Introducing PaperPin: AI-Powered Surveys with Synthetic Respondents

I've been working on a new project called PaperPin—an AI-powered survey platform that uses synthetic respondents to deliver research insights fast.

The Problem with Traditional Surveys

If you've ever run user research, you know the pain:

• Recruiting takes weeks. Finding the right respondents, screening them, scheduling—it's a logistics nightmare.
• Panels are expensive. Quality respondents cost money, and costs scale linearly with sample size.
• Turnaround is slow. By the time you get results, the product has already shipped or the decision has been made.
• Niche audiences are nearly impossible. Good luck finding 50 CFOs of mid-market SaaS companies who will take your survey.

Traditional survey panels work, but they're slow, expensive, and don't scale well for rapid iteration.

What PaperPin Does Differently

PaperPin replaces human panels with AI-generated synthetic respondents. Here's how it works:

1. Define Your Persona

Specify the demographics, behaviors, and psychographics of your target audience. Want responses from "35-45 year old product managers at enterprise SaaS companies who prioritize developer experience"? Done.

2. AI Simulates Authentic Responses

Advanced LLMs embody your persona with nuanced, contextual understanding. They respond authentically, capturing the voice and perspective of real people in that demographic.

3. Get Results in Minutes

What once took weeks now takes minutes. No recruitment delays, no scheduling, no no-shows.

4. Validated Accuracy

Results are calibrated against real human data. PaperPin achieves 95% correlation with traditional human panel surveys across thousands of validation studies.

What You Can Research

PaperPin supports multiple research campaign types:

• Concept & Product Testing — Test new product ideas, measure purchase intent, validate product-market fit
• Brand & Market Research — Measure brand awareness, evaluate positioning, analyze competitors
• Customer Insights — Track CSAT, measure NPS, identify what drives customer advocacy
• UX Testing — Gather detailed product feedback, evaluate usability, prioritize features
• Ad & Message Testing — Measure ad effectiveness, test messaging variants, compare value propositions
• Pricing Research — Understand price sensitivity, estimate willingness to pay, optimize pricing strategy

Why Synthetic Respondents?

I built PaperPin because I kept running into the same problem: I needed quick feedback on product decisions, but traditional research was too slow and expensive for the pace of iteration I wanted.

Synthetic respondents aren't a replacement for all human research. They're a tool for:

• Early-stage validation when you need directional insights fast
• Rapid iteration when you're testing multiple variants
• Niche audiences that are hard or expensive to recruit
• Budget-conscious research when panel costs don't make sense

The goal isn't perfect fidelity—it's getting useful signal quickly so you can make better decisions faster.

How It Works Under the Hood

Each synthetic respondent is generated based on your cohort definition. The AI doesn't just answer questions randomly—it maintains consistent persona characteristics across the survey, providing both Likert-scale ratings and qualitative explanations.

For example, if you're testing a new pricing page:

1. Define a cohort: "Small business owners, 5-20 employees, using spreadsheets for invoicing"
2. Create your survey with questions about clarity, trust signals, willingness to pay
3. Run the campaign with 100 synthetic respondents
4. Get detailed feedback: ratings, sentiment analysis, and verbatim responses

The results include both quantitative metrics and rich qualitative insights—the kind of "why" explanations that make survey data actionable.

Pricing

PaperPin has a generous free tier:

• Free: 10 respondents per survey, 5 surveys per month
• Plus ($9/mo): 100 respondents, 50 surveys, premium AI models
• Pro ($29/mo): 1,000 respondents, 500 surveys, export reports
• Ultra ($99/mo): 100,000 respondents, 5,000 surveys, priority support

No credit card required to start. You get 500 free credits to try it out.

Try It

If you're building products and need faster feedback loops, give PaperPin a try. I'd love to hear what you think.

The goal is simple: smart surveys, better decisions.