Jeremy Weisz 15:25
And then it connects to, tell me a little bit, maybe get a little technical for a second, it connects to a database. So like someone would from a self-service, they’d go in, upload a bunch of maybe product design images, and that just connects to a database. So do they get to choose how many responses or how does it work on the back end, then for the company?
Ian Ash 15:48
Absolutely. So yeah, they’ll go in, and they’ll set up their study. And they can use a template, or they can build it from scratch. And they can have it serviced, or they can do it on their own. And then they would go to an audience and create an audience. And we connect programmatically to a company called Lucid, or they were bought by cents, or not the stories that are said, but whatever. And so that’s sort of like programmatic bidding on respondents to take your survey. So it goes out to, I think it’s the total, the total breadth of people who are, who are connected to that programmatic database are around 30 million people globally. So we can, you know, we can run studies in five, six countries at the same time, as many languages. And that’ll all be fulfilled, usually within a night. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 16:41
So the companies that should be using this platform, obviously, I could see CPG companies, what are other types of companies that tend to use your platform?
Ian Ash 16:53
So banking, insurance, we’ve done a lot with online retailers. Yeah, basically, it’s anybody who has anything they want to test as far as an innovation. So it doesn’t have to be either a new product, it could be like a series of benefits that I want to offer on a new credit card. It could be I want to have a bunch of logos, I want to test for a new to redo my logo, I want to have a bunch of claims around a service I want to test. Those would be more frequent use cases. Again, though, it could be anything that you can imagine you do in like Survey Monkey, you could also do an upside but where we have the real advantages in testing and understand the impact of adding new things.
Jeremy Weisz 17:45
Yeah, I kind of like, picture Tinder for your products or something?
Ian Ash 17:52
Yes, exactly. Exactly. That’s where that’s obviously where the idea came from.
Jeremy Weisz 17:56
Love it. Yeah. So talk about the study that you did, and why you did it. And if you want to, you can feel free to share your screen, because you just did this recently. So you’re kind of going to do, analyzing real time a little bit. So you haven’t really totally processed the data in your mind. But just talk about the Upsiide piece that you did.
Ian Ash 18:22
Sure. Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. And this just sort of came out of you and I doing a really quick debrief before the podcast started and saying, is there anything else interesting that your audience is interested? And I said, well, I did a study last night. Our own accord on our own dime, which is easy to do. And you have your own platform and access to millions of respondents, you can run studies, anytime you want. And I just ran it last night, and the data came back this morning. And so what I’ll do really quickly, first…
Jeremy Weisz 18:57
What motivated you to run this talk a little about what you ran. But why did you decide to run this survey?
Ian Ash 19:05
I just, I felt like there was questions that were not being answered, related to this idea of corporations taking stances on social issues. And I’m actually slightly nervous about talking with you right now, because I didn’t play this with my partners. I don’t know if anybody’s gonna get mad at me. And I feel like it’s a bit of a slightly taboo subject, but I said, I’m going to do it in as unbiased way as possible.
Jeremy Weisz 19:35
That’s the thing. It’s like your gather. This is not necessarily this isn’t your opinion. You’re gathering data here. So it’s like, you’re not even saying, here’s my opinion on the subject. And that’s kind of the beauty of your platform. It’s not about opinion anymore. It’s about how do you support a decision with data?
Ian Ash 19:53
Right. I mean, the nice part was at the end of the survey, I said, does anybody have anything else they want to add? And I actually got quite a few thank you for the survey from both people who consider themselves Republican Democrat. So the truth is people like to have their opinions heard, as long as the survey is done in a truly unbiased manner. So I just, I’ll just quickly show you the interface just so you get a sense of what the people last night would have been. Or yesterday, I’m in the UK. So it would have been like, sort of new. And I guess yesterday that we started this, this survey is about how and when companies or brands should or should not take a stance on social issues. And I start with right away, do they feel like they’re more Republican? Do they feel like they’re more Democrat? Did they feel like they’re in the middle? And then interestingly, do they feel that they’re politically homeless? And then right away, have you ever boycotted a brand? Because of something that company brand did said or stood for?
Jeremy Weisz 20:52
The previous one, the first one with the Democrat or Republican? Or, you know, did you come up with those questions? Or I did in this case, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting question. Like, do you feel politically homeless? Like, that’s an interesting maybe some people wouldn’t even think to put that as an option. Right?
Ian Ash 21:13
I mean, the truth is, okay, so this is, in any survey design there, no matter how hard you try to not have a bias, you can’t help it, you can’t help yourself that you have some sort of bias, and I firmly feel that I land here.
Jeremy Weisz 21:29
You relate to that one?
Ian Ash 21:31
I really relate to that. And so for me, that was like, okay, well, I wish that people put that in surveys, because I kind of feel like I don’t subscribe to anyone. Or all issues from one camp, I just don’t I just think it’s, there’s too many things are completely different. And interestingly, here, I think you pretty much get the divide that you kind of expected sort of aligns with what I’ve been seeing recently in polls in terms of like, Republican leaning Republican versus leaning Democrat or Democrat. But what you don’t see in those polls is the 33% of people are, it’s almost 34% of people say either I feel politically homeless, or I’m in the middle. And so a third of the population, and this is 1,000 Americans. So this is a good sample. For 30 people kind of say, I don’t, I don’t know where I’d say, the world has become too divided. And I kind of liked being able to go to Thanksgiving and not get in a fight.
Jeremy Weisz 22:35
That’s the fun of Thanksgiving, come on.
Ian Ash 22:39
So this, to me is really fascinating. And then I said, have you ever boycotted, or stopped by your brand, because of something that company brand did or said or sit for 45% of people said that they had like that’s a really high number. And I don’t know if people realize the risk, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t stand for something. That’s not for me to decide. But I do think the data we’ve seen, has underplayed the risk profile of that behavior. And I think there was also a belief that this was solely the purview of one side of the political spectrum. And if I filter this data, so one of the cool things you can do Upsiide is you can go in and take any question that was asked in the survey, and filter it. And so let’s say we think, okay, well, I think this is mostly going to be a Democrat behavior. And if I say okay, I lean Republican, or I am Republican, 48% of them say they have boycotted something. So it’s not just one side of the aisle.
Jeremy Weisz 23:58
Yeah, you can see overall, how many boycotted and then you can kind of segment it based on whatever the survey results were if someone leaned if someone was Republican if someone lean Democrat was Democrat, right.
Ian Ash 24:11
And I could also say, what about the people who are in the middle or homeless, which I think it’s very much less of them. The surprise, if I don’t know how I feel about subjects, then I’m less likely to take action, but still 36%. And so why I think 36% is an important number, even among those people who sit in the middle, is because if I go down here, and I asked, Have you ever. So that’s people who stopped buying something? Because they didn’t like a stance. If I say have you ever specifically bought a product? Because they said something you liked about a shoe? That’s only 31% now 31% still a lot. But my point is, it’s not like one stance is gonna get that unit, like, I’m against murder. Do you know what I mean? Like, everyone is uniformly, I guess against the concept. Everyone can agree I hopefully, the murder is bad. I’m anti murder. Or even let’s make it even more true. I’m anti serial killer. I’m against serial killers. If we knew that everybody who said you agree with that would buy it and nobody would boycott it. Okay, that’s good. You’ve got a winning social issue. But what we’re seeing is that there’s such a divide in terms of the percentage of people who are one party or the other. That I don’t know if there is such a thing. I mean, with the exception of maybe being anti-serial, we hope.
Jeremy Weisz 25:47
So some of the questions that you asked in the survey.
Ian Ash 25:53
What brands have they specifically bought? So we actually asked some specific like, you said you did, what’s one you bought? Because they said, I think this is supposed to be Nike, people don’t, Nike, I love to wear the shoes, but they’re not really saying this specific issue here. But do you think that every company or brand needs to or should expand their stance on social issues? And so again, we see the similar divide with about 70% of people saying, no, at least some brands or companies should just stay out socially. And I think this is completely antithetical to what we see in magazine after magazine, like, you know, HBR, Forbes, they’ll come out and they’ll say, you need to take a stand. I think we’re getting to a world where a lot of people are saying, well, not every brand is based on margin margarine…
Jeremy Weisz 26:50
It’s a good question. I mean, this stuff comes out in the media. Do brands, should brands take a stance? Right? That’s the question. Right? Right. And they probably have an advisor, I imagine a PR adviser telling them one way or the other, and then what to say.
Ian Ash 27:11
Right, and I was reading an article just this morning, trying to get some background on this. And it said, the majority of CEOs actually self-identify as Republican. But the majority of companies are seeing that are the causes they support potential students. So they’re dealing with our democratic, or Democrat, I should say, and many of the things that they’re dealing with it like, even internally, they have struggles. And I just don’t know, if it’s as clear cut, as we’ve sort of pretended that it is that you should just always take a stand. I don’t know if you should. And if you don’t know if you should, then maybe you shouldn’t, because you don’t even know if you standpoint, I just don’t think that the data is as clear cut as the story has been made it to be that everyone should. And even here, like if I now obviously, this is going to change. Again, if I let’s just look at Democrats here. That number does go up. Right. So Democrats, people who lean Democrat, almost 40% of them feel that every branch thinks they’re still the minority that are still over 60% of them saying that.
Jeremy Weisz 27:11
They want to know where people stand? Pretty much. Yes, these particular people.
Ian Ash 28:26
Yeah. Yeah. And why? And the good thing about open ends and Upsiide, we can do all these, the regular stuff, like, word clouds, but we can also do keywords, and we can look through positive negative sentiment around those keywords and begin to see what are people saying?
Jeremy Weisz 28:49
So, companies will use this in their messaging or take it out of their messaging, according to what they find here.
Ian Ash 28:56
Oh, yeah. I mean, this is obviously a lot easier to interpret when it’s just like, do you like this new version of this box of pasta? Right? Like, we just did that. Just recently, there was a study we just did. Why do you like this box of pasta? Do you dislike about the box of pasta, and then you get keywords, or No, I don’t like the color, I don’t like the window, whatever it happens to be. That it’s very clear. In this case, we’re looking at a little bit more nuance, because this is just, a sort of a more general study. When you refuse to buy a brand, so it’s one thing to say should everybody stand for something it’s another thing you say, would you actually not buy something if they didn’t take a stand? And now that number goes from before we’re saying let’s say but at 30% of people said everybody should, but the percentage of people who then actually we you drop another 6% if you say when you actually, basically boycott a brand for not takings. Now you’re down to now you’re down at 24%.
Jeremy Weisz 30:07
That’s still higher than I would have expected. Personally.
Ian Ash 30:10
I think it’s, well, I think there’s two things going on. I mean, one is its stated versus actual behavior. So I mean, yeah, yeah. People tend to overstate things that they’ll do like, every year, I say, I’m going to drink more water and drink less alcohol. And every year I drink way too much alcohol the second day of January. But I think it’s that, but it’s also compounded by the fact that if you read the stories in the media, you would assume this number would be significantly higher. Because the advice is always you must take a stand, no one gets to be in the middle. Nobody gets the fence done anymore. I just don’t think that the data supports that argument. Think you can, I’m not saying you should, I’m just saying you can, right. Yeah. Here’s that swiping exercise. So this is a good illustration of that. So the way that I let me go. So I basically said, if you feel positively about this brand, swipe right. If you feel negatively about the brand, swipe left. And then when you’ve been shown a couple of brands that you feel positively about, then I want you to say which of those two do you feel more positively? So a very simple like brand affinity that’s not the exact brand use was more concise than that. But it’s a basic measure of brand affinity. And you have to also consider the context in which this happened. And so I just wanted to understand how do people feel about some of these the biggest, most well-known brands, and then we get this idea score, which is a combination of how many times people swipe right, plus how many times people chose it, and head to head. And we ended up with this composite score that we have a whole white paper around says that’s predictive of when it comes to choice, predictive market share, in this case, it’s the affinity and we can begin to say, okay, so this is how much affinity I have towards these brands. How much would that really change based on political affiliation? Like, you would say, okay, well, if, if some of these brands are seen as more left, more, right or more left with something as simple as political affiliation have a major impact on that. And so, we can see, for instance, that if I say, if I look at those people who lean more, right, Chick-fil-A, the Filter group is the darker bar. Chick-fil-A suddenly jumps up to being the second most liked brand. Yeah, because it’s highly right. Yeah, exactly. Least in their perception. Yeah. And then some Twitter does a little better, or X, whatever we want to call it, like, does worse. I mean, it’s kind of what you would potentially expect. And then there’s some brands that just sort of barely move. Right.
Jeremy Weisz 33:33
It’s really interesting. I mean, I guess, um, you know, companies can use this if like, let’s say they find Republicans, whoever Tesla is Republicans all large percent of you Tesla, then they could start marketing to more Republican lists or something like that.
Ian Ash 33:52
That’s one way to look at it. But I think, yes, I think absolutely, you could lean into it, or you could say, so here I asked the question right out, I said for each of the brands, please indicate if you think they’re more Republican or Democrat, or in the middle, meaning they have no political leanings. And so the first thing I want to do here is just sort on Republicans so those brands that we’re seeing most affiliated with Republicans were Chick-fil-A, ex-Tesla all of this is because of Elon Musk obviously. Then foreign motor car motor company I think that’s the sort of Built Ford Tough this sort of their positioning is sort of more rugged hard work, rugged blue collar, the Home Depot, right then the banks and then if we go all the way to the other extreme if we say more democratic fight if I filter on that, or sort on that. This I did find a little surprising. So the company seemed most skewing left is actually Disney more than even online and and the third highest is actually Starbucks. And then when I looked back at the people who said they were boycotting a company, if I filter that on Democrats, a lot of them are boycotting Starbucks. So they’ve really got themselves in a catch-22 here, which is that they’re seen as leaning one way, but they’re not agreeing with everything that that side potentially believes in. And now they’re caught in the middle with no things. Yeah. Right. And that’s really dangerous. So I guess what I’m saying is, it’s, again, this my interpretation, the data is here to speak for itself. But if you know you lean one way or the other, that’s fine. I think where you run into danger is, here we see Bud Light now is seen as being the second most left brand of the 20 brands I selected here. Free, the controversy would have seen probably is extremely right wing right now seen as extremely left wing, and you get caught in the middle within any doubt. And so I think the same thing might, theoretically, Starbucks is in danger of that same outcome.
Jeremy Weisz 36:16
Things can shift. Right? I mean, things can shift fast with social media as well.
Ian Ash 36:22
Yeah, I think it’s a dangerous game. I’m not, like I said, I see myself as politically homeless, I don’t want to take I’m not betting on any worse in this game. I’m just saying, from a strictly brand management fiscal responsibility point of view, I think the argument that there’s no risk involved is spurious.
Jeremy Weisz 36:51
Yeah, it’s super interesting. No, thanks for sharing that. And just how Upsiide works, but how you can collect data and make decisions is really interesting. So, I’m curious, we talked about the evolution of the service from the agency side of the SaaS side, I’d love to hear a little bit about the evolution of the team. Right, how it started, and now you have a large staff.
Ian Ash 37:20
Yeah, I think as we grew, particularly, as we grew the SaaS side of the business, there’s so much to learn, moving right away we were competing with SaaS companies had started to SaaS. And so vision criticals, and this appies, and a bunch of other companies. And so they were already set up to be in the traditional SaaS model, right, they had, like, product managers, and design and developers, and then they had Customer Success and Support and in sales, and our model is different. And so we kind of have to partly staff up some of those functions, that would be more traditionally SaaS. And then also find hybrid ways of delivering some of the other services in value. Which is tricky, because there’s no known model for it. I mean, people have made arguments that there’s certain companies that we can use as models, but even the ones that they say, often don’t seem to have it all. So whereas the SaaS companies seem to have really figured it, like, that’s how they’re able to scale to like, billion plus dollars so quickly is because it’s like, they follow this playbook of how you structure the company, these are the roles that people play. And we just sell as much as we can. And so we have definitely had to step up. So, Frank Burn leads the tech side of our company. And he did a fantastic job of growing a dev team from zero. And using methodologies like shape up to drive our cycle so that we can be really quick and agile on our development. I mean, just so much to learn everything from how do you build your own product? How do you price your own product? How do you sell it? How do you set up a sales team that’s very different from a sales team for selling consulting services? How do you set up a support team? How do you set up a support desk? How do you get a ticketing system working? None of those things apply to consultants. So it was about growing a bunch of new functions, in addition to figuring out how to build software and scale software. It wasn’t easy. Yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 39:54
Not easy at all. I’m wondering how Private Equity changed your company and your role?
Ian Ash 40:03
Well, so I’ve got a year and a half. I think the private equity, it can be challenging, but challenging in a really good way, which is that they tend to be very metrics-focused. They really hold you accountable on those metrics, in a way that when you’re running the company yourself, and you’re not beholden to a board of directors, or to private equity firm shareholders, you don’t do. And so that’s not to say it’s not without some difficulty, because you want to be able to say, oh, well, I just thought this was a good idea. And that’s why private equity. Why do you think it’s a good idea? What’s your proof? What research have you done?
Jeremy Weisz 41:01
Luckily, research based industries here probably used to it more than most.
Ian Ash 41:05
A little bit, but you still make quick decisions and stuff if you need to, if you’re an agile company, and it’s thankfully, and I’m not just sucking up here, because I guess that’s something people would be apt to do, but I’m not. I mean, we chose carefully the private equity partner that we went with and Behringer was Canadian based, and the founders had like varied backgrounds. They weren’t just finance guys, they’d also like run agencies. And so they really understand the strategic side of things as well as just like the dollars and cents. So it wasn’t just an exercise of like, they bought us then it was like, let’s just cut to the bottom line. It was like, Okay, what’s your strategy? Where do you think the growth is coming from? How is it gonna come from there, and challenging us in a good way? So I think it’s just added a lot more structure and rigor to the way that we’re running the company, which is, I think, a good way to, if you’re growing, and particularly if you’re growing in an environment that’s getting more challenging by the month. It’s good to have that rigor.
Jeremy Weisz 42:16
Ian first of all, thank you for sharing your journey. Your knowledge is fascinating, what you do Dig Insights, and also Upsiide. My last question is just some of your favorite resources. It could be books, it could be maybe mentors that have helped you. What are some of your favorite resources that you’ve learned throughout the years?
Ian Ash 42:45
Oh, I jump around a lot. And I follow a few people on LinkedIn that I really think are really smart. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of stuff that Jason Lumpkin writes from Sastre, I think he’s really dialed in, he understands what’s going on in SaaS, and he understands what strategies are working or not working. So I think, lately, I’ve been just reading a ton of his stuff, including a book that he read wrote, which was I think it was From Impossible to Probable or…
Jeremy Weisz 43:29
Yeah, I think he was the one he sold EchoSign to Adobe or something like that.
Ian Ash 43:33
Yeah. And he sits on the board. He was sitting on the board of HubSpot. Yeah and he runs faster, which is that giant conference.
Jeremy Weisz 43:43
So yeah, From Impossible to Inevitable.
Ian Ash 43:48
That’s what it is. Yeah. So, I read that book a while ago. Yeah, so I’ve been taking a lot from him lately. I jump around, I get onto a and I just sort of read everything that person’s written and then I move on to us. I mean, there was a time when I was following Gary Vee and I just got tired of that and it kind of moves around…
Jeremy Weisz 44:16
You’re in like, SaaS, like you’re just deep in SaaS right now.
Ian Ash 44:23
I’m deep in SaaS right. Yeah. Deep in what he has to say yeah.
Jeremy Weisz 44:28
Cool. First of all, I want to be the first one to thank you. Everyone should check out your website. Check out Dig Insights, we saw the screen obviously with upside and more episodes of the podcast and Ian, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
Ian Ash 44:42
Thanks so much, Dr. Weisz, thanks.
