Heatseeker AI, the Australian-founded startup tackling the flaws of traditional market research, has raised US$1.5 million in pre-seed funding to fuel its growth into the US and beyond.
The round was led by San Francisco-based Capital F, with participation from Euphemia, Even Capital, and East End Ventures. The funding will accelerate the company’s efforts to replace outdated research methods with its live behavioural testing platform allowing brands to make decisions based on what consumers do, not what they say.
What is Heatseeker?
Heatseeker is a behavioural testing platform that helps companies make faster, smarter go-to-market decisions based on real buyer behaviour, not opinions. Instead of relying on outdated surveys or focus groups, teams use
Heatseeker to run live experiments with thousands of actual users through platforms like Meta and LinkedIn.
The platform measures what people do, such as clicks, signups, and shares, to identify which messaging, positioning, or product direction drives action. Designed for marketing, growth, innovation, and strategy teams, Heatseeker delivers actionable insights in days, not weeks, helping companies make confident decisions across the entire product lifecycle.
“Today companies are shooting in the dark, guessing at what their customers want,” said Kate O’Keeffe, CEO and co-founder of Heatseeker. “We’re ending the era where companies make multi-million dollar decisions based on what focus group participants claim they want. Our platform delivers what they truly need – authentic buying behaviour, captured in real time, at scale.”
Targeting the US$110 billion global market research industry, Heatseeker positions itself as a single platform for running in-the-wild experiments that reflect actual user behaviour. It’s already being used by over a dozen enterprise clients across the US, Europe, and Australia — including major banks and health insurers, to guide everything from product development to go-to-market strategy. The approach resonated strongly with investors.
“We’ve seen this problem firsthand in our operating careers – companies launching strategies based on shaky data that doesn’t reflect real-world behaviour,” said Margaret Coblentz, Co-Founder and General Partner at Capital F. “Heatseeker’s solution was immediately compelling, but it was the exceptional founding team with the right experience to execute rapidly that drove our conviction.”
The company was founded in Sydney by Kate O’Keeffe (CEO), Fiona Triaca (COO), and Rutger Coolen (CPO), a team with deep global experience at companies including Cisco, Atlassian, and UserTesting. Following in the footsteps of Aussie tech giants like Atlassian and Canva, Heatseeker operates on a dual-continent model: product development remains in Australia, while go-to-market operations are anchored in the U.S. As the broader industry faces growing skepticism around survey panels and focus groups, Heatseeker is betting that observed intent, not claimed preferences will become the new standard for how brands understand their audience.
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