AI personas replace expensive focus groups at this startup

This article is a part of Startup Spotlight, a series that features young, up-and-coming startups.

Photo credit: Decisions Lab

Louis Cheung and Devansh Gandhi initially built a tool to simulate how prospects would react to cold emails. They quickly discovered that companies were wasting budget on the wrong target audiences.

This realization led them to launch Decisions Lab to simulate entire audiences and validate go-to-market strategies upfront.

😟 Problem

Mid-sized B2B companies routinely commit significant marketing budgets to unproven audience segments and positioning angles. Traditional live A/B tests drain resources.

Conducting manual research takes weeks and requires interviewing busy senior executives. Go-to-market teams waste money on flawed targeting that only reveals its ineffectiveness after months.

💡 Solution

Decisions Lab allows companies to test customer reactions to products and campaigns before spending launch budgets. The platform builds custom AI personas grounded in actual behavioral data.

Teams use the platform to run precise marketing simulations, including:

• Profiling customers using over 25 million behavioral data points from public signals and CRM integrations.
• Comparing positioning angles to identify the strongest messaging for specific audience segments.
• Mapping buying interest against effort-to-convert to optimize resource allocation.
• Running full simulation cycles in hours to provide evidence-backed insights.

Image credit: Decisions Lab

📊 Market size

The primary buyers for this technology are B2B go-to-market and research teams. Globally, there are around 10 million addressable B2B companies across software, fintech, and professional services.

At an average contract value of US$20,000, the total addressable market reaches roughly US$200 billion. The startup targets a near-term serviceable market of 200,000 mid-sized firms, representing a US$4 billion annual opportunity.

🤝 Team

• Louis Cheung. Co-founder and CEO. He is a former Microsoft Hong Kong engineer and previously founded a neuropsychology startup.
• Devansh Gandhi. Co-founder and CTO. He is a former AI researcher at the University of Hong Kong and previously launched a neurotech startup.

🚀 Traction

🏆 Competition

💰 Financials

🚩 Risks