

In this episode of the Through Your Looking Glass podcast, Jeremy and Patrick talk about the future of ResTech, its vast potential, and why research services and SaaS can coexist (even cooperate!). If you want to hear more, make sure you tune in to the latest episode.

Guest-At-A-Glance

Name: Jeremy King

What he does: Jeremy is the Founder and CEO of Attest, a SaaS technology company that makes consumer research easy and actionable.

Company: Attest

Key Quote: “If the demand is already there, the opportunity writes itself. And that’s the exciting thing about ResTech happening right now.”

Key Insights

• Surveying new customers should be as easy as surveying current customers. Learning about your existing customers is easy. You already have everything you need to conduct customer research. But what about the people that don’t know your brand even exists? They are the ones you need to understand in order to grow. Jeremy says surveying them should be as easy, and that’s what tech is here for. “There’s no reason they should both be different. They can both be easy. And that unlocks all sorts of exciting new things.”
• The power of SaaS is all about satisfying the already-existing needs of the market. As opposed to what some people think, ResTech is not here to change behaviors or replace the research industry. Brand buyers and B2C companies have always wanted to have more data and know more about new markets and demographics. Rather than creating new behaviors, SaaS is here to cater to the already-existing demands of the market. “And I think that’s the power of SaaS and new business models in it. It’s not necessarily about creating new demand is just satisfying things that didn’t exist before for reasons that should never have been that way.”
• Will SaaS ever replace research services? Jeremy doesn’t believe SaaS will replace the human touch and expertise that researchers bring to the table. Instead, it enables automation and consistency of tasks. The research industry can greatly benefit from tech implementation. “What SaaS makes possible is probably two groups of things. One is a completely different buying process for customers. […] The other thing is it brings in all sorts of new capital and technology into an industry.”

“We exist to give everyone confidence for every decision. And we do that by making consumer research ridiculously easy and open to anyone.“

Episode Highlights

Democratization of Research

Jeremy thinks ResTech is a much broader opportunity in the industry than it might appear. The power of software is that it can make the previously impossible possible. “My personal view is that if only we could make research, ResTech open to more people to do more things more often than the world of research, and the world of ResTech would be a much bigger one.” Patrick agrees and adds that Lucid is also about the democratization of questions and answers.

The Untapped Potential of ResTech to Grow

Our curiosity is endless. As soon as one question is answered, a new one arises. That’s why ResTech as an industry should be much more significant. “I love the research industry. I respect it very deeply, and it does amazing things. The thing is that there should be so many more amazing things that are done, and it’s limited by things like RFPs. It’s limited by things like existing methodologies, expectations, how projects are run. We need to change all of these things in order to justify all the demands that can exist. And that’s the opportunity that’s out there for ResTech.”

There Will Always Be a Need For Research Services

We will always need human expertise to guide us, so SaaS is not likely to replace research services. It will, however, make it efficient. Some tasks can be automated and replaced by software. Jeremy thinks it will help us achieve consistency. “The bigger opportunity in my mind is doing more things because of tech. And I think that’s a completely different category. For anyone who’s in a research services business, I think it’s time to think about becoming a true specialist and celebrating the human touches, the expertise, and the true value created by having a great research service or agency. Because I think the things that can be automated and standardized will go away.”

The Constant Need for a New Source of Capital

According to Jeremy, if you can create a large market and use a product that could serve it, that market attracts new investments. ”Bringing a new source of capital helps us take a giant leap forward. It does set the rules you need to play by. It’s not all free money, and go for it. We need to have different growth rates, different hiring, different people. People working in SaaS are extremely expensive because we’re not the only ones who are going after this whole software thing.”

Resources to Learn About SaaS

If someone’s new to the SaaS industry, how could they learn more about it? Jeremy has a few suggestions. “I love to read things from SaaStr, Jason Lemkin. He’s the ultimate high priest of SaaS. […] Silicon Valley sets great standards, London sets great standards for what investors look like. If you start to read what investors are looking like, that’s the rule book and the definitions, but what it takes to be an elite SaaS player. If you can learn those definitions and demands, then suddenly you have a good appreciation for the sport and the rules.

Two other great things. One is to read SaaS company filings and documents, particularly when they go public or even when they register and make releases. […] And then the last thing is to read original investor presentations from great SaaS companies. If you go back, you can look on tools like SlideShare and see the original pitch deck for the first investment round from Airbnb, the first investment round from CloudFlare, the first investment round from CrowdStrike from Service Now. You can read these, and you can see where the idea came from and how are they going to go about it.”