1 Million Cups Preview: Wyzerr’s Bjorn Simmons

Little Rock native Bjorn Simmons is vice-president for sales and marketing of startup Wyzerr – a company with a new spin on how to measure customer feedback and consumer attitudes.

The company touts “No more long boring surveys” as part of its offerings and Simmons will be one of the featured speakers at Wednesday’s 1 Million Cups Little Rock meeting.

The programming starts at 9 a.m. at the Arkansas Venture Center, located at 107 E. Markham in downtown Little Rock catty-corner from the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce. It’s easy to participate: just show up, drink coffee, ask questions and network for an hour.

Talk Business & Politics asked Simmons a few questions in advance and learned that a new reveal is in store for those who attend Wednesday’s 1 Million Cups event.

TB&P: Where did the idea for Wyzerr originate and what exactly do you offer?

Bjorn Simmons: As bootstrapping founders, we completed a lot of customer feedback surveys over the years because many companies provide incentives like discounts or free food in exchange for your insight. These surveys were consistently really cumbersome, long, and time-consuming. We’ve never took a survey that we actually enjoyed.

One of the biggest issues we saw was that surveys came to the consumer by way of a receipt – you had to copy a long URL in order to access the survey. So we originally built Wyzerr as a technology to ping customers directly in the store at point-of-sale. The idea was to engage customers as they leave the cashier while their experience is still fresh and BEFORE they leave the store without having the customer type anything out.

Then as we pitched it to business owners, people kept saying “this technology is great! But why would you use it to deliver ugly surveys that nobody wants? You have to build something that’s fun and fast.” So we started designing our own surveys and it evolved from there. Nowadays, we build surveys and analytic software that look and feel like games. We offer businesses the ability to obtain actionable insight about their customers’ experience in under 60 seconds.

TB&P: Where is this company headed? Do you get bought out, have expansion plans, or some other route?

Simmons: Our goal is IPO. We believe we have a business that’s sustainable and our timing couldn’t be more perfect. Businesses are becoming obsessed with surveys and customer feedback, but the current platforms aren’t effective. Wyzerr offers a solution that people like using. We’d also be open to being acquired by a company like Google or Yahoo that would allow us to continue innovating in the big data space.

TB&P: What are you looking forward to sharing with the 1Million Cups LR audience?

Simmons: We’re building a SaaS platform this summer that’s going to disrupt the market research and customer feedback space in a major way. Our SaaS platform makes market research, customer analytics/insights, and data mining strategies that would normally cost brands and companies anywhere from $40k to the low 6-figures affordable and accessible to small businesses.

These tools have been proven to be the factor in why enterprise companies continue to grow and scale exponentially. Unfortunately, small businesses don’t have access to these tools. Wyzerr changes that and levels the playing field.

1 Million Cups LR will be the first to see the mock-ups for this platform. We haven’t shared it publicly anywhere yet, so we’re excited to get some feedback and insight on what people think of it.