In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Fran Brzyski, Co-Founder & CEO at Hark and Lisa Eng, Head of Marketing at Hark. Fran and Lisa went to college together. Fran ended up on Lisa's couch a lot. Now she runs marketing at the company he founded. That context actually matters for how they talk about Hark.

The argument they make together is a simple one: retention marketers are drowning in metrics and barely talk to their customers. Hark is trying to fix that, not by aggregating your existing reviews and support tickets, but by going out and getting net new zero-party data at specific moments in the customer journey.

Fran has a line that stuck with me. An insight is not an observation. An insight is when you thought a cohort would behave one way and they behaved another. Most feedback tools give you observations. Hark is trying to give you the other thing.

Lisa spent 13 years on the brand side at Spanx, TAR Cosmetics, and Shutterfly before joining. She calls it the dark side. She means it affectionately. Mostly.

👥 Meet the guests

Fran Brzyski, CEO at Hark

Lisa Eng, Head of Marketing at Hark

🎙 Hosted by

Aaron Schwartz, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Orita.ai

🎧 Chapters

[00:00] Two Guests One Podcast: Fran and Lisa From Hark

[00:36] Lisa Eng: 13 Years on the Brand Side Then the Dark Side

[01:34] Fran Brzyski: JP Morgan Six Months Then Never Again

[03:35] What Hark Actually Does and Why Surveys Are Broken

[04:46] Walk Me Through It: What Happens When a Brand Signs On

[07:28] Feedback Is Still Batch and Blast: Lisas Lifecycle Framing

[09:27] The Aha Moment: When Clients See the First Responses Roll In

[11:04] Is There Still a Place for Surveys

[13:37] How Gen AI Changed Harks Product Vision

[15:46] Who Actually Buys Hark and Who Feels the Pain First

[18:35] Why DTC and Not Every Industry at Once

[20:25] From Brand Side to Vendor Side: What Lisa Had to Unlearn

[22:43] Where to Drop Hark First in the Customer Journey

[25:18] When Feedback Cuts Out the AB Test Entirely

[28:36] What Brands Should Not Be Actioning on Feedback

[33:19] The One Unique Asset Every Brand Is Sitting On and Ignoring

🌐 Check out Orita.ai for more episodes of The Orita Podcast, where we sit down with the most interesting operators, marketers, and founders in e-commerce to talk about what’s working right now. Hosted by the Orita team. Orita uses machine learning to help brands send smarter, more profitable marketing, by figuring out who actually wants to hear from you and when.

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