The funding round was led by Decibel Ventures with participation from Unusual Ventures and other angel investors.

Strella said the seed investment would drive its mission to ‘make fast, high-quality customer insights accessible to every company’.

The platform, aimed at researchers, product managers, marketers and designers, offers AI-moderated interviews and real-time synthesis. AI is used to streamline the research process, including recruitment and reporting.

Users of the platform can also upload their own previously recorded interviews and pay incentives from the platform. 

Strella is co-founded by Lydia Hylton and Priya Krishnan, who began their careers in UX research and have previously also worked in product and consulting roles. 

“Listening to customers and actioning on their feedback is imperative for both product development and marketing. But in our experiences until this point, it’s been too time-consuming and challenging to gather actionable customer insights,” wrote Hylton and Krishnan in a blog post. 

“The problem is only getting worse as competition gets fiercer and companies move faster. Feeling the impact of this pain point across so many different roles inspired us to solve this problem together – we knew there had to be a better way.”

Companies to have used the platform to date include Duolingo and Ritual.