00:20:19 · Molly O'Shea, Joon Sung Park
[00:20:19] S0: Okay. [00:20:20] S1: But one of the customers that we've been working with is, of course, CVS. And they have worked with us to create simulations of both how to better understand their consumers so that they can better serve them both in terms of the store layout, the messaging, and the overall decor. But we also work with financial companies. So think some of the largest financial institutions today, but we also work with international institutions like Banco Itau in Brazil, where they also have similar needs, but they want to understand what kind of policies or what kind of messaging do we need to put out to better communicate our values to our customers. And of course, also work with entertainment companies, CPG companies. So the verticals are pretty broad, but what unites them is their need that they need to better understand their user base, that they need to be and they're trying to be even more customer centric. And today there's a real limitation to be able to talk to every single people every time they need to talk to them. But if we can create simulations of people and be able to ask any questions at any time, that becomes a superpower for these companies. [00:21:32] S0: For each one of these customers, do you create their own digital twins? Like how do you create net new populations within that instead of using the same base for everything where you'd get duplicates?
00:21:32 · Molly O'Shea, Joon Sung Park
[00:21:32] S0: For each one of these customers, do you create their own digital twins? Like how do you create net new populations within that instead of using the same base for everything where you'd get duplicates? [00:21:45] S1: Right. So SIMILI is maintaining vertical specific agent bank across the key verticals. So these are actually simulated panels that's always available on day one. So when we get into a new customer relationship, that's always available. Now then our customers often have further asks. Right, because no one's actually interested in general population. Everyone's interested in their own unique population that they're trying to better understand. So in those contexts, Simile would actually go collect more data to create and train the model to be able to cover those populations. And today, Simile have partnership with over 40,000,000 real people across the panel partnerships that we have. This is across the globe, and at any given moment, we're talking to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of real people every single week. So that's that's a scale of operation that we are running today. So if there's a new need for new panel members, that can usually be met within twenty four hours.
00:21:45 · Joon Sung Park, Molly O'Shea
[00:21:45] S1: Right. So SIMILI is maintaining vertical specific agent bank across the key verticals. So these are actually simulated panels that's always available on day one. So when we get into a new customer relationship, that's always available. Now then our customers often have further asks. Right, because no one's actually interested in general population. Everyone's interested in their own unique population that they're trying to better understand. So in those contexts, Simile would actually go collect more data to create and train the model to be able to cover those populations. And today, Simile have partnership with over 40,000,000 real people across the panel partnerships that we have. This is across the globe, and at any given moment, we're talking to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of real people every single week. So that's that's a scale of operation that we are running today. So if there's a new need for new panel members, that can usually be met within twenty four hours. [00:22:52] S0: Who are these people? I'm always really curious about this because I don't understand polling. I don't understand when people say it's 53% of Americans think X or Y. It's like, who are these Americans? Who? I don't know. I've never met someone who's been polled before or surveyed. Have you? Well, you have, so. But, yeah, so, like, who are these people?
00:22:52 · Molly O'Shea, Joon Sung Park
[00:22:52] S0: Who are these people? I'm always really curious about this because I don't understand polling. I don't understand when people say it's 53% of Americans think X or Y. It's like, who are these Americans? Who? I don't know. I've never met someone who's been polled before or surveyed. Have you? Well, you have, so. But, yeah, so, like, who are these people? [00:23:15] S1: Yeah. So the way these operate, so these are people, like just everyday people, who chooses obviously to answer the polling or decide to participate in these data collection processes. The magic to this process often is, however, is knowing how to sample them. So social scientists have been developing methods for randomized samples, probability sampling to really get a broad understanding of the representative set of people. In some cases, some of these panel companies, they specialize in this exercise. And what that means for them is they actually try to form a real relationship with people across the entire country. One of the strategic partnerships that Simile has actually is with Gallup. Gallup, of course, of the most... I would consider Gallup to be one of the most golden standard polling company or a company that is generating these kind of insights. They have a gallop panel of hundreds of thousands of people with whom they've actually built up relationship over the past decade, two decades, and so forth.
00:23:15 · Joon Sung Park, Molly O'Shea
[00:23:15] S1: Yeah. So the way these operate, so these are people, like just everyday people, who chooses obviously to answer the polling or decide to participate in these data collection processes. The magic to this process often is, however, is knowing how to sample them. So social scientists have been developing methods for randomized samples, probability sampling to really get a broad understanding of the representative set of people. In some cases, some of these panel companies, they specialize in this exercise. And what that means for them is they actually try to form a real relationship with people across the entire country. One of the strategic partnerships that Simile has actually is with Gallup. Gallup, of course, of the most... I would consider Gallup to be one of the most golden standard polling company or a company that is generating these kind of insights. They have a gallop panel of hundreds of thousands of people with whom they've actually built up relationship over the past decade, two decades, and so forth. [00:24:22] S0: But wouldn't those people be biased at some point or feel entitled to give them what they think would be the best information based on their own circumstances or something? Like, how do you actually know that that's valid information?
00:24:34 · Joon Sung Park
[00:24:34] S1: Yeah. So we control for these. A couple of ways we control. One obviously is, and the biases actually can creep up in different ways. So there are different ways to fight for different kinds of biases. And not surprisingly, this entire thing is an area of study. Like it's an entire academic field with many researchers working on this. But for instance, one of the clear bias that we often see is fatigue. If you get asked the same questions or even different questions, but if you get polled every single week, they start to really get fatigued, and they start to answer in ways, or they try to game the system. Oh, I want to... If I participate in this, I get paid more, so I just give some bullshit answer and I just participate. You start to see those behaviors. So what you do is you actually time it so that the participation is far, is few in between, and sparse enough while being able to still maintain that relationship. And we actually run studies that basically shows we have a new population versus population who had answered x number of questions over the past. What is the right amount of distance to have between asking different questions to get the high quality, what we would consider to the goal quality, goal standard quality responses? We would actually measure that. Another thing that we would do is oftentimes in these kind of studies, we also do attention checks. So these are basically questions that are dummy questions that are not actually a part of the core measurement. Yeah. Or you're basically sneaking in questions that would filter out, participants who are not actually paying attention.