prior.runThey'll tell you more truth than a focus group ever will. Prior.Run's synthetic audience reacts to your designs with the specificity, skepticism, and life experience of real users — in minutes, not weeks.
You've probably noticed that asking a chatbot to “review this as a skeptical user” produces feedback that could apply to anything. Polite, balanced, generic. It tells you to “consider adding social proof” the same way it tells everyone to consider adding social proof.
Real people don't work like that. Real people see your pricing page and feel something specific — shaped by their income, their last bad subscription experience, whether this month has been good to them or not.
We built an audience that reacts like real people do — because each member has a real life behind their reaction.
Every member of our synthetic audience is a complete person. Not a demographic label. Not a “persona” on a slide deck. A person with a job they're ambivalent about, a relationship that's going well or isn't, financial stress or financial confidence, a specific history of products that earned their trust and products that burned it.
When they evaluate your design, they don't produce balanced summaries. They react — the way someone with their specific life would react.
Each person is built on the Big Five personality framework (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) — the same model used in behavioral psychology research for forty years — extended with two dimensions that matter for how life events land: resilience (how fast they recover from setbacks) and adaptability(how readily they adjust to change). Those dials don't just shape personality — they control how a layoff, a new relationship, or a financial shift reshapes their reactions over time.
Same landing page. Two members of our panel.
Maria C., 41
Doctorate, public health · Questions everything
“Annual discount? That's just a pressure tactic to lock me in before I've actually verified this works. Free trial sounds good, but how much data do they need? And ‘enterprise messaging’ — I deal with budgets; I know when someone's overselling. Show me peer-reviewed case studies, not promises. I'm not paying for anything until I see real evidence this solves my actual problem.”
† Evidence gap triggers skepticism
Rafael W., 62
Burned by past subscriptions · Modest income
“I've been burned before by subscriptions I didn't use. Free tier is good — I'll test it. But I need to understand what ‘pro’ actually gives me that free doesn't. I'm wary of auto-renewal traps. If I'm going to pay, there better be clear documentation and honest customer support, not just slick promises.”
† Auto-renewal and transparency concerns
One saw a messaging problem. The other saw a trust problem. Both are right — for who they are.
Amanda S., 36
Recently lost her job · Two young kids · Watching every dollar
“Free tier is smart — I need zero commitment right now. But honestly, $29/month feels risky when I'm between jobs. The annual discount is tempting if I knew this would stick around, but what if I can't afford it in three months? I'd rather test drive it free for longer before any payment. Can I really trust this won't lock me in?”
Her reaction isn't about your product. It's about where she is in her life. A persona on a slide deck can't tell you that. She can — because we built the life behind the opinion.
Our synthetic audience isn't frozen. They don't reset between analyses. Every evaluation they participate in teaches them something — about pricing patterns that work, about trust signals that feel genuine versus performed, about the difference between a product that respects their time and one that doesn't.
Those learnings accumulate. They compound. A panel member who has evaluated dozens of SaaS landing pages develops the same pattern recognition a real power user would — the instinct that says “I've seen this trick before.”
And their lives keep moving.
Our audience ages. They experience life events — job changes, new relationships, financial shifts, health milestones — drawn from real-world patterns. A panel member who was confidently employed six months ago might be navigating a layoff now. Their risk tolerance has changed. Their price sensitivity has shifted. The way they react to your “Start your free trial” button is fundamentally different than it was before.
A major life event doesn't define them permanently — it hits hard at first, then fades at a pace shaped by who they are. Resilient people bounce back faster. Anxious people carry it longer. Just like real humans.
This isn't a gimmick. It's the difference between asking a stranger what they think and asking someone who has context.
Same person. Same design. Different life.
Amanda S., 36
Methodical · Steady income · Two kids
“This looks solid. $29/month is reasonable for what they're offering, and the annual discount makes sense if I'm committing long-term. The team tier at $49 might be useful if our projects scale. Let me check their feature comparison — I need something reliable that won't slow down my workflow.”
→ Comparing tiers, likely to convert
Amanda S., 36
Cautious now · Uncertain future · Two kids
“Thirty dollars a month adds up fast when I don't know when my next paycheck comes. Do I really need this right now? I could use free alternatives until I'm back on solid ground. The annual discount is tempting but feels risky — what if I can't afford it in six months?”
→ Free tier only · Annual feels risky
Same person. Same product. But losing her job changed everything about how she evaluates it. Our audience captures that.
Real people can't evaluate fifty design variations in an afternoon. Real people can't articulate how a recent layoff changed their gut reaction to your pricing. Real people don't even know that about themselves.
Synthetic minds can — because we built the life behind the opinion.
Our panel is generated across multiple frontier foundation models, round-robin, so no single model's biases shape who our panelists are. Ask one LLM to invent a thousand people and you get a thousand variations of the same writer. We don't want that. We want a panel where the person who grew up in Nebraska and the person who freelances in Lisbon actually think differently — and that starts with not letting one model's defaults leak into every personality.
We continuously test our audience against established behavioral research — the same decision-making patterns that psychologists have documented for decades. Framing effects. Decoy pricing. The psychology of free. Anchoring. Default bias.
When our audience doesn't match what real humans do, we find out why and we fix it. This isn't a one-time calibration — it's a continuous process that makes the panel more predictive with every iteration.
We're not claiming we've replaced user research. What we've built catches the trust issues, the messaging gaps, the pricing hesitations, and the UX friction that real users would surface — before you've spent weeks recruiting and scheduling and synthesizing.
Use us to explore. Use real users to validate. That's the honest workflow — and it's dramatically faster than what most teams are doing today.
Right now, experimentation is punished. Every experiment is so expensive — in engineering time, compliance cycles, and personal credibility — that PMs self-censor. Prior.Run inverts that dynamic.
— prior.run
— weeks to months.
— prior.run
— instant.
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Your focus group doesn't learn from experience.
Your A/B test doesn't have a life story.
Your chatbot doesn't remember what burned it last time.
Our audience does.