Written by Tishan Mills (MASc '04)
Recently the world experienced a shocking upset in a US election that online polls said was a sure win for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Compared to online polls, in-person face-to-face polling avoids many of the inherent biases that the Internet brings and mobile devices are the perfect platform to do those surveys.
Six years ago, my co-founder Ravin Shah (BMath '02) and I, began hatching a plan to build a mobile solution for in-person surveys that would deliver an engaging, fast and friendly experience. In 2012 we launched the QuickTapSurvey product which today has thousands of business customers in over 100 countries and an amazing team of 35 people in our downtown Toronto office. Since our launch, we have bootstrapped our company to profitability with no debt or outside investment.
For me, the journey to becoming an entrepreneur has been a long one. At an early age, entrepreneurship was all around me. My father was a successful entrepreneur having started and sold two of his own companies. While completing my Computer Science (BMath ‘02) and Computer Engineering (MASc ‘04) degrees at the University of Waterloo, I saw the startup boom first hand during the dotcom bubble while working in Silicon Valley and Seattle during my co-op terms. I also had the opportunity to work in research and development teams at Canadian companies where innovation for commercialization was the focus. At UWaterloo, I co-founded the Entrepreneur’s Association of UWaterloo in 2000 which at the time was the largest student run club with thousands of members and tens of thousands in funding, bringing in CEOs of major tech companies for our events as speakers. Each of these experiences led me closer to the founding of QuickTapSurvey.
Unfortunately when I graduated, the dotcom bubble had burst and a stable career at large blue-chip companies like IBM and RBC became an extremely attractive alternative to the risky world of startups. This is where I took cover from a faltering tech economy just like many of my peers. While working downtown I was constantly being surveyed by people still using paper and clipboards. As the mobile revolution gained steam with the launch of the iPad, it became clear that mobile devices were the answer to the drab world of surveys which is why I started QuickTapSurvey.
Today, QuickTapSurvey is used in almost every industry for a variety of use cases including lead capture, market research, customer feedback and audits. QuickTapSurvey takes advantage of what touch screen devices have to offer with features like custom keyboards and the ability to capture signatures easily. It also takes advantage of mobile device capabilities like cameras, geo-location and barcode scanning. It even works offline. As a result it has become the industry leader in mobile surveys.
Mobile devices have changed forever how surveys are conducted, the type of data that can be collected and what insights we can gain from that data and QuickTapSurvey is poised to continue to be a leader in this data collection revolution.
