Business Insider reports that three founders - Amir Kanpurwala (former CPO, The Harris Poll), Abhish Raghavan (former Head of Custom Research, The Harris Poll), and Brian Tatum (former deployments lead, Palantir) - launched Outward Intelligence and chose to skip venture capital. According to Business Insider, the team used AI-driven automation to keep operations lean and, within eight months of commercialization, grew revenue to more than $1 million. Kanpurwala is quoted saying, "The polling space is broken," flagging risks from low-quality responses and AI-automated survey manipulation. The article attributes the founders' decision to avoid VC to a preference for control, quoting Kanpurwala: "The person that you care about the most shifts from your client and your employees to the VC - satisfying the VC."
3 founders skipped VC funding, used AI to stay lean, and got to $1 million in revenue in year one