Interview With Insight Innovation Competition Winner Neil Seeman of RIWI Corporation

 

A few months ago a Canadian company with a funky name (RIWI? What’s a RIWI?) reached out to me to share what they were up to.  I quickly learned that the acronym that forms their name (Real-time Interactive Worldwide Intelligence) was no idle boast; these guys had developed a solution that was possibly the perfect combination of a traditional researcher’s dream sample source with the progressive thinking of what online research would look like over the next few years. Suffice to say I was impressed with them and began to follow them closely.

Here is a description from their website:

 

The RIWI Corporation is composed of a multi-disciplinary team of leading-edge researchers, entrepreneurs and Internet engineers. We work with clients and global partners to deliver an exclusive gateway to non-incented respondents and data from around the world using our patented random domain intercept technology.

Our approach to data gathering is efficient on a global scale, having provided companies with unique data streams and millions of real-time data points since 2009.

When we launched the Insight Innovation Competition Phase 3 Round for IIeX in Philly, RIWI was one of the many companies I encouraged to submit. After a hard fought voting round they made it into the final consideration set and were invited to come to Philly to present.

Obviously the Judges agreed with my assessment: RIWI was the clear winner of the Competition. They join previous Competition winners Decooda and Zappistore as examples of how new thinking and cutting edge technology are driving the industry forward.

 

You could sense the excitement in the crowd  immediately following the presentation. Their model of accessing the online equivalent of RDD sample, regardless of access channel and device, on a global basis via “Nano-surveys” addresses both the foundation of statistical science as well as the cutting edge of data collection technologies.They were quite literally swarmed at the next break.

Today I’m very pleased to bring you an interview with RIWI CEO Neil Seeman. It’s a great discussion with an entrepreneur and humanitarian who’s new to MR but clearly understands the space and the needs of the marketplace.  He’s also a heck of a nice guy and very, very smart. I think all of that shines through in the interview and I suspect you’ll be as impressed as the judges of the Competition, participants in the conference, and I have been.

One note; there are a few spots in the recording where the quality of the Skype connection suffers a bit, and the interview ends a bit abruptly because the call was dropped unexpectedly while we were wrapping up. Neil and I agreed were done though, so all you missed were closing pleasantries.

Pay attention near the end when Neil and I discuss a VERY cool new initiative that we are partnering on; I  suspect anyone who engages in online/mobile data collection will be very interested in it.

Here is the interview with Neil.

 

Stay tuned for more on the Consumer Research Experience Index!

For those of you interested, here is the RIWI presentation at IIeX.