Stop Chasing Average...
To Find Game-Changing Insight, You Need to Look for Game-Changing People: The Rebels, the Outliers, the Freaks. So, Who Are You Learning From?
The Insights That Will Help You Outthink, Outmaneuver, and Outgrow Are Hiding in the Hearts and Minds of Passionate Outsiders That Traditional Research Casts Aside.
Ready for What’s Next?
“Our work requires deep exploration of a subject area to synthesize unique brand relevant opportunities for future growth and to enhance our guests lives. David & Faster Horses’ ability to learn across multiple disciplines, get hands on and synthesize with a keen eye, enabled us to move quickly from exploration to opportunity identification.”
Joe Santry, Senior Director, Futures Innovation, lululemon
Traditional research traps you in an echo chamber of familiar voices saying Get me out of this f*cking focus group type things. In today’s market, the riskiest thing you can do is limit your own potential with conventional research that is only capable of delivering you conventional thinking.
The Old Way
Cookie-Cutter Recruitment
Low quality respondents, who have nothing better to do at 3pm on a Thursday, cycle through your research giving you answers they think you want to hear so they can make a few bucks.
Backward-Looking Research
Studies that hopelessly chase growth and innovation through conversation with everyday consumers who embody the status quo. Insights built only through the lens of past experiences.
Shallow Exploration
Familiar and surface-level answers from respondents who have no meaningful connection to your topic of interest. No passion, and no skin in the game. No depth of perspective or expertise.
Decoupled From Reality
Messaging & strategies shaped in calm, controlled settings, only to unravel when they collide with real-world tensions and the vocal few who drive online conversation and public opinion.
The New Way
Obsession-Driven Recruitment
Authentic and passionate people, hand-picked because your topic isn’t just something they occasionally think about - it’s what they obsess over and have built their lives around.
Future-Focused Research
Insight built from people who are actively shaping tomorrow instead of passively consuming the present. Anticipate opportunities before the mainstream even sees them coming.
Deep-Dive Dialogue
A collision of informed perspectives. Quickly get right to the heart of things, as respondents collaborate and explore your burning questions from their diverse vantage points.
Built For Today’s Environment
Anticipate resistance, stress-test your messaging, and launch with a clear-eyed view of the real world. Strategies informed by the voices and tensions that actually shape the narrative.
Market Research Meets Strategic Foresight
Navigate Thorny Challenges
Explore your critical yet out of reach questions from diverse and highly-informed perspectives that provide you with deeper understanding.
Anticipate Change
Forward-looking insights that allow you to anticipate and capitalize on emerging trends before they become mainstream.
Proactively Defend Your Reputation
Surface hidden tensions and outlier perspectives. Design proactively with the loud minority in mind. Before they derail your messaging, launch, or license to operate.
Command Attention
Rally your team and capture the attention of your internal stakeholders with powerful stories from compelling and authentic respondents.
Winning Strategies
Arrive at stronger innovation opportunities, and develop better-informed strategies that you can confidently execute in market.
We built Faster Horses for teams who want research that leads, not lags.
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People & Culture
We study how behaviour, identity, and belonging are actually shifting in the real world, going beyond the surface-level generalizations of traditional research.
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Brand Strategy
We guide brands toward what’s next, helping them define positions that are sharp, timely, and culturally fluent.
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Innovation & Foresight
We uncover the passions, tensions, and rituals shaping future demand, using them to fuel novel product, category, and experience strategies.
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Development & Evaluation
We help brands shape work that resonates, taking into account how opinions are formed, and how narratives travel, in today’s media landscape.
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Research Recruitment
We partner with brands, agencies, and other researchers to recruit people who have skin in the game, and aren’t just showing up for the gift card.
Our team has had a hand in work that has shaped some of the world’s most recognizable brands and companies.
Whether you’d like to learn more about Faster Horses, or you’ve got a specific project in mind, we’d love to hear from you.
Hey, I’m David. I started Faster Horses because I couldn’t keep doing it the old way.
After 15 years in agencies and consultancies, I started to feel like research had drifted too far from the real world. It was doing the opposite of what it was meant to: Flattening complexity, ignoring uncomfortable truths, and reinforcing old assumptions. So I left, and started doing things differently.
I remember the moment that did it for me. For the fifth time in a year, the same respondent showed up in a group I was moderating. Five different brands. Five different categories. I remember thinking: How could this one average Joe possibly be worth this much time and money?
Faster Horses is what happened when I chose curiosity over cynicism. Creativity over caution. And committed to honouring the eccentricity and weirdness that research too often smooths into something safe and palatable.
The world is more complex and more interesting than most research gives it credit for. The future belongs to those brave enough to actually explore and try to understand it.
If any of that hits home, I’d love to hear from you.