Deep Research: From $400 Startup Budget to $15K Months Selling Customer Research

Who built it, and what they built

Deep Research is a boutique market research agency founded by Abhishek Kumar. It works with early-stage startups validating ideas and with established businesses hunting for their next growth move, running customer conversations over 4-8 weeks and turning them into buyer personas, messaging, positioning, feature priorities, and marketing guidance.

The agency launched in January 2023 and averages $10,000 in monthly revenue, with its best month so far at $15,000. Prices have been raised twice as the service kept expanding around client needs.

Where the idea came from

Abhishek moved from India to the UK in December 2019 for an IT job, then spent the pandemic lockdown deep in business Twitter. He built a TikTok page past 130k followers by repurposing YouTube content, then used that audience as leverage to book entrepreneurs on a podcast he started to grow his network.

The podcast and a newsletter never took off, but they led to freelance work of every kind, from dropshipping to writing code. Research was the work he enjoyed most, so he began cutting side projects and looking for something full-time.

A customer research gig connected him with Sophia at the Ignore No More agency, who stayed a client for almost two years and became a mentor he could message for templates, pricing advice, and outreach help. Seeing demand for startup research up close convinced him to start his own agency, and a six-month stint back in India cut his burn while he made the jump.