Building Got Easy. This Startup Solves What to Build | Alfred Wahlforss, Listen Labs
Building Got Easy. This Startup Solves What to Build | Alfred Wahlforss, Listen Labs  
Podcast: The Peel with Turner Novak
Published On: Sun May 24 2026
Description: Alfred Wallforss is the Co-founder of Listen Labs, the AI customer research company.Companies like Microsoft use Listen to run AI-powered customer interviews, and Alfred talks about how they first landed them as a customer at a pitch competition.We talk why startups should pursue enterprise customers early on, why 85% of survey answers are random clicks, how AI is changing the $140B market research industry, leveraging VC’s for customer intros, how to stand out when recruiting as a startup, and hiring for obsession.Thank you to Numeral, Flex, and Amplitude for supporting this episodeNumeral: The end-to-end platform for sales tax and compliance https://www.numeral.comFlex: Get premium banking and a net 60 day credit card at 0% APY https://home.flex.one/referral/bananacapitalAmplitude: AI analytics, all you have to do is ask https://www.amplitude.comTimestamps:(0:14) Listen: AI customer research tool(7:30) Fraud is a big problem in customer research(9:06) The $140B customer survey industry(12:08) Why running customer surveys is so hard(16:03) AGI will never replace humans(18:25) Surveys vs interviews(21:13) Importance of emotion in data collection(22:54) Using AI interviews to get product feedback(26:15) Building digital twins creates better data(32:22) Outperforming generic AI tools(34:17) Sweetgreen’s Max Protein Bowl(36:09) Jevon’s Paradox in customer research(40:37) Quantitative vs qualitative(42:38) Landing Microsoft as an early customer(44:50) Targeting enterprise customers from day 1(48:05) Building a VC customer intro leaderboard(51:53) Recruiting with billboard games(57:20) Hiring for obsession(1:02:07) Alfred’s favorite movies(1:03:53) Listen’s custom agent harness(1:06:24) Velocity Fellowship for Swedes moving to SF(1:08:34) Growing up with entrepreneurial older brother(1:09:46) No shoes in the officeReferencedTry Listen: https://listenlabs.ai/Careers at Listen: https://listenlabs.ai/careersSweetgreen protein bowls: https://listenlabs.ai/case-studies/sweetgreenToni Erdmann: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4048272/Episode with Erik @ Modal: https://www.thespl.it/p/building-ai-native-infrastructureFollow AlfredTwitter: https://x.com/itsalfredwLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wahlforssFollow TurnerTwitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovakLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovakSubscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/