Data Gurus Podcast | Insights on Business Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, Market Research & Data Collection

Welcome to another exciting episode of the Data Gurus Podcast! Today, Sima is happy to welcome Anton Umnov, the VP of Consumer Insights and Partnerships at Drop Technologies Inc., as her guest for the show. Anton’s journey to where he is today Anton started working in the consumer insights and data space about ten years ago. He spent a long time at Nielsen Data Analytics, where he had many engagem...

In this exciting episode, Sima is excited to have Nitzan Shaer, the CEO, and Co-Founder of Wevo, joining her. Nitzan’s background Wevo is the fourth company that Nitzan has either started or joined early on. He loves the thrill of joining a team of like-minded people in the early days of a new venture. Skype was among the companies that he joined early on, which were all in the space of trying to...

Welcome to today’s podcast! In today’s special episode, Sima continues her conversation with Gary Laben, the CEO of Dynata in the second part of the exciting two-part interview. In this episode, Gary and Sima continue with their discussion about the things that influence the size of opportunity within the industry and discuss whether doing things faster will denigrate the research process. They al...

In today’s episode, Sima is happy to welcome you to the podcast, which is the first part of an exciting two-part interview that she did with Gary Laben, the CEO of Dynata. Today, in the first part of the series, Gary talks to Sima about his journey that led to where he is today. He also talks about his general leadership style and the impact Covid-19 has had on him as a leader and on his business....

On today’s show, Sima welcomes Mike Page, the Co-founder and Chief Executive of Phebi, as her guest on the podcast. The founding story of Phebi Phebi has been around for a little more than a year and their focus is on the insights industry. Their journey has been around the explosion in voice and voice tech when they saw the whole landscape of how people interact with technology was shifting to vo...

In today’s episode, Sima is excited to welcome Gangesh Ganesan, the Founder and CEO of PeerNova, as her guest on the show. This podcast is typically about data and the data ecosystem. Today, however, Gangesh takes us into the area of the financial market. In this episode, he explains the importance of ensuring that data has good quality and is accurate. PeerNova PeerNova is a Silicon Valley-based...

On today’s show, Sima is excited to host a panel of three powerful and well-respected women as her guests. Tiffany Hays is the CEO of FUEL Global. She is and also CEO of The Focus Room. Aryn O’Donnell is the Vice President of Corporate Services of Fieldwork. And Kelli Hammock is Senior Client Solutions Manager at L&E Research. Tiffany, Aryn, and Kelli are all in the qualitative space in...

Today, Sima welcomes Andy Davidson from the Engine Group as her guest. Andy is the Head of Analytics and Data Strategy at Engine. The Engine Group The Engine Group is a full-service marketing services firm specializing in a range of things from insights and analytics to planning and content and distribution. Background Andy has been with the Engine Group for about two years. Before that, he spent...

Sima is excited to welcome Erinn Taylor as her guest for today’s podcast. Erinn is the Executive Vice President of Product and Platform at Canvs AI. He has had a breadth of experience within the field of market research. Some of Erinn’s background Erinn grew up in market research. He worked his way up at several different organizations. About a year ago, he met the founder of Canvs and was intrigu...

Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Hunter Thurman, the President and Founder of Alpha-Diver, as her guest today. Hunter has been in the insights and strategy world for the last twenty years. Some background for Alpha-Diver In 2011, Hunter got to a point where he felt dissatisfied with how he was doing insights and research and translating it into a strategy. (Subsequently, he learned that his approac...

Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Kristin Luck once again as her guest! Kristin is the founder and managing partner of Scalehouse Consulting, and Kristi and I are both advisors at Oberon Securities, on the investment banking side. Where the industry is, as related to the impact of Covid The abrupt impact of the pandemic on the overall economy brought the industry to a near standstill last spring. It...

Sima Vasa is excited to have Bob Qureshi join her today. Bob is the co-owner and managing partner of i-view viewing facilities in London. Bob talks about the history of his business In the 1960s and 1970s, most of the qualitative research in the UK took place at the home of the recruiter. Over the years, specific facilities for research were being built in the US. Then, in the 80s, that also start...

Sima Vasa is excited to welcome Tim Clover as her guest for today’s podcast. Tim is the CEO and Founder of Glow, based in Australia. Tim is originally from the UK and has been living in Australia for the last ten years. About Glow Glow is an online research platform, and people often compare it with SurveyMonkey on steroids. For Tim, it is about a lot more than just creating surveys. It is about t...

I am happy to welcome Ken Roshkoff, the CEO of AMC Global, as my guest for today. Ken’s father started AMC Global Ken’s father started their company in 1979. He was a true researcher who loved working with data, doing analytics, and working with project staff. The competitive component Ken always loved the competitive component, so he spent much of his childhood focused on sports. He loved tournam...

This is the first episode in our MRX Podcast Network series. I am excited to kick this year off with an episode focused on perspectives and thoughts related to our industry for 2021. A year like no other 2020 has been a year like no other. As an industry, we collaborated, we called on each other for help, and we were there for each other, both personally and professionally. That was an important s...

I am excited to share some news with you today. Some of my fellow podcasters and I came up with the concept of an MRX Podcast Network. The main mission of the podcast network is to be able to podcast on a topic on our respective podcast channels, and provide multiple points of view, perspectives, and formats on how we address the specific topic, and give all our listeners in the industry a broader...

We are excited to welcome Steve Schlesinger, the CEO of the Schlesinger Group, as our guest for today’s show. Join us today to learn about Steve’s journey. You will hear the story behind the Schlesinger Group and find out how it got founded by Steve’s mother back in 1966. Steve’s mother’s story The Schlesinger Group was founded by Steve’s mother in 1966. A few years before, she started looking for...

We are excited to welcome Dave Shanker as our guest for this episode. Dave is the CEO and Founder of David Shanker Consulting. Dave’s journey Dave’s career spans more than thirty years, and he has mostly been involved with market research, running different market research agencies. He has also been involved in startups and has had a family business along the way. Dave’s leadership style People ha...

I’m happy to welcome Rebecca Brooks to the show. She’s the founder and CEO of Alter Agents, a full-service, strategic market research consultancy reimagining research in an era of shifting decision making. Rebecca has enjoyed an amazing trajectory to her successful career, and her work has never been more relevant and necessary than it is in today’s world.   About Rebecca Rebecca fell into market...

Sima’s goal for this two-part podcast series is to help senior leaders understand the mindset and psychology of sales. She would like to help sales leaders understand how they need to think about sales as a profession, how sales integrate into an organization, and the psychology behind what makes a salesperson tick. So many companies struggle with one of the biggest components of scaling their bus...

One of the biggest components for scaling any business is sales, and yet so many companies tend to struggle with it. It involves finding a balance between the right personality, the right leader, and ensuring that there’s lockstep with the product. Adam Jolley is joining Sima in presenting this two-part podcast series on sales. Much of the sales piece tends to be forgotten in all industries, and t...

We are excited to welcome Tim Hoskins today. Tim is the President of Quester, an insights and strategies company. He is joining us today to talk about his journey and driving business results. Tim’s journey While in college, Tom needed a job, so he answered an ad for a lead-generation specialist at an information security startup. He worked there for two years while he was in college, and then pos...

We have the pleasure of welcoming Mark Simon, the Managing Partner for Hawkmoon Advisors, as our guest for today’s podcast. Mark is joining us to talk about his journey and share his experiences with the kind of work he has been doing to help small businesses scale, grow, and reach their goals. He also talks about what   ten-million-dollar companies need to be thinking about if they want to scale....

Today, we have the second part of the podcast series Data Gurus for IEX. We have been focusing on the concept of the last mile. In our industry, the last mile relates to empowering and getting the insights and value that clients want to get from research. Today, we invited Paul Gaudette, the co-founder of Dig Insights, to give us his perspective on how he looks at his clients from that perspective...

Nicole Schmidt and Chuck Mitchell are joining Sima today as panelists for a webinar on the impact of Covid 19 on middle-market firms. People have been impacted by Covid 19 all over the world. The purpose of this webinar is to provide context, perspective, and some key takeaways for executives to consider as they plan for the future beyond 2020. About Sima  Sima Vasa is a Senior Advisor at Oberon S...