Emporia Research is a B2B market‑research technology company that builds programmatic, LinkedIn‑verified participant sourcing and quality tooling for hard‑to‑reach professional audiences, used by market‑research teams, consultancies and enterprise clients to improve data quality and speed of recruitment.[4][2]
High‑Level Overview
- Mission: Emporia aims to modernize B2B participant recruitment and raise data integrity standards for business and healthcare research by replacing traditional panels with programmatic, verified sourcing and fraud prevention systems.[4][1]
- Investment philosophy / Key sectors / Impact on the startup ecosystem: Emporia is a product company, not an investment firm; its core sectors are B2B market research and (since 2025) healthcare recruitment, and it impacts startups and research teams by giving them faster, cheaper, and higher‑quality access to niche professional audiences for product discovery, segmentation and go‑to‑market testing.[6][5]
- What it builds / Who it serves / What problem it solves / Growth momentum: Emporia builds a self‑serve platform and suite of tools (including Polis, Levada and mrxCore) that programmatically source and verify B2B respondents from a universe of professional records to serve market‑research agencies, management consultancies, Fortune 500s, creative/advertising firms and startups; it solves panel fraud, outdated self‑reported profiles and slow manual sourcing while demonstrating rapid product expansion, venture funding (~$6M raised) and a 2025 push into healthcare markets.[2][4][5]
Origin Story
- Founding and background: Emporia Research was founded in 2020 by Michael Hess, Jake Roeland and Mark Hannan, a team with backgrounds in big data and research from firms including Goldman Sachs, Amazon and Marriott International.[1][4]
- How the idea emerged: The founders started with a data‑first, programmatic sourcing engine—originally focused on expert engagements—that outperformed manual sourcing and revealed a broader industry pain: panels with high fraud and poor data quality, prompting a pivot to build verification and quality‑first recruitment products.[4][1]
- Early traction / pivotal moments: Early product wins included mrxCore and Polis launches, industry recognition as “Best New Product Innovation in Research,” raising over $6 million in venture funding, and case studies showing rapid recruitment (e.g., arranging expert interviews in seven business days).[4][8]
Core Differentiators
- LinkedIn verification and multi‑layered quality checks: Emporia verifies recruited respondents against LinkedIn and other quality/security checks to reduce fraud and ensure respondent authenticity.[1][4]
- Programmatic, non‑panel sourcing: The platform sources from a large universe of professional and firmographic records (reported at 800M records) rather than relying on a static consumer/research panel, enabling hyper‑targeting of niche B2B personas.[2][4]
- Real‑time monitoring and fraud detection: Emporia uses digital fingerprinting, a proprietary “Pori” waterfall fraud detection layer and real‑time engagement tracking to flag professional survey takers and maintain response quality.[1][5]
- Product suite and tooling: In addition to a sourcing engine, Emporia offers a participant portal (Polis), audience allocation tooling (Levada), and mrxCore for research workflows—positioning it as an end‑to‑end solution for recruiting, managing and reporting study performance.[4]
- Speed and cost efficiency: Programmatic recruitment and automated workflows reduce time‑to‑insight (examples show interviews scheduled within days) and aim to lower costs versus service‑heavy healthcare and B2B recruitment approaches.[8][5]
Role in the Broader Tech Landscape
- Trend alignment: Emporia rides the trend toward data‑driven, programmatic marketing and research tooling, where companies replace manual panels with identity‑verified, API‑driven audiences to support rapid product development and evidence‑based GTM decisions.[2][4]
- Why timing matters: Rising concerns about survey fraud, demand for high‑quality B2B insights, and the need for faster customer discovery make Emporia’s verification and automation capabilities increasingly valuable to research teams and startups.[1][6]
- Market forces in its favor: Growth in B2B SaaS, expansion of remote research workflows, and buyers’ willingness to pay for reliable niche samples (including in regulated areas like healthcare) support Emporia’s expansion opportunities.[5][6]
- Influence on the ecosystem: By improving the quality and accessibility of B2B respondent sourcing, Emporia can raise industry standards for data integrity, reduce reliance on low‑quality panels, and enable smaller companies and startups to run rigorous customer discovery at lower cost.[4][6]
Quick Take & Future Outlook
- Near term: Expect continued productization (deeper healthcare capabilities, expanded audience coverage and analytics), enterprise integrations, and scaling of Levada and Polis to capture larger research workflows and compliance needs.[5][4]
- Key trends that will shape its path: Continued focus on fraud prevention, identity verification, tighter regulatory/compliance needs in healthcare, and demand for programmatic research pipelines in product teams and agencies will be central to Emporia’s growth.[1][5]
- How influence might evolve: If Emporia sustains low fraud rates and broad professional coverage, it could become a default sourcing layer for B2B insights—displacing legacy panels for many use cases and enabling startups to make faster, evidence‑backed product and marketing decisions.[2][4]
Quick take: Emporia Research has carved a practical niche by combining verification, programmatic reach and workflow tooling to tackle long‑standing B2B panel problems; its 2025 healthcare expansion and prior product awards and funding indicate credible momentum, and its continued success will hinge on maintaining data quality, scaling audience depth and integrating into research and product ecosystems.[4][5]
