← All founders
Friends of Kevin
Day 2 · Interview 10 of 221:11 PM · Moscone West

Irosha de Silva & Yasith Jayawardana

Co-Founder & CEO · Co-Founder & CTO, Marketrix

259 million simulated personas for instant user research.

The full conversation

12:29 · every question and answer, tightened. Tap a line to jump to it.

The short version

3:40 · Irosha and Yasith's answers, condensed.

Clips

6 short clips, captioned, in vertical and widescreen. Free to download and repost.

259 million personas to test your ideas

“So the main core of the product is this part called Persona OS that we have built, which has a population of 259 million personas, built on US census data, and data partnerships that we build, and then also real intervie…”

0:41
Download 1080p: 9:16 17 MB · 16:9 19 MB

"Pretend you're Elon" isn't research

“Anybody can tell Claude, pretend like you are Elon Musk and speak like him, right? but it's not going to give you any useful research outcomes. So the main problem we had to initially solve is make sure that they are bei…”

0:25
Download 1080p: 9:16 10 MB · 16:9 11 MB

MVP is dead. Now it's MVD.

“There are so many founders that are just vibe coding everything it like right now it's really easy to build yeah but when it comes to understanding the customers You are 100% right Kevin because now MVP is dead now the m…”

0:22
Download 1080p: 9:16 8 MB · 16:9 9 MB

The hardest pitch: his wife

“Yeah how hard it was it actually uh for him to actually convince you it was just from the beginning No no I was just pretending so so so I think that the hardest thing was not convincing him I just think was convincing h…”

0:49
Download 1080p: 9:16 22 MB · 16:9 26 MB

The lowest point: having to pivot

“We initially pointed these user simulations to end user support, Us being an early-stage startup, not only that we had to convince customers, but we had to convince them to put us in front of their customers straight awa…”

0:45
Download 1080p: 9:16 20 MB · 16:9 22 MB

Jump off a cliff. Build the plane.

“Like building a startup it's more like you jump off a cliff, right? And you build the plane on the fly, right? Literally, right, so you don't have any safety net or anything like that, right? I don't think there's any se…”

0:36
Download 1080p: 9:16 14 MB · 16:9 17 MB