How Dialogue sourced 25 startup founders in under 4 days with Terac

Overview

Startup founders are one of the hardest audiences in research to recruit. They are time-poor, allergic to generic surveys, and skeptical of anything that smells like a sales funnel. When Dialogue needed a sample of startup founders for a study, they came to Terac.

The target was a full sample of 25 startup founders. This is the kind of recruit where traditional panels struggle: generic pools can return people who technically check a box but are not the real thing, so quality, not raw volume, was the whole game here.

The approach: a vetted panel plus AI screening

Two things make this kind of recruit possible at speed.

Terac is not a generic survey pool. We aggregate and verify experts, including operators and founders, so that when a study calls for startup founders, we are sourcing from people who actually fit, not hoping the filters catch the right ones.

On top of that, every participant is screened and interviewed by our AI moderator before they count toward the sample. Qualification is not a self-reported checkbox. It is a real conversation. That is what keeps a high-bar audience like founders from getting diluted as the sample fills.

Results: 25 of 25 in under four days

From going live to a complete sample, Dialogue hit 25 of 25 completed interviews in under four days. Quality held across the sample because every participant was screened and interviewed, not just surveyed.

The pipeline stayed full because we were not waiting on scheduling or chasing no-shows. Participants moved from invite to completed interview continuously.

What it unlocked

A niche founder sample, filled fast, without cutting corners on who actually made it through. For an audience this hard to reach, that combination of speed and verified quality is the whole point.