A Calgary-based startup is taking aim at the $90 billion market research industry with a hybrid approach that promises to deliver what traditional firms can't: speed, affordability, and fresh human insights. Cashew Research just won TechCrunch Disrupt's enterprise stage competition with technology that automates survey creation and analysis while still collecting real-world data from actual people, potentially democratizing market research for smaller brands that have been priced out of the market.
Cashew Research is betting that the $90 billion market research industry is ripe for disruption. The Calgary-based startup just proved its point by winning the enterprise stage pitch competition at TechCrunch Disrupt, showcasing an AI-powered platform that promises to solve one of the industry's biggest pain points: the impossible timeline demands from clients who want comprehensive research delivered in days, not weeks.
CEO Addy Graves knows this frustration intimately. With over a decade in market research, she watched clients repeatedly ask for the impossible - full research projects with real-world human data completed within tight deadlines. "That was definitely the aha moment," Graves told TechCrunch. "And it wasn't until the onset of AI that we were actually able to automate these processes that we use as researchers."
The company's approach sits in what Graves calls the middle ground between expensive traditional firms and unreliable AI-only solutions. Cashew Research uses AI to develop customized market research plans and surveys based on specific client needs - whether that's measuring brand recognition among target demographics or testing how marketing taglines resonate with potential customers. But here's the crucial difference: instead of relying purely on large language models that recycle existing internet data, Cashew sends these AI-generated surveys to real people and then uses AI again to analyze and summarize the findings.
"You can use an LLM to try to do deep research and get answers to your questions, or you could use a firm that's going to be really expensive," Graves explained to TechCrunch. "Now there's Cashew that exists in the middle. It creates custom, fresh data to answer your question instead of you just using an LLM that's surfacing the same recycled pool of data that everybody's finding on the internet."
This hybrid model isn't just about speed - it's about democratizing access to market research insights. Traditional market research firms price out small and medium-sized businesses that can't afford comprehensive studies. By automating the research design and analysis phases while maintaining the human data collection component, significantly reduces costs and timelines.
