Motives

Motives is a team of AI agents that runs qualitative consumer research for brands, moderating and analysing video interviews to test concepts and understand consumer preferences in hours rather than weeks. Customers describe their research questions in chat, and the AI builds a research plan, recruits participants from a global panel, conducts video interviews up to 60 minutes long, and delivers an analysed report with actionable insights within about 48 hours. Based in London, it was part of Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch. It was co-founded by CEO Sean Conley and CTO Sam Stoll, whose team has backgrounds at Google, Palantir, Dataiku, and TrueLayer, and serves major consumer brands in the US and Europe.