In this exclusive CanadianSME Small Business Magazine interview, Addy Graves, Co‑Founder and CEO of Cashew, shares how a decade in customer insight—from Ipsos to leading global research at Critical Mass for clients like Apple—sparked a mission to democratize professional‑grade market research for every business. By embedding proven methodologies into intuitive software and building Cashew from Calgary into an award‑winning, revenue‑tripling enterprise, Addy explains how continuous, human‑centered insight can replace guesswork, sharpen everyday decisions, and give every brand Fortune 500‑level clarity.
Addy Graves is the Co-Founder and CEO of Cashew, a guided research platform that makes professional-grade market insights accessible to businesses of all sizes. With more than a decade of experience in primary research and customer insight, Addy began her career at Ipsos before moving to Calgary, where she led research initiatives across sectors. She later joined global digital agency Critical Mass, heading its research team and supporting high-profile clients, including Apple.
Cashew was built to give smaller and mid-sized businesses the kind of consumer clarity once reserved for Fortune 500 brands. In plain terms, what problem are you solving, and what does that mean for a founder or marketer making day-to-day decisions?
At its heart, Cashew solves a problem every founder and marketer knows too well: making big decisions with limited information. Most small and mid-sized businesses don’t have the time or budget for traditional consumer research, so they rely on gut instinct or wait to see what sticks.
Cashew changes that. We make it easy to understand how real people will respond before you commit time or money. Whether you’re testing a product idea, packaging, or a new message, Cashew collects the feedback, interprets the results, and gives you a clear go/no-go recommendation. It’s the kind of insight Fortune 500 brands have relied on for decades, but now delivered in a fast, affordable, and approachable way.
You can check your assumptions, explore new directions, and make decisions with confidence, grounded in real input from the customers who matter most. For founders, that means less second-guessing, more clarity in day-to-day decisions, and a confidence that’s genuinely empowering.
For many teams, “doing research” still feels slow, expensive, and intimidating. How does Cashew actually work in practice — from typing in a question to getting a clear go/no-go recommendation on a product concept, message, or package design?
For many teams, research still feels like a heavy lift and can be overly technical, so founders often put it off. Cashew is different. It starts with something simple: you type in the question you are wrestling with, even if it feels vague or not like “real research.” We know most people are not market researchers by trade. From there, Cashew guides you step by step, helping clarify objectives, surface hidden assumptions, and shape the smartest path to an answer.
Behind the scenes, the platform combines your inputs with proven research methods and clear strategic options. You can tailor every detail, including the exact customer you want to hear from. Cashew then builds a bias-checked, professionally structured survey in minutes. Most studies finish within a few days, and the platform delivers a clean, actionable report with clear recommendations.
The experience is fast, friendly, and grounded in real human insight, so teams can move forward with confidence.
You’ve spoken about the power of continuous consumer input rather than one-off big studies. Why do you think ongoing insight is becoming the new foundation of modern marketing, and how are your customers using Cashew to make faster, more confident decisions?
I think the shift toward continuous consumer input starts with something simple: founders want to stay close to their customers, and they finally have a way to do that without the heavy lift that research used to require. At Cashew, AI isn’t replacing people. It’s replacing the tedious, expensive parts of the research process that once made insights feel out of reach. The conversations themselves still come from real humans. Never bots. Never synthetic data. We believe this is the right use of AI: speed up the workflow, not the voices you listen to.
Because the process is now fast and accessible, teams can check in with their audience at the rhythm that matches their business. Some use Cashew monthly as creative evolves, others tap in quarterly to test product concepts or sense-check shifts in their category. The cadence changes, but the benefit is consistent.
When founders can reach real consumers regularly and still have budget left to act on the learnings, everything becomes clearer. Decisions feel grounded rather than speculative, and teams can move forward with a steady confidence that comes from truly understanding the people they serve.
Cashew was built from Calgary, outside traditional tech hubs, and has gone on to win Best Enterprise Company at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 while tripling revenue year over year. What has this journey been like, and how have the “no’s” along the way shaped how you build and lead?
Building Cashew from Calgary has been equally challenging and rewarding. We aren’t doing this in a traditional tech hub, and that means things moved differently here. Funding is harder to access, customers are more cautious, and you have to show proof before people believe. We heard “no” far more than “yes,” and there were days it felt like we were pushing uphill with no trail ahead.
But in that friction, something important happened. Being the outsider forced us to be sharper, to build lean, prove value early, and stay disciplined about focusing on customers vs. building something shiny that investors like. The early version of Cashew lived in my living room during naptimes, fueled by conviction more than capital. Those constraints shaped us into a company that could do a lot with very little, and do it fast.
What’s been remarkable is watching Calgary transform over the years. When I moved here in 2012, the city was driven by very different industries. Today, there’s a new wave of builders, people who are creating technologies, companies, and ideas that didn’t exist here a decade ago. And there’s a shared energy that comes from building in a place where nothing is handed to you. It creates community, scrappiness, and this collective sense of let’s show them what’s possible.
That underdog momentum carried all the way to TechCrunch Disrupt, where Cashew won Best Enterprise Company in 2025 and tripled revenue year over year. We didn’t win because we were in the right ecosystem, we won because we built like we had everything to prove.
You’re growing a high-performance tech company while raising two young children. What has entrepreneurship alongside parenthood taught you about resilience, boundaries, and leadership — and what advice would you share with other founders trying to build ambitious companies and full lives at the same time?
Being a founder with two young kids has a lot in common with building a tech company outside a major hub like Silicon Valley. The conditions aren’t ideal, but the constraint becomes the advantage. When you don’t have unlimited time, unlimited capital, or the luxury of endless iteration, you learn to focus fast. Every hour matters. Every decision matters. You move with precision, not volume.
Parenthood forced me to be efficient in a way I never would’ve been otherwise. I don’t have time to overthink, to polish endlessly, or to chase every idea. I have to prioritize what actually grows the business, the work that moves revenue, deepens customer value, and compounds over time. There’s no room for busywork or “someday” projects. That discipline came directly from juggling nap schedules, daycare drop-offs, and board meetings in the same day.
And in many ways, Calgary amplified that mindset. We didn’t have a deep roster of investors or a playbook from a hundred unicorns before us. We built without safety nets which for us has meant listening obsessively to customers, stayed close to the problem, and validating in real-time because we had to. If we’d been building in the “perfect” scenario which maybe some would say is early 20s, no kids, Bay Area funding, we might have moved slower, learned slower, or built in isolation instead of alongside real market demand.
