Blok Deploys AI Personas for App Usage Simulation

To produce products more quickly, developers are writing a lot of code every day with the aid of AI-powered coding tools like Cursor, Replit, Claude Code, and Lovable. To test how future additions will function, app developers must still either use simulation software or release full beta versions of their apps.

Blok, an emerging firm, enables developers to test an app’s features and learn how to improve them by using AI to simulate various user personas.

In 2024, Olivia Higgs and Tom Charman launched the business. Both have been serial entrepreneurs and worked on enterprises together in fields including travel and learning.

Through two rounds, the startup has raised $7.5 million so far. People from Discord, Google, Meta, Apple, Snapchat, and Pinterest participated in its $5 million seed round, which was led by MaC Venture Capital. Rackhouse, Blank Ventures, and Ryan Hoover’s Weekend Fund participated in Blok’s pre-seed round with Protagonist.

Blok is frequently compared to Optimizely and Amplitude, but those technologies are more reactive, according to Marlon Nichols, managing general partner at MaC Venture Capital. Blok, he claimed, has exceeded them by giving apps a predictive layer of testing.

Because we think product development is at a turning moment, we supported Blok. Even though teams are shipping more quickly than before, they continue to rely on gut feeling and A/B testing when making important decisions. That concept is reversed by Blok’s simulation engine, which enables teams to forecast user behaviour before writing a single line of code,” he emailed TechCrunch to convey his message.

Testing is becoming more and more necessary, according to Higgs, as interface complexity has grown over time. She said that in order to understand the issues that product teams encounter, they conducted interviews with over 100 product engineers.

“The standard for visual interfaces is rising significantly, thus there is a genuine need for more testing. People are using speech and chat to communicate with technology. Therefore, you must be careful not to add needless friction to a user’s workflow when adding visual UI [elements] to the mix,” she noted.

Big and small businesses have various issues, according to Charman. Big businesses want to avoid cramming functionality into their apps and making them cumbersome, whereas small businesses lack cohorts to test their products and gain real-time feedback.

“Our goal is to get to a point where businesses don’t have to release their features experimentally and have to wait for weeks or months for results,” he stated.

Customers submit their event log data from Amplitude, Mixpanel, or Segment when they first begin working with Blok. Blok then develops various user personas for app developers to evaluate and does behavioural modelling. The majority of an app’s user base would be generally covered by the personas.

The user persona agents then attempt to perform the simulation multiple times when the development team sends Blok a Figma design and experiment specifics, including the hypothesis they wish to test and the user goal they hope to accomplish. Blok will conclude by offering suggestions and ideas into how people might use a specific feature.

An overview of the experiment and details regarding what worked and what could be improved are included in these insights. A persona-wise report and recommendations are also available for teams to review. Additionally, since it’s 2025u can ask questions about your experiment to a chatbot.

Blok has placed its product on a waitlist and is collaborating with a small group of clients, mostly creating financial and medical solutions. Since they are unable to do poor trials in public and frequently tinker with the product, the startup claimed that these locations are perfect for targeting.

The startup is attempting to balance its computational costs while charging businesses via a SaaS model. This year, the company wants to reach mid-single-digit millions in revenue and expand its clientele.