People Lie — Their Data Doesn't| Renny, Convo | NC S1 E3

In this episode of Nectora Conversations, I sit down with Renny, founder of Convo (getconvo.ai), an AI-powered voice interviewing platform built to scale user and market research. Traditional qualitative research forces companies to choose between depth and scale. You can interview 10–15 people in depth, or survey hundreds with much less context. Convo is trying to change that by allowing researchers to interview hundreds or even thousands of people while keeping humans in control of the research process. Renny explains how they recently interviewed 500+ people in just five days, how AI can make techniques like mobile ethnography dramatically more accessible, and why what people say often differs from what they actually show. But the conversation goes much further than research. We discuss why people don’t care whether your product uses AI — they care about the outcome, why AI should amplify human judgment rather than replace it, the importance of explainability and evidence, whether current LLMs can really lead to AGI, and the risk of becoming too dependent on AI to think for us. We also talk about building a bootstrapped AI startup, hiring, Europe vs. the US startup ecosystem, and the resilience required when a major deal disappears just days before signing. Chapters 00:00 AI should amplify humans 01:18 What is Convo? 03:03 From Miro to founding Convo 04:12 AI + human decision-making 05:10 Scaling qualitative research 06:01 AI-powered mobile ethnography 10:26 500 interviews in five days 10:42 The challenge of building an AI company 12:24 People don’t care about AI — they care about outcomes 13:14 Building trust in AI-generated insights 14:19 When should a founder start hiring? 16:04 Will current AI lead to AGI? 19:04 Is AI hurting critical thinking? 21:50 Europe vs. the US startup ecosystem 27:15 Why building a startup is a marathon 28:43 Losing a major deal days before signing 30:35 Who Renny wants to connect with