Happy Market Research Podcast

Ep. 225 - Jenny Karubian - Hacks for Building a Successful Market Research Agency

Episode Summary

My guest today is Jenny Karubian, Founder and CEO of Ready to Launch. Founded in 2014, Ready to Launch is a consultancy based in LA that helps firms launch new ideas, products, and technologies that better serve their customers. Jenny has extensive experience as an ethnographic researcher and is a professor of anthropology, sociology and gender studies. Find Jenny Online: LinkedIn Website: https://readytolaunchresearch.com Find Us Online:  Social Media: @happymrxp LinkedIn This Episode’s Sponsor:  This episode is brought to you by HubUx. HubUx reduces project management costs by 90%. Think of HubUx as your personal AI project manager, taking care of all your recruitment and interview coordination needs in the background. The platform connects you with the right providers and sample based on your research and project needs. For more information, please visit HubUx.com. [00:00] On Episode 225, I’m interviewing Jenny Karubian, founder and CEO of Ready to Launch, but first a word from sponsor. [00:09]   This episode is brought to you by HubUx.  HubUx is a productivity tool for qualitative research.  It creates a seamless workflow across your tools and team.  Originally, came up with the idea as I was listening to research professionals in both the quant and qual space complain about and articulate the pain, I guess more succinctly, around managing qualitative research.  The one big problem with qualitative is it’s synchronous in nature, and it requires 100% of the attention of the respondent. This creates a big barrier, and, I believe, a tremendous opportunity inside of the marketplace.  So what we do is we take the tools that you use; we integrate them into a work flow so that, ultimately, you enter in your project details, that is, who it is that you want to talk to, when you want to talk to them, whether it’s a focus group, in-person, or virtual or IDI’s or ethnos; and we connect you to those right people in the times that you want to have those conversations or connections – Push-Button Qualitative Insights, HubUx.  If you have any questions, reach out to me directly. I would appreciate it. Jamin@HubUx.com [01:36]   My guest today is Jenny Karubian, founder and CEO of Ready to Launch.  Founded in 2014, Ready to Launch is a consultancy based in L.A. that helps firms launch new ideas, products, and technologies that better serve their customers.  Jenny has extensive experience as an ethnographer researcher and is a professor of anthropology, sociology, and gender studies. Jenny, thanks very much for joining me on the Happy Market Research Podcast today.    [02:04]   Thanks for having me, Jamin. [02:05] So, you started an agency 2014.  I’ve just got to start the conversation with, “Why in the world did you start an agency?”  Obviously, I’ve started a couple of companies. It’s really hard to start a company. An agency is like, for me, would be considered one of the really hard, hard things because you got to be hunter and you’ve also got to be a farmer and you’ve got to be inv...

Episode Notes

My guest today is Jenny Karubian, Founder and CEO of Ready to Launch. Founded in 2014, Ready to Launch is a consultancy based in LA that helps firms launch new ideas, products, and technologies that better serve their customers. Jenny has extensive experience as an ethnographic researcher and is a professor of anthropology, sociology and gender studies.

Find Jenny Online:

LinkedIn

Website: https://readytolaunchresearch.com

Find Us Online: 

Social Media: @happymrxp

LinkedIn

This Episode’s Sponsor: 

This episode is brought to you by HubUx. HubUx reduces project management costs by 90%. Think of HubUx as your personal AI project manager, taking care of all your recruitment and interview coordination needs in the background. The platform connects you with the right providers and sample based on your research and project needs. For more information, please visit HubUx.com.

[00:00]

On Episode 225, I’m interviewing Jenny Karubian, founder and CEO of Ready to Launch, but first a word from sponsor.

[00:09]  

This episode is brought to you by HubUx.  HubUx is a productivity tool for qualitative research.  It creates a seamless workflow across your tools and team.  Originally, came up with the idea as I was listening to research professionals in both the quant and qual space complain about and articulate the pain, I guess more succinctly, around managing qualitative research.  The one big problem with qualitative is it’s synchronous in nature, and it requires 100% of the attention of the respondent. This creates a big barrier, and, I believe, a tremendous opportunity inside of the marketplace.  So what we do is we take the tools that you use; we integrate them into a work flow so that, ultimately, you enter in your project details, that is, who it is that you want to talk to, when you want to talk to them, whether it’s a focus group, in-person, or virtual or IDI’s or ethnos; and we connect you to those right people in the times that you want to have those conversations or connections – Push-Button Qualitative Insights, HubUx.  If you have any questions, reach out to me directly. I would appreciate it. Jamin@HubUx.com

[01:36]  

My guest today is Jenny Karubian, founder and CEO of Ready to Launch.  Founded in 2014, Ready to Launch is a consultancy based in L.A. that helps firms launch new ideas, products, and technologies that better serve their customers.  Jenny has extensive experience as an ethnographer researcher and is a professor of anthropology, sociology, and gender studies. Jenny, thanks very much for joining me on the Happy Market Research Podcast today.   

[02:04]  

Thanks for having me, Jamin.

[02:05]

So, you started an agency 2014.  I’ve just got to start the conversation with, “Why in the world did you start an agency?”  Obviously, I’ve started a couple of companies. It’s really hard to start a company. An agency is like, for me, would be considered one of the really hard, hard things because you got to be hunter and you’ve also got to be a farmer and you’ve got to be invoicing and the whole rest of it as well.     

[02:35]

So I think some hybrid of “I’m a glutton for punishment” but “I’m also very dedicated” probably why I started the agency.  But, also, really, I’m very much in love with the research process, and I also enjoy working with clients. I enjoy so many aspects of working in the research industry that working for a much larger agency doesn’t give the opportunity to work on projects from end to end the way that it does in an ownership and leadership position.  So I think that that motivated a lot of the reasons why I wanted to start my own business.  

[03:15]   

So I get the “why” you’d want to start it maybe, but there’s risk when you start a business, right?  Not only is it a time thing there’s a lot of money there. What gave you that courage to be able to step out and do it yourself?

[03:28]

Initially,