Ignite Startups: How Chris Hicken Is Reinventing User Research with AI at Theysaid | Ep241

Episode notes

In 2015, waiting six weeks for user research felt normal.In 2026, it feels like sending a fax. Yet most companies still treat feedback like it’s a quarterly ritual. Write the test plan. Recruit participants. Run interviews. Watch the videos. Build the deck. Present the deck. Finally… maybe fix the thing. By then, your competitor has shipped three versions. Chris Hicken has lived this cycle from the inside. As the fourth hire and President of UserTesting.com, he helped scale the company from a few hundred thousand in revenue to nearly $100M and through IPO. He understands the traditional research model better than almost anyone. And now he’s rebuilding it from scratch. The Problem: Nobody Wants to “Do Research” Here’s the uncomfortable truth Chris shares: Nobody wants to do research. They want to know what to fix. Traditional user testing is slow because it was built for a different era: * Slower development cycles * Heavier engineering constraints * Fewer product experiments Today?Junior engineers ship in days using AI-assisted coding tools.Founders test new features weekly.Product teams iterate constantly. But research hasn’t caught up.