The alpha, twice a week
That was 2 min.
Get the best new moments in your inbox every Wednesday and Saturday. It's free.
Check your inbox
We sent a link to your address. Click it to finish signing up. Not there in a minute? Look in spam.
or
Sourcery · 2 min · Oct 26, 2026
An EV message risked hurting the whole category
Joon Sung Park recounts a simulation that found a seemingly winning EV message could lower sales of non-electric vehicles across the market. It shows how testing wider effects can reveal risks a narrow campaign test misses.
Joon Sung Park is cofounder and CEO of Simile.
Molly O'Shea, Host · Founder, Sourcery
Ex-Upfront Ventures investor; has interviewed Alex Karp and Palmer Luckey.
About this segment
Joon Sung Park recounts a simulation that found a seemingly winning EV message could lower sales of non-electric vehicles across the market. It shows how testing wider effects can reveal risks a narrow campaign test misses.
From “The $2B AI Startup Simulating Human Behavior with 85% Accuracy”, Oct 26, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
“This particular messaging, this particular approach towards the market actually shifted people's overall perception of non-electric vehicle and globally actually lowered the sales more in that entire market.”
Takeaways
- Automakers tested messaging for electric vehicles.
- A winning message could damage perceptions of non-EVs too.
- Simulations can surface effects beyond the immediate campaign.
In this episode
Full episode- 8:52Simile tested digital twins against real people2:17
- 11:22What people do can differ sharply from what they say2:22
33:31An EV message risked hurting the whole category2:23
- 5 more moments in the full episode
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 33:35
One of the questions I had was, what is the most expensive mistake similarly helped a customer avoid. Yeah. What is it? So there's actually an interesting study that we actually ran. This technically was before a simile, but I still mention it because I think as an example, I think this is quite interesting. We worked with a few automobile companies and one of them, and in fact all of them were interested in electric vehicles. Should we do it? When should we do it? How should we do it? That was the top of their mind for every single electric vehicle company that we've met. And these were some of the largest players in the field.
- 34:25
And one of the simulations that we ran actually had to do with can we predict or can we simulate how people would react to different messaging for the entry of new electric vehicle in this particular market and how can we optimize that messaging so we convey our values to our customers. So there was a strategy that said, okay, this is a clear winner. Fantastic. We're ready to go and this is good. What was interesting though is this actually had downstream implication.
- 34:57
This particular messaging, this particular approach towards the market actually shifted people's overall perception of non-electric vehicle and globally actually lowered the sales more in that entire market. Jeez. So, and obviously this was run in studies and this ended up becoming an input, but this was, again, this wasn't a part of a simile back then. But it's these kind of findings that I actually find to be quite interesting.
- 35:28
These are the findings that are not just narrowly focused on one particular question, but it's more generalizable, but you're looking at the entire field holistically. Simulation allow you to explore that. And when it's at its best, it actually should surface insights that's counterintuitive, that's surprising. So that's really the goal and that's really the value.