20 years in, Buzzback innovates $100B+ research market

The Challenge 

After nearly two decades in business, Buzzback is a celebrated leader in the market research industry, which is projected to reach $108.57 billion by 2026.

So how could an industry veteran strike boldly into this quickly-expanding market, and bet on itself to stay atop the crest of the innovation wave rumbling through the sector? 

Market research is equal parts quantitative and qualitative. In recent years, quantitative innovation has surged, while the industry’s qualitative side has struggled to catch up. It remains “manual, fragmented, and slow,” according to Liz White, managing director of Studio at Buzzback.  

And no one was doing much about it. That’s where White saw a massive opportunity: One streamlined platform for connecting market research experts with the organizations who need them, facilitating their collaboration within a secure workspace. Through single sign-on integration, users could also seamlessly move from Studio to other field work platforms.

If done well, Studio would open up additional revenue and expansion opportunities with Buzzback’s Fortune 100 and Fortune 50 clients: “The prospective opportunity and client base is actually pretty wide-ranging,” said White. So, it would be important to get it right, straight out of the gate. 

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The Build

Buzzback sought a cutting-edge, nontraditional route for this work, beyond a traditional dev shop and beyond building in-house. They wanted to treat the Studio build like a mini startup: super lean, using only the most critical resources required to reach the finish line. That made A.Team’s model, which supercharges companies with high-performing teams of Silicon Valley talent, extremely appealing.

The “startup” approach would ensure lower costs, agility, and speed. Speaking of speed, Buzzback was able to interview and onboard their A.Team within the first week. They hit the ground running and started the build. Said White: “We wanted only the best and most essential people for this build, across areas where we had resourcing gaps. We wanted this to be an experiment into how we think about tech resourcing in general, in the future.” 

Studio’s zero-to-one build required four A.Team members: a lead engineer, a product lead, a front-end developer, and a designer. Given Studio's pre-revenue state, the build team worked to stretch each resource to optimize efficiency. 

A.Team’s approach felt unique and exceptionally transparent. According to White, “Other agencies might bring their full dev team, but you don’t know who is actually working on the project. With A.Team, we were given control of choosing the exact right people for the work.” 

White also found value in being on the customer side of a similar business model to Studio. A two-sided marketplace contains two audiences, each of whom needs very different things. Being in this position helped Buzzback “crawl-walk-run,” leaning on an empathy-led discovery process to build Studio and successfully find true product-market fit.

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Outcomes 

After one year of work, Studio launched. Although it is early days, Buzzback has been thrilled with initial user feedback. The Studio experience feels “revolutionary” for users. It’s “fast, easy, seamless, and with UI that is beautiful AND functional. All a testament to the A.Team builders,” said White.

Buzzback claims the quality of A.Team’s work was “phenomenal,” and “leaps and bounds above some of the development firms we’ve previously worked with.” 

Throughout the build process, White valued the thoughts, opinions, and perspectives of her A.Team. She said: “At the end of the day, you’re putting a lot of trust into the developers whom you ask to bring your vision to life.” 

There were many instances where the A.Team took her initial suggestions and came back with improvements and counter-suggestions. White trusted A.Team enough to move beyond the bounds of a typical contractor project. In its place, she found a team of collaborators and equals. 

Said White, “With a lot of other development firms, the onus has been on us to spec out a project. The developers are basically just executors. By contrast, everyone on our A.Team was a true collaborative partner.” 

Post-launch, White considers the A.Team partnership a resounding success—so much so that Buzzback is rethinking how it will hire technical resources for future development projects. 

The experience has “...in really good ways, opened our eyes to a new level of development and what can be achieved,” said White. “I don't think I would have been able to bring this idea to life had we made different decisions about resourcing our build team.”