Founders Bootstrap Outward Intelligence to $1M Revenue

Three former executives from The Harris Poll and Palantir launched Outward Intelligence, an AI-driven polling startup, and grew revenue to over $1 million within eight months without venture capital funding. The founders cited a broken polling industry and a desire to prioritize clients and employees over investors.

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."