Wise spotlight: Veylinx, revamping market research remotely

Veylinx is a Dutch startup, advocating a new way of doing market research. We spoke to CEO and co-founder, Anouar El Haji, who is convinced we need a clean break from the abundance of consumer surveys. “Every self-respecting market researcher knows those surveys are not reliable.”

Bold words, but the young Dutchman practices what he preaches. “Traditional market research has been ‘innovative’ by embracing new technology. When the telephone became part of everyone’s daily life, we saw phone research picking up and the same goes for the widespread adoption of the Internet. At Veylinx, we truly think differently and promise insights that match reality. We let consumers vote with their wallet. They’re invited to an auction, where they’re shown the product, and they’ll be asked how much they’re willing to pay for it. By actually making them put their money on the line, you get a real insight into how much your product is worth on the retail market. Sometimes we’ll send companies back to the drawing board if our auction shows the market is not willing to pay a certain price for their product.”

Going beyond the Low Lands

The startup was originally Anouar’s PhD brainchild. Together with his co-founder, he officially launched Veylinx in its current form in 2015. The company has an international outlook and doesn’t want to limit itself to Dutch national borders. They are currently serving well known giants such as Unilever and Nespresso, and their team is distributed across the world.

Putting money back into employees’ pockets

“We’re based in Amsterdam, but we have employees in countries like Switzerland, the UK and Morocco. Remote working is definitely feasible in this day and age, because we have the tech to enable that. The issue for us was paying out our employees’ salaries in different currencies. In Morocco, we were paying our employees via traditional providers, but it was costly and took a lot of time. We looked into other providers such as Paypal, but it still wasn’t ideal.”

“In the beginning of last year, I discovered Wise. It was quicker than any other solution we’ve tried and the fact that one of the co-founders was Skype’s first employee added extra credibility. We’ve saved thousands of euros by switching to Wise. It has really made it easier to do business internationally. We can now compensate our team members quickly, effortlessly and transparently through complete automation. Wise takes an onerous task off our hands, which completely fits in with our automation strategy.”