What is Askiva, and why did I risk everything to build it?

Salam, I am Khayal. I was born in Russia, but I spent almost my whole life in Azerbaijan. I grew up in Aghjabadi. It is a small town far from the center, and we did not have a lot of resources. But even as a kid, I loved building things. My older brother and I used to take our toys apart just to create something new. I did not know much about the world then, but in my head, I called it "inventing."

When it was time for university, my family and I moved to Baku. It was a huge, busy city, and it was really hard for me to get used to it. But I saw it as a big opportunity. I started working when I was just 16 years old. My only goal at the time was to buy my own computer. It took me three full years of working and saving, but I finally got it.

From the first day I turned that computer on, I started learning graphic design. I joined local hackathons to test myself. Soon I realized those short events were not giving me the deep knowledge I wanted. I stopped going to them, closed my door, and just focused on getting better. For four years, I worked hard as a UX/UI designer. I worked with several local companies and even a startup in Abu Dhabi. During this time, I tried to build my own startup called Quo. It failed, but it was a great foundation. It taught me how things actually work behind the scenes.

Fast forward a few years. Artificial intelligence was growing incredibly fast. Every single day I asked myself how I could use AI to build something new.

In early 2025, I was working at a company called Azerconnect. I was doing user research for an app called "SalesApp." I needed to interview just 6 users. It sounds easy, right? It was not. It took me two full weeks of finding them, matching our schedules, doing the interviews one by one, taking notes, and making transcripts. I was completely exhausted.

Then it hit me. I could build an AI tool to completely automate this workflow.

I immediately researched the market. I found tools like Listen Labs and Outset. But for some reason, I felt a huge wave of confidence. I just knew I could build a better structure. That is how Askiva was born.

Before writing any code, I wanted to make sure other people had this problem. I talked to my UX researcher friends. They all suffered from the same slow process. I went deep into Reddit and Quora. I realized this is not just a UX problem. People in many fields hate the manual work of recruiting, planning, interviewing during strict business hours, and transcribing.

I quickly built a waitlist website. My SEO was very weak, and I did not have a big network. But by reaching out to people directly, I got over 100 signups. Seeing those numbers made my belief in Askiva so much stronger.

So, I took a massive risk. I put all my personal savings into this project and even took on extra debt to fund it. I found an amazing team. We worked day and night, laying down the pillars of our software. In just 5 short months, we finished a fully working Beta version.

Today, Askiva is ready to use.

Askiva is an AI agent that handles your entire research process. It works 24/7 in 11 different languages. It schedules meetings with your participants, conducts Zoom style interviews with them at the same time, analyzes the answers, and gives you incredibly clean data.

Because you are reading this on my personal blog, I want to give you a gift. You can use the code START100 to use Askiva for free for your first month. Your feedback is the most important thing to me right now.

I am very nervous, but I am also full of hope. I want Askiva to be a huge success. I want to make my country proud, and I hope that one day, this project becomes a Unicorn.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story.