Nadia Masri, 27

FOUNDER, PERKSY

“I’VE ALWAYS BEEN FASCINATED BY PEOPLE—why they do the things they do, what drives their behavior,” says Nadia Masri. She carried that interest to a summer program at Harvard, where she learned how companies research and struggle to understand their customers.

“I thought to myself, There’s got to be a better way to do this, something more fun and engaging,” she recalls. “And I also thought, I love giving feedback to brands. And I knew that a lot of my friends do, too.”

In 2018, she launched Perksy, a mobile app. Users log in and take surveys with questions from companies like Smucker’s and Pepsi. Businesses pay between $60,000 to $300,000 a year to get their queries in Perksy. (Some companies pay $5,000 to

$10,000 per project.) Users earn points for completing the surveys—Masri says

85% of them finish, compared with the 1% to 3% completion rates that most market researchers get—and can trade those points for gift cards and subscriptions to places like Netflix.

The questions range from “Do you have any pets?” to “How do you feel about Uber as a company?” Another question around a client’s Mother’s Day ad campaign asked people how they felt about their mothers. The answer? Masri is pleased to report: “Overall, people love their mothers.”

—Jenny Rooney and

Katherine Love