Crowd Muscle is a Vancouver-based startup founded by Aslam Jamal that helps businesses conduct high quality market and customer intelligence. I met Aslam and his team when they were working out of Bootup Garage last January.
Bootup’s open space and collaborative environment was designed to inspire and support technology entrepreneurs in the earliest stages and connect founders with peers, investors and mentors, who could help them grow their business. One of the mentors whom Aslam met via the Garage program was Mike Edwards of Initio Group, who invested in Crowd Muscle last Spring.
With the recent release of Crowd Muscle’s Private Crowd, I was eager to catch up with Aslam to find out more about their new platform and how they have grown since receiving investment from Initio and moving out of the Garage.
Initio Group: What is Private Crowd?
Aslam: Private Crowd is a platform that allows companies to build and leverage a Crowd of their own existing customers. All you needed to get started is a list of existing customers, who can then be invited to join the company’s Crowd through a campaign-driven survey process. The result is a richly profiled, opted-in group, the Private Crowd.
The Crowd can be examined using a collection of rich analytic capabilities that provides a multi-dimensional understanding of a customer base. These can be used to drive tactical and strategic decisions, while also giving companies hard metrics that enable improvements in customer engagement and customer service.
IG: How much does it cost?
The pricing for Private Crowd is based on a company subscription, and takes into account the size of a customer base, the level of use within the organization, and the reach of the campaigns being run. This allows us to serve companies of varying sizes and needs in line with our mission to remain accessible and affordable.
Companies who are interested in building a Private Crowd should contact us at sales@crowdmuscle.com, and we’d be happy to tailor a plan to meet specific needs.
IG: How is Crowd Muscle different then market research firms like Vision Critical?
It’s shocking how many businesses conduct little or no market research when making significant strategic decisions. While Vision Critical is well reputed for the quality of their work, the business model used to engage clients is traditional and similar to large consulting firms. This drives up engagement costs, and typically results in a lengthy, point-in-time report.
Crowd Muscle serves progressive businesses that understand the value of quality market research, but want it on their own terms. That requires delivering intuitive, self-service products for the non-professional that can be integrated with common daily activities. The Crowd Loyalty Index, which was released as part of Private Crowd, is a great example of how we’ve made this a reality.
IG: Where did the inspiration for Private Crowd come from?
In a previous life, I worked in enterprise environments to improve collaboration among teams. What was often overlooked in these company-wide initiatives is how different the needs of marketing professionals are in comparison to most other functions. I believe this is driven by the fact that marketing as a discipline is outward-facing, where most other functions are contained within an organization.
I kept seeing the needs of marketers being dismissed as “special case” requests, leaving these folks with very limited enterprise-quality sources of information designed specifically for them. Easily consumable primary market intelligence was at the top of the “most desired” list, and that is where Private Crowd originated.
IG: How has the response been so far?
It’s still early days, but we’re seeing lots of interest across a wide variety of retailers across the country. Many are eager to leave email blasts and mass marketing techniques behind in favour of segment-driven activities. This is the type of feedback we expected.
What has come as a more pleasant surprise is how marketers we’ve walked through the product are coming up with all sorts of inventive ways to use the Crowd in their own organizations. Figuring out how to balance these requests as the product continues to evolve is going to keep us busy!
IG: What’s the best piece of advice you have ever received?
That’s a tough one – I’ve been fortunate to receive so much great advice.
“One of the most important skills an entrepreneur can learn is the ability to receive and respond objectively to constructive criticism. Stand up for yourself on the merits of your argument if necessary, but never isolate yourself from a new or different perspective in fear of being proven wrong.”
About Aslam:
Aslam is an experienced collaboration consultant who has driven the success of numerous high profile engagements. When he is not working on Crowd Muscle, Aslam likes to hit the gym to decompress. His guilty pleasure is watching reality shows like Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank, and picking apart company pitches. Keep up to date with Private Crowd updates and news by following Aslam @ajsoundoff or @crowdmuscle on Twitter.
