David Dobrin is co-founder and CEO of OriginalVoices, a London technology company that builds Digital Twins of real people so that businesses and AI tools can test ideas against human opinion on demand.
Launched in December 2025, the company announced a £1m pre-seed round led by Iona Star on 15 September 2026, two months after it launched YouGov Parallax with the polling group.
The company says more than 40,000 Digital Twins can now be queried through its platform. He tells Business Matters why AI should amplify real people rather than replace them, and why original ideas still count when building has become cheap.
What do you currently do at OriginalVoices?
I am the co-founder and CEO of OriginalVoices. We create Digital Twins of real people, grounded in their experiences, opinions and preferences, so businesses and AI applications can get audience insights and feedback on demand.
My role spans product, strategy, partnerships and working with customers. A big part of it is connecting what the technology can do with problems people actually need solving.
What was the inspiration behind your business?
There is a thread running through my career: making it easier for people to share what they think and for businesses to listen to that insight and feedback. I previously co-founded Inconvo, which was acquired by YouGov, and later led YouGov’s AI platform work.
As AI developed, I kept coming back to one question: how do we make sure it stays connected to what real people actually think and feel?
At the same time, I saw pure synthetic data solutions trying to replicate human perspectives without involving or rewarding real people. I questioned how effective those approaches could be and found the direction quite dystopian.
My belief was that AI should amplify and augment real people, with those people sharing in the value created. Making their insights and perspectives available to AI tools felt fundamental to both their effectiveness and their alignment with human needs. That became the starting point for OriginalVoices.
What has changed for the business this year?
We launched in December 2025 and things have moved quickly since. In July we launched YouGov Parallax with YouGov, which combines its panel data with our twin technology.
In September we announced a £1m pre-seed round led by Iona Star. That funding is going into growing the team, expanding our network of Digital Twins and building our presence in the US.
Who do you admire?
I admire people who are brave enough to have a vision and build something themselves. Starting a business is unbelievably hard. It takes grit, resilience and perseverance, alongside a vision and a bit of luck.
When you are in the thick of it yourself, you develop a much deeper appreciation for what others have gone through to make something successful.
Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
We are still in the very early stages of OriginalVoices, so no regrets just yet. There is plenty we are learning as we go, but that is part of building something new.
What defines your way of doing business?
I am ambitious about what we can build and practical about how we get there. We build, test and iterate as fast as possible. Speed matters enormously in this space.
I also believe ideas matter and compound over time. That is often overlooked as building becomes easier and cheaper. Having an original idea and a clear, opinionated view of where the world is going gives you a direction to build towards. Someone can copy what you have built today, but that only takes them so far. Your vision, ideas and creativity keep moving you forward.
Relationships matter just as much. I value open conversations and direct feedback. I want people to feel they can be honest with us, that we will do what we say, and that we are building something valuable together. We are competitive and relentless in our pursuit of success, while being approachable and easy to work with.
I admire companies that have values of being “smart, kind and creative”. That captures the kind of business we want to build too.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Be clear on your vision and get comfortable with uncertainty about how you will get there. You rarely have the whole route mapped out. Being able to keep going, trusting your ability to work things out and adapting along the way is essential.
Get close to the people you want to serve. Understand what they struggle with, what they do today and what would make their lives better, even if they cannot yet articulate the solution themselves. Put something in front of them early, learn from how they use it, iterate quickly and keep going.
