Meet the hippos
HIPOPOTESIS is a boutique strategic intelligence firm founded in 2017 in the mountains of Asturias, Spain. We work with companies facing decisions that carry real money and real risk, and we bring the tools of social anthropology to help them decide well.
Abdo López and Norah Walsh, co-founders of HIPOPOTESIS
Our story
2016
Months of validation, and the honesty to pivot.
Before HIPOPOTESIS there was a technology company. We spent months talking to the people we thought would use it, and what we heard didn’t match what we had built. So we stopped, and we pivoted. It’s a small thing to write and a hard thing to live, and it taught us what it feels like to be on the other side of a research finding, with your own money and months on the table.
2017
A blog on Lean Startup and Design Thinking, from Asturias.
We had spent a whole day trying to name what came next. Dozens of options, all sensible, none memorable. Late in the afternoon Norah said “hipopotesis” and Abdo laughed, the way you laugh at something you’re about to discard. Then he stopped. Of everything on the list, it was the only name that had made either of us feel anything, and it carried the idea we cared about most: every plan starts as a hypothesis, and somebody has to go and check. HIPOPOTESIS opened in 2017, in the mountains of Asturias, as a blog about how to build a company with Lean Startup and Design Thinking.
2019
Classes, workshops, an accelerator, validation for early teams.
Writing turned into teaching, and teaching turned into doing. We ran classes and workshops, trained founders in qualitative research, went through one of Spain’s larger accelerators ourselves, and then started running the research for the teams instead of only showing them how. The goal was simple and slightly stubborn: fewer startups dying from questions nobody asked in time. We loved that work, and it also taught us the thing that changed our direction: early-stage teams need far more time and accompaniment than they can pay for, and the research we were proudest of belonged next to decisions that could carry its weight.
2022
Studies for global brands. H3™ took shape here.
So we took the same way of working to larger companies, as HIPOPOTESIS | Strategic Market Research for global brands: studies across countries, languages and industries, for organisations whose choices moved budgets, launches and entire market entries. Those were the years that turned our habits into a method: qualitative, quantitative and social listening kept answering different halves of the same question, and reading them separately kept losing the answer. H3™ came out of that.
Since
Research built around the decision. We turned down an acquisition to stay independent.
Which brings us here. Somewhere along the way we were offered the chance to be acquired. It was a good offer from a good company, and we said no, because we would have dissolved inside it and the way we work would have gone with us. We’d rather grow alongside our clients than inside somebody else’s structure. Insight-led strategic intelligence is our name for research designed around the decision from day one, and this website exists because that work needs more room to explain than a single page. Same two anthropologists, same curiosity, much bigger questions.
The founders
We both design, run and read the research ourselves, and between us we run the company too. This is who you’ll be working with.
Co-founder & CEO
Social & Cultural Anthropologist
Abdo is a researcher who also runs the company, and the order matters. He designs studies, recruits, works in the field, analyses and writes the report, and before any of that he settles the question the brief is really asking. He also carries the parts nobody sees on a slide: budgets, timelines, vendor contracts, hiring, the technology we work with, and the final responsibility for what reaches you.
Fascinated byWhere technology, the social sciences, business and strategic market research meet.
Coming soon: abdolopez.com | The Market Anthropologist
Co-founder & Head of Research
Social & Cultural Anthropologist
Norah heads research. She designs the fieldwork, moderates it, analyses what comes back and decides what each finding is allowed to claim. She also runs the research teams and the schedule, which in practice means holding two things together that usually pull apart: the depth a question deserves and the date we promised you.
Fascinated byWhere technology, social impact, human centred design and futures studies meet.
What anthropology changes
Social anthropology is a way of looking at people. These six habits come from it, and each one changes something concrete in the work you receive.
A brief, a business case and a launch plan are all hypotheses. Good ones, usually, but hypotheses.
What it changes in your project
The gap between what people declare, what they do and what they feel is where decisions can go wrong.
What it changes in your project
The same product, message or price means different things in different places, to different people.
What it changes in your project
Research is finished when a decision has been made. The report is one step on the way there.
What it changes in your project
Depth can’t be handed over: the context that turns data into meaning gets lost when work changes hands.
What it changes in your project
A real opportunity shows up in all three lenses, while a false one gives thin signals that collapse under triangulation.
What it changes in your project
The team around the core
Every project keeps the same core and gets a team chosen for its markets, languages and lenses. Nobody on it is learning the job on your budget.
Design the study, lead the fieldwork and sign off every finding, on every project, from the first call to the last slide.
Each with ten years or more in their discipline. Social listening is led by our Head of Social Listening & Intelligence.
People who share the participants’ language and culture, recruited for the country you’re entering, working alongside our own seniors.
Panels, fieldwork platforms and analysis software, each one audited before it gets near your study.
How we audit themThe market, mapped
Every kind of firm on this map is strong at something. Pick one to see its strengths, where it runs thin, and how our work differs.
Blue ocean
Many firms choose between depth and decisions: research that stops at the data, or strategy with little evidence underneath. This corner asks for both, and few firms build a senior team that can read people, numbers and conversations together. H3™ is how we hold it.
For the record, hippos can’t swim. They walk along the riverbed, which is roughly how we like to work: under the surface, with our feet on the ground.
Pick any kind of firm on the map to compare it with ours.
Kind of firm
Trusted in the boardroom, and usually a long way from the customer.
We bring the same strategic authority, built on evidence gathered from real people for your question, instead of a template that has travelled from another industry.
Kind of firm
Enormous reach, with strategy bundled next to audit, tax and technology.
Strategic intelligence rooted in human evidence is the only thing we do, and the two founders are in the room for all of it.
Kind of firm
Real depth, through one lens by design.
H3™ keeps that ethnographic depth and adds quantitative weight and live social signal, so what you take to the board carries both meaning and size.
Kind of firm
Design research, aimed at what gets built rather than what gets decided.
We answer the question that comes before design: what is worth building, for whom, and on what evidence. The design work lands better afterwards.
Kind of firm
Volume, panels and methods, kept in separate departments.
Senior led, custom and fused. H3™ exists so the three readings meet before they reach you, in one narrative instead of three reports.
Kind of firm
Fast, cheap, and available to your competitors on the same terms.
We use AI where it earns its place and say so, and we keep the interpretation human. Our AI Manifesto sets out exactly where the line sits.
Kind of firm
Excellent expertise, without the infrastructure around it.
The same rigour, with a senior team around it and a report written for the decision instead of for the discipline.
Blue ocean
Insight-led strategic intelligence, built on H3™ evidence.
Holding qualitative depth, quantitative weight and live social listening in one senior team is slow to build, and it doesn’t scale by hiring juniors. That’s why so few firms try.
LinkedIn Learning
We teach in Spanish, on the subjects we work with every day: generative AI and its biases, technology, data, and how to find patterns in information.
In SpanishGenerative AISocial Problems, Ethical Challenges, and Biases in Generative AIThe social risks of generative AI, the biases it inherits from its data and how to use it without passing them on.Watch on LinkedIn Learning
In SpanishGenerative AIGenerative AI for Boosting Creative Problem SolvingHow to use generative AI as a thinking partner when a team is stuck, without letting it do the thinking.Watch on LinkedIn Learning
In SpanishGenerative AIHow Generative AI Is Transforming BusinessesWhat generative AI is changing inside companies, and how to lead that change with people instead of around them.Watch on LinkedIn Learning
In SpanishTechnology and dataDesign Thinking: Data IntelligenceDesign thinking applied to work with data: framing the right question before collecting anything.Watch on LinkedIn Learning
In SpanishTechnology and dataUnderstanding and Harnessing TechnologyA plain-language guide to living and working with technology, and using it on your own terms.Watch on LinkedIn Learning
In SpanishInformation analysisFundamentals of Information AnalysisHow to design, gather and analyse information without fear, from the first question to the conclusion.Watch on LinkedIn Learning
In SpanishInformation analysisInformation Analysis: Detecting Patterns and TrendsHow to spot social patterns and trends in information, and tell a real shift from noise.Watch on LinkedIn LearningRead this before you hire anyone
A recommendation is only worth the work behind it. These four pages explain ours.
Straight answers
Something else on your mind? Ask us directly. You’ll get an answer from the people who would run the work.
Abdo López and Norah Walsh, two social and cultural anthropologists from the first graduating class of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Granada. They founded HIPOPOTESIS in 2017 in Asturias, Spain, and still lead every project in person: Abdo as CEO, Norah as Head of Research.
Our base is in Gijón, Asturias, in the north of Spain. The work happens wherever your market is: we have run local fieldwork in 25 countries and work in six languages, with recruiters and moderators who share the participants’ language and culture.
It’s a play on “hipótesis”, Spanish for hypothesis, with a hippo inside it. Norah suggested it at the end of a long day of naming, and it stuck because it carried the idea we care about most: every plan starts as a hypothesis, and somebody has to go and check. The hippo with glasses is Hype, and checking is his job.
Small on purpose. The two of us lead every project, with senior specialists around us who each have ten years or more in their discipline, plus local recruiters, moderators and audited partners brought in for each study. There is no junior team for your project to be handed to.
Yes. We were offered the chance to be acquired and turned it down to stay independent, because the way we work wouldn’t have survived inside a larger structure. We’d rather grow alongside our clients.
A way of looking at people in their context: what they say, what they do and what they mean, which are often three different things. In practice it means fieldwork in the country and the language, studies designed to prove a plan wrong as well as right, and findings read against the culture they come from.
Yes. Abdo and Norah have published seven courses in Spanish on LinkedIn Learning, taken by more than 100,000 people, and they teach at universities, business schools, accelerators and public programmes across Spain. Teaching keeps the method honest, because students ask the questions clients are too polite to ask.
Tell us the decision you’re facing. We’ll tell you which lenses it needs and what it takes, with a fixed price and a date we commit to. If you don’t need us, you’ll hear that first.
