University Research Partnerships
Help us understand the future of America’s home-service businesses
44pixels and Handle are inviting universities to study how small home-service businesses operate, grow, adopt technology, and think about AI.
Research grounded in local businesses, shaped together with university partners.
- Priced equity financing
- $21.5M+
- Venture-backed
- Series A
- Users internationally
- Millions
- Founded
- 2024
- Headquartered in
- London
01 / Why this matters
Small businesses are entering a new technology era
We want to understand it from their perspective. These are the businesses that repair homes, install air conditioning, fix plumbing, maintain yards, clean properties, and keep everyday life moving.
For an owner with a handful of employees, serving customers is only part of the job. Marketing, scheduling, quoting, payments, and managing the team all compete for the same hours.
A 100-person company
Dedicated teamsA 5-person business
One busy ownerSame jobs. Far fewer people.
Autonomous AI agents could make capabilities once reserved for an entire office team accessible to a business with a few employees. But first, we need to understand how those businesses actually work.
02 / The company behind Handle
44pixels builds AI products used by millions of people
Founded in 2024 by Adam Stevens, Noam Yasour, and Anton Zhuravsky, 44pixels is a venture-backed AI technology company headquartered in London.
Our thesis is simple: AI creates an opportunity to rethink everyday software from the ground up. Our international product, engineering, design, and growth team has built and scaled products including Pixi, Cue, and Clara.
Backed to build for the long term
$21.5M+
Raised in priced equity financing. A Series A company backed by investors including vgames and Velo Partners.
Cue passed one million downloads in its first year.
Cue and Clara have received Apple editorial recognition.
03 / Introducing Handle
Building an AI operating layer for small service businesses
Handle is the next evolution of Clara, created by 44pixels.
Handle is our emerging AI platform for small home-service businesses in the United States. It grew from Clara, an AI receptionist built for trades and service businesses.
Working with thousands of small service businesses taught us something important: answering the phone is only one small part of the problem.
Owners are also finding customers, scheduling work, following up, collecting payments, and keeping the business organized. Our long-term vision is to make sophisticated business capabilities accessible to them through AI.
Get discovered and generate demand
- Google Business Profile
- Website
- SEO / AI discoverability
- Advertising
- Content
- Reviews
Turn inquiries into jobs
- Calls
- Lead capture
- Qualification
- Scheduling
- Customer communication
- Payments
Bring customers back
- Reviews
- Follow-ups
- Reminders
- Repeat services
- Reactivation
We do not yet assume which parts of this lifecycle matter most. That is one of the questions we want the research to answer.
04 / What we want to understand
Six questions we think matter
How do these businesses actually acquire customers?
Where do new jobs come from? What do owners spend on Google, agencies, lead marketplaces, SEO, websites, social media, and referrals? What works, and what feels like wasted money?
How is the business really run?
Who answers the phone and schedules jobs when everyone is out in the field? What software, spreadsheets, texts, paper processes, and informal systems hold everything together?
What does the owner most want off their plate?
More customers? Admin? Scheduling, hiring, payments, marketing, or keeping the team organized? Or simply getting some of their own time back?
What will an owner delegate, and what will they not?
Which decisions are owners comfortable giving to employees, agencies, software, or AI? Where does trust break down, and what would it take to earn it?
What does AI mean to a small-business owner?
A tool, an assistant, an employee, or a risk? Something they already use, or something they mostly ignore? We want to hear it in their own words.
What changes as the business grows?
Two people, five people, ten people. How do responsibilities, priorities, and technology needs change? “Small business” is not a single, homogeneous category.
05 / What a project could involve
Primary research, not desk research
Real conversations. Time inside real businesses. Evidence that goes beyond what a search engine can tell us. The work could combine qualitative depth with broader quantitative research.
- 01
Observe
Visit businesses and see real workflows, from the first call to the final invoice.
- 02
Interview
Talk with owners, office managers, dispatchers, and technicians.
- 03
Quantify
Use broader surveys to understand spending, tools, priorities, and patterns.
- 04
Analyze
Map customer journeys, workflows, and differences between business types.
- 05
Challenge
Test concepts and assumptions about AI, automation, and delegation.
- 06
Recommend
Turn evidence into clear recommendations about what deserves to be built.
The final methodology would be developed with participating faculty and 44pixels’ experienced user researchers, based on the course, discipline, and available research time. Our team can help students plan field observations and interviews, recognize bias, and distinguish what the evidence supports from what remains uncertain. These are possibilities, not a mandatory checklist.
Our commitment to academic independence
We are not looking for research that validates our product
We want students to challenge our assumptions and tell us where we’re wrong.
This is research, not a sales exercise. If owners do not want AI performing particular jobs, we want to understand why.
If a problem we believe is important turns out to be insignificant, we want to know. An opportunity we have not considered may be the most valuable finding.
The work should help us decide what should be built, not justify decisions already made.
06 / For students and faculty
A research project with real-world consequences
A live strategic question
Your findings will directly influence product and investment decisions at a funded technology company.
Access to founders
Selected projects can include direct interaction with 44pixels founders and senior product leaders.
Learn from experienced researchers
Work alongside 44pixels’ experienced user researchers to build practical skills in qualitative research, from observing real workflows and asking better interview questions to interpreting evidence with care.
Real businesses
Study real small-business owners, their working days, and their decisions, beyond hypothetical case studies.
Present to leadership
Research teams can present their conclusions directly to 44pixels leadership at the end of the project.
Room to challenge us
Disagree with our assumptions. An unexpected conclusion can be the most valuable contribution.
A collaboration, from the start
What we bring to the partnership
A useful research partnership takes time and involvement on both sides. We can help shape the questions, stay involved as the work develops, and put the findings in front of the people making decisions.
- Access to founders, product leadership, and technology experts
- Existing hypotheses and industry knowledge
- Relevant anonymized learnings, where appropriate and subject to privacy requirements
- Product prototypes where useful
- Research planning with faculty and experienced 44pixels user researchers
- Guidance on field observation, interviewing, and evidence-based analysis
- Regular check-ins and feedback on interim findings
- A final presentation to leadership
- Potential follow-on opportunities for particularly valuable research
The question behind the project
If AI suddenly made sophisticated business capabilities affordable to a small home-service company, what would these owners actually want it to do for them?
And what would they trust it to do?
That is the question we are trying to answer.
Let’s start a conversation
Interested in exploring a university partnership?
We’re speaking with universities, professors, and experiential-learning programs interested in small businesses, entrepreneurship, AI, marketing, operations, and the future of work.
If this could fit a course, capstone, consulting program, or independent research initiative, we’d like to hear from you.
Thank you for reaching out
Thanks. Someone from the 44pixels team will get back to you.