
## About Tio Magic

[Tio Magic](https://tiomagic.com/) is a VC-backed startup building AI-generated educational content for children. Their platform creates personalized shows that combine entertainment with learning — imagine "a season of Bluey that teaches mathematics." As they prepared for South Park Commons Demo Day, the founding team needed to validate the best way for parents to use their platform.

## The Challenge

Tio Magic faced a common early-stage startup problem: their immediate network wasn't representative of their target market.

Local conversations with Bay Area parents provided valuable early feedback and helped shape the team's initial thinking. But the founders recognized that they had largely exhausted their immediate network, and that this group — while insightful — didn't necessarily reflect the broader American market they were ultimately aiming to serve. With South Park Commons Demo Day approaching, they needed to learn if they were going down the right path.

A critical question emerged: **Were they building a solution that parents were comfortable with? And how could they understand that on a nationwide scale?**

Traditional user research would take weeks and cost thousands of dollars that startups don't have. They needed to recruit parents nationwide, validate their hypothesis, and understand how users actually interacted with their product — something that wouldn't have been possible at their stage until now.

## The Solution

Tio Magic partnered with Persona to conduct 10 AI-moderated interviews with parents across the United States. Each interview explored screen time habits, reactions to the product concept, and user experience with the website.

### Real-Time Adaptive Interviewing

The AI interviewer didn't just follow a script — it adapted in real-time based on participant responses, asking contextual follow-ups the team hadn't anticipated.

> "I remember a specific moment where the AI was kind of weaving its way to a particular question in a really good, smart way. It was smarter than I thought it was going to be and that my team probably could have been, since we just aren't experts in research."
>
> — Marci, Founder, Tio Magic

## The Results

The nationwide research delivered exactly what they needed: validation, direction, and actionable insights.

### Validated Market Demand

STAT: 10 interviews in < 24 hours | Nationwide Parent Research

Tio Magic's interviews with 10 parents completed in less than 1 day. The research confirmed their hypothesis: parents saw the value of the product they were building.

> "I was able to interview a random sample of 10 parents, and it definitely gave us way more conviction that what we're doing is correct."
>
> — Marci, Founder, Tio Magic

![Recruit external participants suited to your study with Persona [border]](/blog/tio-magic-external.png)

### Landing Page Redesign in a Weekend

Beyond validation, the research revealed a critical behavioral insight that led to immediate product changes.

A finding from the interviews was that users were reading about the product on the landing page, but not using it.

- **Before:** Long explanatory content about the product vision
- **After:** Simple call-to-action to create an episode immediately

> "We had a very deep landing page that discussed a lot. We simplified it a lot within a day of viewing this research. Now if you visit our landing page, it's basically just asking you to make an episode."
>
> — Marci, Founder, Tio Magic

### Actionable Insights Without Hours of Video Review

The AI summary report provided everything needed to make decisions without watching hours of recordings.

> "The thing I used the most was definitely the summary output report. This was already generated, and when I saw it, I was like, perfect — this is exactly what I needed."
>
> — Marci, Founder, Tio Magic

![Example of a report generated by Persona[border]](/blog/tio-magic-report.png)

INSIGHT: Early-stage startups don't need expensive, time-consuming research to validate product direction. With the right tools, 10 well-targeted AI interviews can provide the conviction needed to make major product decisions and get ready for fundraising conversations with confidence.

## Why It Matters

For early-stage founders, this case demonstrates how AI-moderated research can answer critical validation questions without the traditional time and cost barriers.

Tio Magic's experience shows that:

- **Representative sampling is now accessible at any stage** — 10 diverse, strategically recruited interviews can provide conviction for product decisions and break out of biases in your local market
- **Speed enables iteration** — With research kickoff to results in hours, teams are able to see live results in their product in days
- **Behavior matters more than stated preference** — Watching how users actually interacted with the site revealed the real opportunity

> "My overall take: this is really good. The value-add is extremely clear."
>
> — Marci, Founder, Tio Magic

CTA_BOX: Ready to validate your product direction? | See how Persona can help you recruit nationwide and get answers in days, not weeks. | Book a Demo | https://cal.com/insights-company/30min


How Tio Magic broke out of their local network to validate their product hypotheses with a nationwide sample before a fundraising milestone

Tio Magic Validated Product Direction with 10 Diverse, Nationwide Interviews - in Less Than 24 Hours, using Persona


## About Otter.ai

Otter.ai is a leading AI-powered meeting transcription and collaboration platform used by millions of professionals worldwide. As a leading AI-native company with over 200 employees, Otter has been at the forefront of applying artificial intelligence to workplace productivity since before the GPT era. Their user research team, led by a sole senior researcher with experience at other AI-native brands, needed to scale insights gathering across the entire organization while maintaining research quality.

## The Challenge

Otter's research team faced a common scaling problem: one researcher supporting an entire 200-person organization with diverse research needs across product, sales, and marketing teams. Traditional 1:1 interviews couldn't scale to meet demand, and the team needed to understand whether their B2B professional user base would actually engage with AI-moderated research tools.

A critical open question loomed:

*Would enterprise B2B customers – busy professionals accustomed to white-glove service – be willing to participate in AI-conducted interviews? Or would they view it as impersonal and decline to engage?*

> "I am the only researcher on the team, and part of the reason I was interested in bringing on AI moderated tools was to be able to do more and bridge the gap. AI-moderated interviewing tools make sense, but it's still an open question how receptive our customers will be."
>
> – Misha Cornes, User Researcher, Otter AI

## The Solution

Otter partnered with Persona to run a study with their B2B users that focused on understanding user expectations around one of Otter's key features.

### Persona's Link Customization

Otter utilized Persona's link customization to create a fork-in-the-road experience: participants could either book a traditional calendar slot with the human researcher OR complete an AI-moderated interview on their own time. This A/B design would reveal genuine user preference rather than forcing adoption.

> "If it's framed as an option — either you can talk to me or you can do this on your own time — I think people might actually choose to do the AI interview."
>
> — Misha Cornes, User Researcher

![Otter.ai research study showing fork-in-the-road option [border]](/blog/otter-fork-in-road.png)

## The Results

The pilot delivered a clear answer to the B2B acceptance question:

STAT: 15 out of 16 | Participants Chose AI Interviews

The results were a landslide. 15 out of 16 participants opted for the AI interview over a human booking. This proved that for B2B stakeholders, the value of their time and the convenience of an immediate session outweighed concerns about missing a traditional "human touch."

> "The findings from the study were pretty definitive. We put that fork in and received all 15 AI interviews. Only two people chose to talk to me (and one of those actually had to cancel)."
>
> – Misha Cornes, User Researcher

This finding challenged the assumption that B2B professionals would resist AI-moderated research. When given a genuine choice – not forced adoption – busy professionals overwhelmingly preferred the flexibility of completing research on their own schedule.

### Quality of the Interaction

Beyond just completion rates, the quality of the interaction was high. The Persona AI's ability to probe deeper than a standard survey was immediately evident:

> "I was impressed by the follow-up questions. It didn't just move to the next script item. It actually probed into why the user felt that way about the AI 2.0 features. The feedback from the AI interviews was also consistent with what I heard in the human conversations."
>
> – Misha Cornes, User Researcher

Otter also observed that AI interviews sometimes encouraged greater bluntness and honesty than human-led conversations – consistent with findings from other Persona studies.

INSIGHT: B2B customers are ready for AI-moderated research. When positioned as a convenient alternative rather than a replacement, professionals prefer the flexibility of asynchronous AI interviews over scheduling constraints.

## Why It Matters

For research teams at scaling companies, this pilot answers a fundamental question about AI-moderated research adoption. Many B2B teams hesitate to adopt AI-moderated research due to concerns around perception and enterprise readiness. Otter's pilot shows that:

- **Choice matters** – something Persona enables with its unique branding capabilities
- **Enterprise participants are open to AI** when expectations are clear
- **AI interviews can meaningfully reduce friction** while preserving insight quality

Persona's unique customization features, which allowed for a fork-in-the-road design, proved especially valuable: rather than assuming user preference, it measured it directly. This approach can help other research teams build internal confidence in AI-moderated methods by demonstrating real user acceptance.

![Persona recruitment settings](/blog/otter-recruitment-settings.png)

> "AI-moderated interviews feel inevitable — especially when you're trying to scale research with one person."
>
> — Misha Cornes, User Researcher

CTA_BOX: Ready to scale your research? | See how Persona can help your team run AI-moderated interviews at scale. | Book a Demo | https://cal.com/insights-company/30min


How Otter.ai validated enterprise customer acceptance of AI-moderated research

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Tio Magic Validated Product Direction with 10 Diverse, Nationwide Interviews - in Less Than 24 Hours, using Persona

94% of Otter’s B2B Users Chose Persona AI Interviews Over Human Calls

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Tio Magic Validated Product Direction with 10 Diverse, Nationwide Interviews - in Less Than 24 Hours, using Persona

94% of Otter’s B2B Users Chose Persona AI Interviews Over Human Calls

Frequently Asked Questions