Elliot Kim, CEO of Checkbox, explores why online survey tools are now largely a solved problem—and why the real differentiator lies in the company behind the product. He explains how Checkbox is building a people-first, purpose-driven business focused on trust, transparency, and customer-centric policies.
Elliot also discusses Checkbox’s broad range of research use cases, and explains how its combination of cloud and on-premise deployment options gives organizations greater control over sensitive data and supports data sovereignty requirements.
The conversation also examines the challenges of modern B2B research, from identifying “dark” prospects outside CRM systems through awareness and perception surveys, to reaching niche audiences with small sample sizes. Elliot shares how persistence, creativity, trusted research panels, and aligned incentives all play a role in driving honest, high-quality responses.
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About Checkbox
Checkbox is a research-grade survey platform trusted by enterprises and public-sector organizations since 2002. With both SaaS and self-hosted deployment options, Checkbox gives teams full control over their data while making it easy to design, distribute, and act on research at scale.
About Elliot Kim
Elliot Kim is the CEO of Checkbox and an engineer at heart with two decades of building and scaling products. Before leading Checkbox, he spent years growing engineering teams and developing people-focused cultures in high-growth environments. He’s driven to solve real-world problems through ethical research, done right.
Time Stamps
00:33 Elliot’s Career Journey
02:43 Why Another Survey Tool
07:49 Who Uses Checkbox
09:17 Awareness and Perception
11:43 Reliable B2B Research
15:05 Getting Honest Answers
17:24 On Premise and Trust
20:39 Running Better Studies
Quotes
“I love solving problems, that’s why I’ll always be an engineer at heart. I feel like I’ve traded satisfaction from my own personal accomplishments for the satisfaction I get from the team’s accomplishments.” Elliot Kim, CEO at Checkbox
“By the time someone enters your CRM, they’ve already made most of their decision — and analytics can’t really tell you about the people who didn’t.” Elliot Kim, CEO at Checkbox
“Marketing is about serving people with honesty and connecting not with every person in the world, but finding the right people and the right audience.” Elliot Kim, CEO at Checkbox
Follow Elliot:
Elliot Kim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliotykim/
Checkbox website: https://www.checkbox.com/
Checkbox on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/checkbox-com/
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
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Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547
Transcript: Interview with Elliot Kim at Checkbox
Speakers: Mike Maynard, Elliot Kim
Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today.
Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. I’m Mike Maynard, and today I’m joined by Elliot Kim. Elliot is the CEO of Checkbox. Welcome to the podcast, Elliot.
Elliot: Hi Mike, thanks. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Mike:
It’s great to have you on the podcast. We’d like to start by getting you to give a little bit of background about yourself and your career. So, can you tell us about your career and how the opportunity to run Checkbox came about?
Elliot: Yeah, more than happy to share. I began my career in software engineering. That’s really where I found my first passion, and I first made a transition to leadership at a company that was going through hyper growth called Optimizely.
I built and led a people function while we were going through hyper growth and a lot of change, and I have to say I’ve been really fortunate throughout my career. A lot of it can be attributed to crossing paths with amazing people who opened doors and guided me.
One such person is a friend of mine named Matt Althouser, who I met at Optimizely. He later co-founded a company called Polychrome that purchased Checkbox, and long story short, they asked me to join to help refound the company, and I said yes.
Mike: That sounds great, and I’ve got to ask, because I started my career as an engineer as well — an electronics hardware engineer. So, how do you find being a CEO? Do you enjoy it more, or do you sometimes hanker for those days of engineering?
Elliot: This is a question my wife likes to ask me. Just when I think, “Oh, I’m not going to hear this question again,” she’ll wonder again. I think some of it has to do with the burden of responsibility that she sees. She just wonders, “Do you miss not having that at times?”
I love solving problems — that’s why I’ll always be an engineer at heart. And there are definitely aspects of engineering that I miss. There’s a concreteness, and it’s very simple: either your code works or it doesn’t, and there’s a satisfaction in having that clarity.
But right now, what I enjoy most in my role is something you find in any leadership role. I enjoy seeing my team succeed. I enjoy watching individuals grow, and I feel like I’ve traded satisfaction from my own personal accomplishments for the satisfaction I get from the team’s accomplishments, and I wouldn’t trade that back.
Mike: Oh, that’s really cool. And I guess, as a CEO, you’ve always got problems to solve, so there’s still a bit of engineering.
Elliot: Yeah, all the time.
Mike: I’ve got to ask this, and I apologize, but Checkbox is an online survey tool, and we’ve had a couple of people with similar products on the podcast. Do we really need another online survey tool? What does Checkbox do that’s different?
Elliot: Mike, that’s a very fair question, because there are a lot of options out there, and at least for now, no one’s really struggling to find software because it doesn’t exist.
There are a lot of options out there that have the full feature set that a researcher would be looking for, and so I think of this as largely a solved problem, with AI changing the equation. We’re probably going to see a different chapter coming up, and probably coming sooner than later.
But for the time being, of the software that’s available, there’s not one that’s an order of magnitude better than all of the others, and there’s probably going to be an increase in the amount of information that we need to gather from people, so surveys are the main tool in the field of human subject research, and it’s likely to stay that way for a while.
If the software is more or less equal and you can find multiple options, I think the real difference then is the company behind the product.
We’ve heard recently a lot about OpenAI and Anthropic in the news, and it’s not always about their technical capabilities or their product or their features. Actually, recently it’s been a lot about the type of companies, the type of decisions that their leadership is making.
So, you might wonder, as a user, why do I care? Well, if you interact with sales or support or have to do a renewal, then you’ll definitely care. But even if you never speak to anybody at the company, you’re affected by the terms and conditions, you’re affected by the price and the massive amounts of data that they’re collecting.
Those decisions might be fine today, but priorities change within companies. There are people — real people — behind the decisions that are being made.
Sometimes I have to ask: will it stay okay for the future, or is there a chance that things are going to change?
So yeah, I think taking a look at the company behind the product is something worth spending some time on.
Mike: That’s fascinating. I think that’s a really good point, and I’ve certainly seen it with SaaS pricing. We’ve used some products with amazing support that just want you to succeed, and others just seem to want to take your money.
So I guess there are areas where Checkbox is unique because of your culture and the way you approach things. Can you give us an idea of where you think Checkbox is different and actually excels?
Elliot: Sure. I think part of it starts with what I was thinking about when I joined Checkbox.
I have worked at VC-backed companies for the better part of more than a decade, and Checkbox was different because we’re not backed by a VC and we’re also not owned by private equity.
When the financing changes, the timelines change, the pressures change, and I really saw an opportunity to do things differently than what I’d seen at other software companies.
We’re very intentional about being people-first and purpose-driven, and that’s important because we believe that we operate for more than just profit and growth.
I think a lot of companies have to grow at all costs, and there are a lot of trade-offs that they make that, in the end, the users are the ones losing out on.
So we’re trying to be different.
We’re in the middle of preparing for our B Corp application. We’d love to be B Corp certified, not because having that changes anything — I think it’s just a reflection of who we want to be as a company, the way that we’re going to operate, and a standard way to communicate that externally.
I’m going to borrow some of their wording, but we use Checkbox as a business as a force for good, so not just for profits, but we want our impact to be more good in the world.
The way that affects our users is that we really care about the research that’s being done. We aim and work to be very researcher-friendly. You’ll experience that in the interactions you have with our team, whether it’s sales, marketing, support, or when we’re working on our contracts and terms.
Something that we decided to change since I joined is the cancellation policy.
If you ask, “Why does a software company need to know 90 days before the end of your contract whether you’re renewing or not?” — they really don’t, but it’s in their benefit.
So they say, “Oh, I’m sorry, you missed the 90-day window, so you’re automatically renewed and you have to pay for another year.”
At Checkbox, you can cancel the last day of your contract. We don’t have these artificial limitations that are good for us and bad for our users.
Mike: I love that. I think that’s a great example.
Let’s pivot a bit and talk about your users. You mentioned that you’re all about doing research, and obviously surveys are basically a research tool.
Who’s actually using Checkbox, and what problems are they solving with the tool?
Elliot: Yeah, Checkbox is quite general in that it can be used for a lot of use cases, and that’s what we see with our customer base.
A very large percentage of our user base is in healthcare, and it makes a lot of sense because we have two versions of our product.
One is the cloud-hosted version — it’s on our servers, it’s in the cloud, similar to what other companies offer.
Then we’re one of the very few companies that offers an on-premise version as well.
With the on-premise version, you install it on your own servers. You have absolute control over the data. Literally nobody at Checkbox can ever even look at your data.
That’s something that very few companies offer.
Anybody that is data-sensitive — whether for compliance reasons, regulations, customer demands, or simply because they want to respect survey respondents — they look to us.
That can be market research, healthcare, governments, law firms, financial institutions. The range is quite broad.
Mike: That’s great.
I’m sure we’ll go back to this ability to control the data later, but I want to dig a little bit deeper into Checkbox and really what it means to the people listening to the podcast.
Most of the listeners are going to be in B2B marketing. They’re going to be marketing some sort of complex product.
What is it they get from perception and awareness studies that is really unique and lets them be customer-led?
A lot of people talk about customer-led, but then really make all the decisions internally. So how do surveys help businesses be better businesses and better serve their customers?
Elliot: That’s a great question. I have a feeling that many of your listeners will be able to answer this question way better than I can, but I think this is an important point, so I’ll share my take.
The data that you’ve collected is wonderful, but it’s for a subset of your population.
Remember who’s actually included in your data. This is true for all studies. You have to keep that in mind.
Who are you sampling?
There are people that have engaged with your brand. They’ve either visited your website, filled out a form, or they’re using your product. They’re already on your radar.
But it’s not hard to imagine there are way more people out there who haven’t been using your product and you don’t have any clue that they’re there.
There’s a flaw called the streetlight effect, where if you happen to drop your keys in the middle of the night, you’re going to look under the street lamp because that’s where you can see.
But what happens if your keys are somewhere in the dark and there’s no light there?
This is kind of what happens with the data that you’ve collected. You have no idea about the people that are in the dark.
Research shows that about 70% of the purchasing process for B2B buyers happens before they’ve ever engaged with the seller.
That means there’s a lot of information that you can glean from there, and this is where surveys can help.
With awareness surveys, you’re trying to figure out who in the general population has heard of you.
With perception surveys, maybe somebody came across your company but didn’t shortlist you or didn’t consider you further and just discarded you as an option.
The perception survey would help you understand that process and their decision-making there.
By the time someone enters your CRM, they’ve already made most of their decision, and analytics can’t really tell you about the people who didn’t.
Mike: I love that, and I mean, I think we’ve all seen those surveys from companies that say, “Everybody loves us. We got our sales team to ask our top 10 customers, and they all said we’re great.”
But it doesn’t give you the information about the people who are not buying.
I think companies do this because actually it’s really hard to do B2B research. The samples can be small and very hard to reach.
So how do people overcome this? And more importantly, how do you get data that’s reliable? Because sometimes these samples are quite small and feel very unreliable.
Elliot: Yeah, that’s a very common and very real problem that researchers have to work around, and usually budget is the first constraint that gets in the way.
It can be very expensive to get the quality and quantity of data that you need, and sometimes just the amount of obtainable data out there is finite. There’s not an infinite amount of people that you can go and ask.
For me, the burden of using the data responsibly lies with the one who’s interpreting the data.
I think they have to reflect on what their aim is and what they’re trying to achieve.
Obviously, if you’re looking for something to support a bias that you already have, then you can kind of pick and choose the data.
It doesn’t matter whether you have complete data or just a small sample of the data — you can still find the data that supports you.
That responsibility is with the decision-makers and the ones performing the analysis to be aware of those biases and really look for the answer.
They also need to realize there are limitations in the data they have, and there may be caveats to the conclusions that they draw.
You have to be careful, and you have to apply your findings appropriately.
But yeah, this is a very real problem with any research study.
Mike: And also, I loved your analogy — the streetlight analogy — of some of your potential customers being in the dark.
On a practical level, if you’re trying to do research that really is valid and representative, are there any really good ways you’ve seen of reaching people who aren’t already fans of the brand?
Elliot: Yeah, I think there are two pieces of advice that I would give.
One is that you have to remember the people you’re trying to reach are humans, so persistence goes a long way.
Second: creativity.
No one likes to be sold to. No one likes to be tricked into anything.
I think it’s helpful to connect with people and maybe even share why you’re trying to collect this information and what it’s going to be used for.
Connecting with people and being creative in your approach are generally good things to do.
The second thing is that there are specialized panels that have already built up their networks and recruitment processes.
This can be expensive, but it’s often the way to get the results that you need.
You do have to be careful which panel specialists you go to because they’re not all equal.
Depending on which audience you’re trying to reach, some will be better and some will be worse.
Finding the right fit for your study and your audience is very important.
Mike: I think that’s a great point.
When you’ve got those people, though, you then have this question of whether respondents are going to tell the truth.
We’ve all seen research where people give a very clear explanation of the logical process of how they decide to buy a product, and yet we know the most effective tagline in B2B is “Nobody ever gets fired for buying IBM,” which is completely emotional.
How do you encourage respondents to give honest answers rather than the politically correct answers they feel they should be giving?
Elliot: Respondents again are humans, and they need to feel like their incentives or interests are aligned with what you’re trying to achieve.
It would probably be foolish for someone filling out a survey to answer honestly if giving away information would actually harm them in the end.
The purpose of research is to understand something that hopefully helps serve the respondents.
I’ll use a medical example.
If somebody is using a medical device, it’s in their best interest to answer honestly so that the results and findings are accurate and helpful for them and others in the future.
I think you can see similar analogies in the B2B space as well.
Safety is a big concern for survey respondents, and that might be one reason they’re not honest.
Credibility is absolutely paramount for these studies.
Respondents need to know that their data is going to be used ethically, handled with care and security in mind, and not leaked.
Finally, they need to know it’s not going to be distorted.
Credibility to the researcher gives credibility to the research study.
Tooling is one of the ingredients that’s important.
If the people involved say all the right things, but then you look at the URL and the company has a poor reputation, it undermines all the hard work that you’ve done.
Selecting the right tooling, having the right messaging, and building the right reputation are all important.
Mike: That’s interesting, and you talk about data security, which brings us back to this point you highlighted earlier.
Checkbox has chosen to offer an on-premise solution, which I’m not aware of anybody else doing.
How does that impact the way customers look at Checkbox, particularly enterprise businesses that are very concerned about data sovereignty?
Elliot: Checkbox has been around for over two decades now, and I think a lot of the reason we have an on-premise version is linked to our history.
We have customers who have been with us for 15 or even 20 years.
There’s already trust there with those customers.
If you’re a brand doing internal studies, an on-premise solution means you can host it on your own server and use your own domain.
Users immediately see that this is on your company’s website and not being redirected to a third-party site.
That’s a signal that helps build trust.
More importantly, it signals to users that you’re willing to put in extra effort instead of always taking the convenient route.
When you care about the details, it speaks to how you handle the things users don’t see.
Mike: I love that, and I think that’s fascinating.
That data sovereignty issue doesn’t just benefit your customers who own and control the data — it benefits survey respondents too and probably gets better data in the end.
Do you think people sometimes underestimate the importance of data sovereignty?
Elliot: Yeah, I think the whole issue of data has been evolving over the past decade.
There was data privacy, then data security, and now we hear more about data sovereignty.
A lot of things are still hypothetical dangers regarding data governance, but they’re also very real threats.
Hopefully we don’t have to find out what the worst-case scenarios are, but it’s good to understand the risks so you can act appropriately.
I hear more companies thinking about this these days, especially with geopolitics and countries asserting different rights over data.
It’s likely to change over time, so it’s worth understanding now and setting yourself up properly so you’re not forced into reacting later.
Mike: Let’s switch tack again and get a bit tactical.
If somebody listening is looking to run their first proper perception study in B2B, do you have any tips or steps people should follow to make sure they get it right?
Elliot: I highly recommend working with someone experienced.
All of us have biases, whether we’re aware of them or not, and those biases will color the data, the design of the study, and the interpretation of the results.
My key advice is to start with someone who has done this before.
It’s also very important to have clear expectations about what you’re trying to achieve.
You have to make sure you’re studying something where realistic results are possible.
Some studies are doomed from the start because you can’t collect enough information or the data quality won’t be good enough.
You also have to be honest with yourself.
Are you genuinely looking for an honest result, or are you trying to sway a decision-maker or justify funding?
Those motivations can subtly undermine the credibility of the research.
Mike: That makes sense, and I love the advice of not starting a project that’s doomed to failure.
Are there other mistakes people can make along the way?
Elliot: With any human response survey, context is incredibly important.
If you’re working with a third party, they may not fully understand your audience or environment.
A good researcher will try to gather as much context as possible from you, but it’s your responsibility to provide accurate information.
That helps them build better questions and structure the study appropriately.
Context is probably the number one thing to keep in mind.
Mike: Elliot, it’s been fascinating talking to you about research.
Before we go, we’ve got three quick-fire questions we like to ask.
The first is: is there a B2B marketing campaign you’ve seen recently that you thought was particularly great?
Elliot: I don’t think this is actually a campaign because it doesn’t really have a defined start and endpoint.
It’s more about a company brand.
The company is 37signals.
I was fascinated with them over 15 years ago because they famously decided they didn’t want to grow past a certain point.
They were wildly successful and profitable, but they intentionally chose not to grow headcount and even turned away customers who got too big for them.
They said, “We are building tools for small businesses, and if a customer becomes too big, we’re not going to change our roadmap or our ethos.”
Instead, they’d recommend those customers go to competitors.
That’s a trade-off many companies are unwilling to make.
There’s often growth for growth’s sake, and it becomes an endless hamster wheel.
I really appreciated the intentionality behind the audience they wanted to serve.
Mike: I love that.
They had a value and really followed through on it, and I think that’s why people believed in them.
Elliot: Exactly. They started with a great product.
You can’t cover an inferior product with branding and expect good results.
They invested heavily in the product and then built a brand around it that people identified with.
Choosing 37signals said something about the customer, not just the tool.
Mike: Second question: what’s the best marketing advice someone has given you?
Elliot: I haven’t gotten a lot of marketing advice in my career because of my engineering background, but one idea from the book Conscious Capitalism really helped me.
The authors described marketing as a way for a purpose-driven business to connect with people who genuinely value that purpose.
That was a mental unlock for me because I had negative associations with marketing.
Sometimes there’s overt persuasion or bending the truth.
But reframing marketing as serving people honestly and finding the right audience — not just making noise for everyone — completely changed my perspective.
Mike: That feels like a quote about great marketing rather than marketing generally.
And finally, what advice would you give to a young person just starting a career in marketing?
Elliot: This is a question I’ve actually asked marketers recently.
One answer that stuck with me came from my cousin, who’s a market researcher.
His father framed marketing and market research as fundamentally being about understanding people — their needs, motivations, and behavior.
If you genuinely want to serve people by understanding them and meeting those needs, then marketing can be a very rewarding and beneficial field.
Mike: That’s a great bit of positive advice to end on.
If people want to learn more about Checkbox, where should they go?
Elliot: Our website is checkbox.com.
Feel free to reach out to me at elliot@checkbox.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.
We’d love to hear from you.
Mike: Thanks, Elliot. It’s been a great conversation.
Elliot: It’s been my absolute pleasure. Thank you.
Mike: Thanks so much for listening to Marketing B2B Tech.
We hope you enjoyed the episode, and if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast application.
If you’d like to know more, please visit NapierB2B.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.
