The Founders’ Story Behind Behavix:
Democratizing Behavioral Data
Helsinki, September 2, 2024:
I wanted to write this post on behalf of all the co-founders (more about them later this fall), to shed some light on our new mission.
With my previous journeys with Unity Technologies, Rovio/Hatch Entertainment, Verto Analytics and DISQO, I had witnessed firsthand the challenges different product, marketing and advertising teams face to better understand their target audiences and their online behavior. The amount of waste that this lack of understanding leads to for every team, is often quite significant and sometimes fatal, especially in the startup world.
On one fine sunny day in the summer of 2023, I was in my greenhouse tasting different hot peppers trying to assess which one sat higher in the Scoville scale. In that self-inflicted painful moment, my brain got flooded with some interesting ideas which screamed for validation - all those endorphins and dopamine!
From that day forward, I started pitching these wild ideas about solving these problems with behavioral data to my soon-to-be co-founders, advisors, and investors. After countless coffee-fueled heated debates and brainstorming sessions, it was obvious—we were crazy enough to think we could tackle these challenges, so why not give it
a shot? My fellow espresso aficionado and co-founder, Hannu Verkasalo, and I decided to bring Behavix to life—a company that would not just participate in the market but fundamentally transform it. With our vision and mission crystal clear, it was surprisingly easy to persuade the rest of my fellow co-founders to join me on this intriguing adventure of launching a behavioral data startup, even in the midst of a gloomy economic climate.
The founding of Behavix was not merely the next step in our careers but a mission to solve critical problems that have plagued the market research industry for years. We have witnessed the limitations and the untapped potential with behavioral data - more specifically the opportunities with the novel behavioral data-as-as-service business model, tapping into the ongoing movement around the ResTech (Research Technology) movement.
The Problem:
A Broken System in Need of Disruption
The market research industry, for all its impressive value, has been a bit like a dinosaur stuck in the tar pits—slow to evolve.
Traditional methods like surveys, focus groups, and interviews were once the cool kids on the block, but now they’re struggling to keep up in a world that craves real-time, objective and deep data. These legacy methods are full of holes—riddled with inaccuracies, biases, and they barely scratch the surface. Even with fancy BI tools, we’re still stuck in the shallow end, unable to get a complete view of consumer behavior and decisions.
What do we think of insights built with just opinion data? They’re often as reliable as your friend’s memory after a wild night out—full of inaccuracies and biases with a good dose of fraud. Plus, they can’t provide the continuous, real-time data we need for next-gen platforms powered with AI and ML.
I would appreciate some HELP here!
This is exactly where Behavix comes in—we’re here to shake things up and bring a fresh,
real-time approach to understanding consumer behavior.
The Birth of Behavix:
A Journey Fueled by Industry Demand
SPREADSHEET?
After over a hundred meetings with market research panel companies, app developers, and data buyers in 2023, we figured, "Why not start Behavix and make life a little easier for everyone?"
All these conversations had a common theme: everyone was hungry for better quality data—like, starving! Panel companies are stuck in the past, still clinging to their ancient scrolls of surveys. App developers are basically trying to read minds to figure out their users. And, what about data buyers? They are begging for some high-quality, real-time clickstream data to power their businesses.
For the Behavix team, this feedback was like finding a treasure map. The writing on the wall was clear: the industry was imploring us for a shake-up!
Behavix isn’t just another data company; we’re born to make data collection transparent, ethical, and actually useful! Our tagline, “Indexing Human Behavior” says it all—our mission is to turn raw signals into real-time business decisions faster than you can say, “Where’s my data?!”
Vision and Mission:
A Commitment to Ethical, Transparent, and Actionable Data
At Behavix, our vision is 20/20:
To empower businesses to make actionable decisions from ethical and transparent behavioral data
Our vision is deeply rooted in the belief that businesses deserve better, more accurate data that truly reflects consumer behavior in a real-time, scalable, and objective manner.
Our mission, therefore, is to provide innovative solutions for collecting and processing consumer behavioral data with complete consumer opt-in. We will be a neutral and independent platform that respects privacy and delivers high-quality data in an easy-to-use format, helping companies improve their business through a behavioral data-as-a-service model.
That day, for no particular very good
reasons, we decided to go for a little run!
Behavix is a commitment to better, more meaningful and accurate data. It is the culmination of my nearly two decades of experience in the tech industry and the beginning of a new chapter in market research.
I invite you to join me on this journey to redefine what is possible with high precision behavioral data ... as we index us humans, one behavior at a time.
Surath Chatterji
Co-Founder and CTO
