340: Consumer Insights with Field Agent

Summary: Welcome to another great episode of Startup Junkies!   On this episode, hosts Caleb Talley and Jeff Amerine sit down with Rick West and Henry Ho, co-founders of Field Agent, where Rick serves as the CEO and Henry is the Chief Strategy Officer. Field Agent is a tech company built for winning at retail by connecting brands to shoppers across the country. This enables companies to capture in-store information, gather rich consumer insights, and drive product trials completely on demand. Throughout the show, Rick and Henry discuss the solutions Field Agent provides, how to improve interactions with customers, and how to create business ventures that are scalable and repeatable.   Show Notes: (0:57) Introduction to Rick and Henry (1:41) Field Agent’s Backstory (9:33) About Field Agent (14:18) Raising Outside Venture Capital (18:56) What’s Next for Field Agent (26:03) Interacting with Customers (27:56) The Future Utilization of AI (35:16) Scalability and Repeatability (39:13) Northwest Arkansas’s Collaborative Ecosystem (46:27) Advice to Younger Self (49:57) Closing Question   Links: Caleb Talley Jeff Amerine Rick West Henry Ho Field Agent   Quotes: “We built this platform along with a crowdsourcing engine to help our clients understand store conditions like pricing product, distribution, merchandising, etc…We also created it so we would be able to gain everyday shopper insights into their shopping experience.” - Henry Ho, (10:19)   “We’ve created an opportunity or a marketplace for people to be able to come in and see items and actually purchase as opposed to talking to a bunch of different sales people from different companies to try and make something work.” - Rick West, (19:24)   “We think we have the secret sauce to have a services mentality, a sales led growth mentality, and taking the best of that and then productizing it to make it scalable and repeatable.” - Rick West, (35:37)   “I think one of the joys I have as an entrepreneur is not only are we pouring into business entrepreneurs, there’s a whole bunch of social entrepreneurs in Northwest Arkansas that are doing incredible things.” - Henry Ho, (44:51)