Interview with Craig Stevens, CEO of CoolTool

2021 marks 20 years in the research industry for me, which is an awful lot of history as well as time to build many relationships with various folks.

Because of that, occasionally when I conduct CEO series interviews, I have the pleasure of doing them with people I “grew up with” in the industry; today’s interview is a prime example of that.

I’ve known Craig Stevens since he was the manager of my Account Director at eRewards and I was the CEO of Rockhopper Research (hint: it was a looong time ago!) and since then we’ve stayed in touch as he ascended the ranks at that company through their various incarnations, left and started his own company (UBMobile), successfully exited that and now has assumed the Global CEO role at CoolTool (a Gen2 Advisors client).

It’s been a privilege to stay connected through his journey and now have the opportunity to share his story with you.

Craig has earned success the old-fashioned way; by hard work in the trenches building businesses from start-up to growth phase and shares much of that experience in our conversation. It’s an inspiring, validating, and highly educational conversation for anyone looking to grow their career or business. Of course, it’s also a great story about CoolTool, a company that has had its own journey and has been a “diamond in the rough” that is really starting to be refined and is a shining example of technological innovation in the insights space.

I think you’ll enjoy this one a lot, so without further ado here it is!

The text has been edited for clarity.

Lenny Murphy: Hello, everybody. It’s Lenny Murphy here with our CEO Series of interviews. And every once in a while I get to chat with people I’ve known for a really long time and have been friends with, and today is one of those times. So welcoming Craig Stevens. Craig, how are you?

Craig Stevens: Good. And how are you, Lenny? Thank you for having me today.

Lenny Murphy: Of course, of course. So as I mentioned, so I think we were talking beforehand how long we known each other? Since – I mean, the year or days, right?

Craig Stevens: I think it’s got to be 15 years-ish.

Lenny Murphy: Something like that. Something like that. So a long and storied history. So anyway, so it’s great to have you here. And I did – this is the CEO Series. So there is an announcement around that related to you. So why don’t you tell the audience what’s going on?

Craig Stevens: Yeah, thank you for the opportunity and I appreciate that. So you may have seen in the announcement you’re referring to. I recently joined CoolTool as their new CEO. I had been digging into and advising with them for probably the six months prior to that, had been introduced to them by someone that I’ve known for a very long time to kind of dig into the business on what kind of the proverbial layers of the onion. The more layers I peeled the more impressed I became with what they had built.

They were established back in 2012. So they’ve been building the technology – really it’s a DIY platform initially, but have had the opportunity to get client feedback for some number of years and continually enhance the platform to today I think it’s one of the best platforms on the market to support both operational efficiency and kind of the core blocking and tackling of insights, project design, launch, and automated reporting, as well as the innovation that’s built into the platform, the ability to capture some of the nonconscious by using eye-tracking and emotion measurement and implicit tests that are built into the platform as well.

So I thought the marriage of the conscious civic, a very robust civic platform with the nonconscious all seamlessly integrated into one environment I feel is a powerful application for both market researchers and insights within brand organizations.

Lenny Murphy: And great. And full disclosure for the audience, I’m an advisory to CoolTool, have been for a few years, and have a similar take. And what’s interesting though – and now we both get to play old-timers, right, in the industry in the –

Craig Stevens: I play older timer every day.

Lenny Murphy: I know, I know. Right there with you. Often we think that these technology companies that just come out of nowhere and boom, they just succeed. And some do. But most have been around for a very long time. And visionary founders see how things are probably going to get, right, or they think it’s going to get, and the gamble on that. And that process takes a lot of pivoting.

And I think of CoolTool and their history specifically, and they’re a great example of that. Dmitry Gaiduk is the founder and certainly visionary, an incredibly energetic guy. And they swung at a few balls over the years that maybe they should have let walk. But they kept that, they kept pivoting. And not even pivoting. I don’t think that’s even the right word. It’s refining, so refining the solution, listening to the market, trying to get a sense of what’s ahead of the market until finally, it’s almost a phenomenon of the market catches up with the visionary.

So and there are so many companies that that’s the case. But CoolTool specifically I think is a fantastic example of that. And you said something. You took about six months, and yes, full disclosure I introduced Craig to Dmitry because I thought they needed a US CEO. And that – tell me about the time that you took in peeling that onion, and through the lens of your own experience, because this is not your first rodeo either, and what it’s like to actually go through that process of being picky about the next opportunity that you’re going to engage with and apply your talents to.

Craig Stevens: Right. So thank you for that opportunity. Well, for those of – Listen, if you who don’t know my background, of course, I spent 10 years at what was originally e-Rewards and then Research Now, and of course today Dynata. And when I joined e-Rewards back in the day it was a well-established business but it was still relatively small.

And so I had the fortunate of the experience of being part of a very fast-growing organization and learned some of the things around scaling a business that already had a proven business model, a well-defined go-to-market approach. And then after the 10 years, I left. I wanted to scratch the entrepreneurial itch and do the whole startup thing, and I co-founded UBMobile. We started with a PowerPoint presentation and an idea.

And certainly, as anyone who has started a business has learned you have a vision for the business when you first start, and then you get client feedback and you learn, and you adjust. And as you said, sometimes it’s a full-on pivot, sometimes it’s just kind of trying to find a center within the guardrails that removes friction on your original vision. And so I had the opportunity to learn quite a lot prior to the transaction that we had with Critical Mix part of the Reimagine Holdings Company.

And so after that, I wanted to take some time off. It was convenient to take some time off during the pandemic and relocated my family from Texas where I grew up in the Dallas area to Connecticut where my wife is from and has a lot of family. And so we took the opportunity to do that. And I just did some soul searching. I took some time off learning to kind of refresh a little bit.

And then about the time you reached out I had been advising a couple of companies informally here and there, wasn’t quite ready to dive in, and had been asked to do so by a couple of other companies and just wasn’t ready to do that yet, some large, some small. And when you introduced me to Dmitry and CoolTool, I was kind of starting to get the itch to get back involved in something, but I didn’t quite know what yet, because obviously our industry it’s the largest cottage industry in the world. So it’s a very large industry but it’s small at the same time.

And so I started going through the mental process of just what part of the sandbox of our industry do I want to play in, where I think the fine is. And the timing was great with the introduction to Dmitry because I knew I wanted to be part of a technology forward and kind of innovation forward in the insights space. So as I started having the conversations with Dmitry what I found is that they had some really incredible technology that frankly, I – even as much time as I spent the industry, I wasn’t really aware of CoolTool and what they have, and how, pun intended, how cool it all is.

And so as I got to learn more about it and diving deeper into it, not just the functionality but the thought behind it, the original vision of what they’re trying to achieve, I became more and more impressed with it. Even so, I want to be pretty thoughtful about what I went into next. Again, fortunately, I had several different opportunities with different companies that played in different spaces within our industry. And so I was very methodical in how I would say Dmitry would probably say, a little too much so.

But I wanted to make sure that I had gotten all the way to the core of the end, so to speak. And in doing so what I found is that they just had built this incredible portfolio of technology I’ll call it in two platforms, a CoolTool platform and they have one called UXReality. I should say we now have one called UXReality which is all about UX research.

And what I also found though, not only in discussions with Dmitry but in chatting with his team is that they were excited about what they have and proud of what they have, but they were struggling a little bit to find the right market that they would have and operate a client request to satisfy some certain capability or some certain methodology, and they would move the boat in that direction. And they would do that and they’d have a little bit of success, but then they would hear a different client with a different use case need and, oh, yeah we can build – because they’re very, very strong technologists and developers. And so it’s like, no problem, we can build that. And in two weeks we can have a whole new functionality built into the platform. And they would say, wow, that’s exciting. Let’s go pursue that.

And so we all want to be client-centric and client-led, but at some point, you have to really refine your business focus, your business model, what it is that you’re delivering to clients. You want to deliver something that you can do better than anyone else, that clients will find value in their usage of whatever that is, and importantly, that they’re willing to pay for it, right? And so really trying to focus on the necessary things.

I heard someone say one time that most small businesses don’t starve to death, they choke to death. And what – meaning that they try to do too much. They spread themselves too thin, the proverbial Jack of all trades, master of none. So in the discussions with Dmitry and the team kind of six months prior to me joining us their CEO, it was all about looking at all the call it the raw ingredients, the technology, and the functionality, the capabilities that they bring to the process and the insights industry.

And what is resonating? What is most valuable in those individual parts? And then is there a way for us to really refine the focus and bring that into something that clients will value and be willing to pay for? And I also reached out to some of my friends who are CEOs of market research agencies, and even some researchers with brands as part of my own due diligence before I decided to join to say, look, this is what this company has. This is what they do. Is that something that you would find to be of value and be willing to pay for?

And so those conversations helped to refine my own thinking through my own due diligence process, but it also validated that yes, if we package up all this capability, if we focus it on what can deliver the most value that there’s really something there. And I’ll say the three things that we’re finding most is as clients – as we’re talking to clients, as we’re demoing the platform, as we’re diving into client proposals, meaning collaborating with them with research agencies and their clients, and these are Fortune 100 brands, they’re finding really three key values out of using the CoolTool platform.

One is just operational efficiency, just blocking and tackling on their core business because it is a very enterprise-grade survey engine that, oh by the way was built as a DIY platform which makes it very intuitive and easy to use, and it produces real-time reporting within the platform all the way from raw data to visualizations, all of which that you can slice and dice the data within the platform and then it can be exported into native applications like SPSS, Excel, PowerPoint, and then be editable within that native application. And so we’re finding that just that alone clients are excited about the time and cost savings that they’re seeing from that.

The second of the three big benefits we’re hearing from clients is their ability to build their proprietary products, if you will, with their own methodologies that they’re talking to their clients saying, look, we think we have a better mousetrap. We think we have a better way to get you the insights that you need even if it’s on a tradition – what we would consider, you and I consider old-timers traditional methodologies for just traditional consumer insights. But it’s providing them the ability to then have their clients have self-administered access into those projects, into those reports, in an online environment.

The third is a playroom for innovation. The fact that it checks the box on being an enterprise-grade service platform with real-time automated editable reporting within the platform and building these custom proprietary products that clients can turn to their clients with direct access, but also incorporating the neuro, the nonconscious. So leveraging the webcam for eye tracking, for emotion measurement, for ad testing, for fun product packaging.

So those are three key things. Operational efficiency, the ability to build proprietary products on the platform with direct self-administered access to their clients, and lots of headroom for innovation all within the native seamless platform.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. Let’s make clear the combination of the conscious and nonconscious methodologies. So a survey engine combined with the noncon tools. And those noncon tools are proprietary. So those we’re not plugging in another solution. They are their own algorithms, their own IP driving that. And from a reporting standpoint, to make that seamless as well, because I think that’s always one of the challenges with nonconscious measurement. You get the report back like, what am I seeing? What does this really telling me?

So it takes a Ph.D. to be able to say, here’s what the implicit measures state. Or often. I shouldn’t say that. There are certain platforms out there that do a good job of that as well. But the focus is on that usability. But I do think that is one of the key things that makes – The time is right for a solution like CoolTool that integrates the best of both worlds from a UX perspective, from a design perspective that makes them usable across multiple use cases.

And it’s always been the challenge of scaling nonconscious measurement. Look at the grid data. We always know that clients are intensely interested. One of our most successful events at IX is our behavioral science event. It has like 60% client-side attendance. We know people are incredibly interested in this, especially after 2020. But the use of – the speed, the cost, and the usability of nonconscious measures have always been a barrier to adoption.

So that’s one of the things I think that’s always excited me about CoolTool, and I decided to be an advisor a few years ago, was how do we scale this, so how do we make this accessible to the masses? Just as Survey Monkey did for surveys, to begin with. So I’m pretty excited about now having you kind of settle down Dmitry. We’re going to focus on this. And I don’t mean in any disparaging way. If you’ve ever meet Dmitry, he’s brilliant and he’s just like you said he’s all over the place. We have an idea. And boom they’ve developed in two weeks.

And focus on now let’s scale, so I think the market demand is there now. And so let’s – I want to be conscious of time. Let’s pivot there for a minute. So in the – By the meantime you guys are watching this we’ll release the grid report, but when we’re recording it, it hasn’t been released yet. But Craig, you and I have talked a little bit about the results. But I’ll put it in context again.

If we look at last year in 2020 it looked like the death knell of full service. And technology was just boom, taking off. Now, that was one point in time. So it was kind of a spring where we looked at that and we’re like, oh, wait that doesn’t look good. But now in 2021, we collect data it’s like, no, that was incorrect. What we saw was a drive towards efficiency, towards DIY automation from a brand standpoint simply because they had to. There was an immediate need to get answers and DIY was there to help provide some of those – the way to do that.

But brands quickly got to the point too where they recognized that they were not equipped to do that themselves across the board. Some things, absolutely. But many that were more strategic in nature or more complex they still needed service.

So now our take is that we’re seeing this convergence of DIY and service. And we used to look at some bifurcation as a dichotomy. I don’t think that’s where we are now in 2021. I think we are back – We are to a synthesis of the best of both worlds. Now, that’s my long-winded way of queuing up because I know when you think about the opportunity for a technology platform, I have always maintained that technology platforms should sell to everybody, not just the brands, not just the suppliers but to both.

And if there’s an opportunity to really reach rescale and drive real value by being the connective tissue between those two worlds and empowering them to do their own unique things. Is that what you’re finding? Now, I know it’s still early. But as you’re going through kind of the business model and early exploration of scaling is that ringing true for you?

Craig Stevens: It is. What we’re finding – so CoolTool, we are client agnostic. So if a large market research agency –

Lenny Murphy: Will pay us, we’ll do business with you.

Craig Stevens: Yeah. If you’re an individual consultant or if you’re a large brand and you need 100 seats into the platform please, welcome all, right? But we’re not business model agnostic. So what I mean by that is that as we’ve been talking directly to brands about their – kind of helping to establish the value that they would get from the various tools, part of that process we talked about, kind of refining and focusing the business model with the collection capabilities that we have, what we found – two things when we spoke and worked directly with brands.

One, excitement like, wow, this is awesome. I can now – Oh, wait, I can see what consumers think by way of the survey, the stated, the conscious feedback. But now in the same project, in the same platform seamlessly I can also learn what they see and how they feel. So now I can get how they think, what they see, and how they feel all in one project when responding for example to various types of marketing stimuli. So that excitement.

But what they also say is, this is awesome. I want to do a project with you. In fact, I have the perfect thing I’m trying to solve and this sounds like it solves and checks the box. And then they turn to us and they want us – because it’s new, it’s innovative. They see what it can deliver but it’s connecting the dots of how do you get it from setting it up in the platform to OK, now this information is providing the answers to help inform my decision.

So they turn to us to do the whole thing. Effectively the same thing that they return to a market research agency to do to help them with the survey – the project design, the survey design, the survey m collecting all the responses, doing analysis, providing summary reporting back to them. And while we have the expertise in-house to do that many of our team comes from full-service research agencies.

We do have the expertise to do that. That’s not our business model. So if a brand wants to license our platform for those use cases then for those reasons we’ll certainly provide them what I’ll call onboarding and technical support. But it’s not our business model. It’s not how we want to scale to hire a bunch of researchers and provide those full-service solutions.

And that’s why I think that going to the research agencies, the research consultancies those companies and those teams, they are experts in working with methodologies and tools and assembling the raw ingredients into a prepared meal to hand directly to, to serve directly to the brands. And so that’s why I said our platform is client agnostic, but our business model is not. We’re focused on being a platform providing the tools and the capabilities upon which users can drive deeper insights, a more holistic view of the consumer to better answer their questions, optimize their marketing assets, to improve their return on their marketing spend.

So that’s really where our focus is. And it’s I guess encouraging to hear that what you’re seeing in the grid report is that the demise of the full-service research agency has been drastically overstated, as they say because we view them as an important channel partner in our go-to market strategy.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah. All right, so kind of last question. And so what would you consider to be success for you in this role?

Craig Stevens: I was hoping there was going to be more on the end of that to refine the question a little bit because that’s a big one.

Lenny Murphy: It is, however, it doesn’t have to be a financial metric. It could be emotionally-

Craig Stevens: I think Dmitry and his co-founder and the team that has been working on CoolTool for many years, they’re passionate and proud about what they’ve created, and they’re excited about the path that we’re on and the potential for accelerating our own growth by way of getting these tools that they have built into clients’ hands, into the wild if you will. They are providing real value in day to day support of our clients who are using these platforms. So when I decided to join as their CEO, I knew I was taking on a big responsibility and commitment to help them realize the original vision that they had for the business.

So what does that original vision look like? Ideally, a fairly wide distribution of the utilization of our platforms with a whole lot of happy clients saying, my business is better today. It’s just been my own internal operations, my own margins for my own business, are better today. My teams are happier.

And part of that too is that research agencies are able to say, and we’re able to serve our clients better. We’re able to give them a deeper, more holistic view of the consumers to better inform their marketing decision-making. And we’re able to do it faster, and of course, in a cost-effective manner. So I think that is what success looks like to me when we’ve achieved that point. And I say achieve. There’s really no achieving it because it’s ongoing. It’s evergreen. You’re always wanting to pursue that vision.

Lenny Murphy: OK. All right, final question. So what is the map behind you, because I keep looking at it and I’m trying to figure out what it is? The map behind you.

Craig Stevens: So I mentioned I’m originally from the Dallas, Fort Worth area in Texas. And even though we moved to Connecticut we still own land with cattle roaming on that land. So that map, it was the first thing that I hung when we moved to our new house in Connecticut, and it’s a map of the Republic of Texas. Not only within that map of the Republic of Texas but it has copies of the deeds from my grandparents acquiring the property and I inherited from my grandparents, them acquiring it from the person they acquired it from, and that person acquired it – and that original deed was issued by the Republic of Texas signed by then-President Anson Jones. And so that’s bringing my Texas roots with me to Connecticut.

Lenny Murphy: All right, very cool. We could go to all types of places that kind of press my geek button. But we won’t do that. We’ll save that for an offline conversation. So it’s great. It’s always a pleasure. Congratulations on the new role. I’m excited to see what happens on multiple levels.

I don’t think I mentioned it for those who don’t know that CoolTool had won the UX competition as well after entering it three times, being a runner-up, and then finally winning it. So there’s just – there’s a lot of, for me personally, a lot of investment here and just rooting for the underdog. Just come on, guys. You can pull it off. You can pull it off.

And I’m excited to see you pull off now, because what a great team and what a great product. And have you join as well just adds to it. So yes, I’m a fanboy audience, but I usually am of the people that I choose to have conversations within this forum. So I’ll try not to gush too much.

Craig Stevens: Well, I’m encouraged by the feedback conversations that we’re having and how clients are embracing the platform.

Lenny Murphy: Very cool. All right. Well, we will be talking soon. And to our audience, I hope that you’ve enjoyed this, and appreciate your time and engagement as always. So everyone have a great day, and we’ll talk later.