ai-customer-research
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Alfred Wahlforss had 20,000 users. Then came the questions.
A viral avatar app gave the Listen Labs co-founder an audience he barely understood. His next experiment turned that problem into a business built around asking people why.
Lydia Hylton
Lydia Hylton is the co-founder and CEO of Strella, an AI-powered customer research platform that runs adaptive, AI-moderated interviews and synthesizes the results in hours instead of weeks. A Georgia Tech computer engineer and Stanford MBA, she moved from Facebook data science and Bain consulting into venture capital at Redpoint and Bain Capital Crypto before teaming up with her high-school friend Priya Krishnan to build Strella. After a 'Wizard of Oz' MVP and a perfect 12-for-12 design-partner conversion, the company raised a $14M Series A led by Bessemer in October 2025 and now serves Amazon, Duolingo, Chobani, Square and Apollo GraphQL.