• by Charlene Weisler , Op-Ed Contributor, June 15, 2011

Matt Warta entered the media research field via an unusual route -- from a stint in the venture capital world. From this unique perspective, he saw an opportunity with a new start-up that focuses on one-to-one online polling. Matt is a partner in GutCheck, which promises a focus group sensibility to online research, enabling clients to delve deeply into consumers' motivations and opinions. In an interview, Matt talks about his background, GutCheck, the world of venture capital, privacy issues with online polling and a look forward into the industry for the next few years.

Click here to view the interview. Below is a short excerpt:

CW: How long have you been in the venture capital world? Have you seen changes in the decision-making process for venture firms?

MW: That is a great question. I've been in the business since the mid-1990s -- and like most industries, venture capital industry sees cycles. When I was just getting into the industry we saw the huge boom of the Internet days. The decision-making processes changed quickly then. When you have a lot of exits like that and a lot of money coming back to limited partners and the venture capitalists they fund, it tends to lead into a lot of new entrants into the business, which it did.

Obviously we saw the bust after that, and we've seen ever since then a lot of people getting out of the business because they were not able to generate the returns that their limited partners were expecting. So I think we are probably back to days where the investment-making decisions are more sober than they certainly were back then, and reverting back to an old school notions on how to run that business.

There are always going to be sectors, though, where there is frothiness -- and we are seeing that in the social media market today and location-based services and mobile. There is certainly going to be some fabulous, huge winners in all of that, but the industry has a predisposition to overfund certain sectors as well.

CW: In terms of social media, where do you see the industry headed, particularly in the research sector?

MW: One of the areas where the social media industry has done a good job and has benefited researchers is where it has aggregated individuals in a very specific way, especially when you have a more verticalized approach... Linked In has obviously done a wonderful job of aggregating people from a business to business perspective. And Facebook has done a good job of aggregating people generally, but with the ability to target individuals in a fairly unique and specific way.

So because they have done that -- efficiently aggregated these people -- it provides the research industry easier access to get some really targeted research participants for studies, [which] is certainly benefiting us today.

CW: Let's talk about GutCheck. What exactly does your company do?

MW: We provide insights that you would typically get through other traditional qualitative methods. But the difference is that we do it all online, and we do it literally in a matter of minutes, and typically at less than 10% of the costs of traditional methods.

We built this panel of over 5 million people who we can access instantaneously in a very specific way. So if you want to speak to 25-54 year old women who live in the Northeast and purchased organic foods in the last six months we can find those people very quickly, and then we connect those research participants with our clients in an online format where they can test out product concepts, test out pilots, test out ad copy etc. -- all on our online platform.