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How Caribou heard from 396 small business owners in Lagos, Gauteng, London and New York about extreme heat, in their own voices, in ten days of WhatsApp fieldwork.
How Caribou heard from 396 small business owners in Lagos, Gauteng, London and New York about extreme heat, in their own voices, in ten days of WhatsApp fieldwork.
In short
Caribou, a research and advisory firm, used Yazi to survey and interview 396 small business owners in Lagos, Gauteng, London and New York about extreme heat. The study ran on WhatsApp from 29 August to 7 September 2026, collected more than 300 voice notes with AI follow-up questions, and fed The Lost Working Week report, launched at New York Climate Week.
Caribou is a research and advisory firm that works on digital economies, livelihoods and inclusion. In 2026 it set out to document how extreme heat disrupts the world's smallest businesses, for a report launching at New York Climate Week.
The study, published as The Lost Working Week, covers 903 small businesses across seven countries, with Nairobi-based Aareton Blue running part of the fieldwork. Yazi ran the WhatsApp portion: 396 owners in Lagos, Gauteng, London and New York, each answering a structured survey, with more than 300 also describing a hot working day in a voice note.
It was the third study the two teams had run together, and the first that both sides funded and co-branded.
The report had to be ready for New York Climate Week, which left about ten days for fieldwork across four markets.
People running the smallest businesses work long days and rarely have time for a scheduled interview or a long online form.
Lagos, Gauteng, London and New York needed one instrument that worked the same way in every market.
Caribou wanted findings that partners and policymakers would feel, which meant hearing owners describe the heat themselves.
Yazi recruited and screened small business owners in each market and ran the study as a single WhatsApp conversation. Owners answered structured questions on trading time, customers, stock, health and costs, then recorded a voice note about a recent hot day. The AI Interviewer followed up to draw out what happened and what it cost them.
Screening, survey, voice notes and AI follow-up ran in one thread, with progress visible to Caribou in the dashboard every day.
Illustrative screen showing how the conversation worked. Not a real participant.
Fieldwork closed in ten days with 396 completed conversations and more than 300 voice-note answers, and 72% of the owners who started went on to finish. Together with Aareton Blue's markets, the published study covers 903 small businesses.
Heat cost owners time, customers and stock
Share of small business owners reporting each effect
The working week the report is named after
Out of every 100 small business owners
Yazi cut the owners' voice notes into a short video, which Caribou published on YouTube, promoted on LinkedIn and shared with its partners. Caribou's CEO also posted about the study and the partnership on her own LinkedIn.
Caribou now names Yazi in proposals to funders and clients, and has introduced Yazi to another research firm in its network.
How the work grew
“I think it has very good potential... I gained some insights that I didn't get from the contractor that did the fieldwork.”
“There's so much that you guys can do that breaks down the clear barriers between qual and quant.”
| The Lost Working Week on WhatsApp | |
|---|---|
| Markets | Lagos, Gauteng, London and New York |
| Participants | 396 small business owners |
| Voice notes | More than 300, each followed up by the AI Interviewer |
| Fieldwork | 29 August to 7 September 2026 |
| Outputs | Analysis deck, dashboard and a voice-note video |
| Launch | New York Climate Week, September 2026 |
A launch-ready evidence base for The Lost Working Week, with numbers for the headlines and owners' voices for the stage. The study gave Caribou a co-branded piece to promote and a partner it now writes into proposals.
Owners told their story on their own time, in a voice note between customers. Their experience of heat, lost hours and spoiled stock now sits in a report written for policymakers and funders.
We loved how you helped to shape the questions, how quickly the results came in, the lovely analysis deck, and the voice notes honestly blew our minds.
Extreme heat is usually reported through temperatures and economic estimates. The Lost Working Week adds the owners themselves: what a hot day did to their trade, in their own words. Running the fieldwork on WhatsApp let Caribou reach four markets in ten days without losing that voice.
The Lost Working Week is a 2026 Caribou report on how extreme heat affects the world's smallest businesses. It covers 903 small businesses across seven countries and launched at New York Climate Week in September 2026. Yazi ran the WhatsApp portion with 396 owners in four markets.
Owners answered a structured survey on WhatsApp, then recorded a voice note about a recent hot working day. Yazi's AI Interviewer followed up on what changed and what it cost them. More than 300 of the 396 owners sent a voice note.
Ten days, from 29 August to 7 September 2026, across Lagos, Gauteng, London and New York. 72% of the owners who started the conversation finished it.
53% of owners lost trading time to heat, 37% spent more on cooling, ice or power, 31% saw fewer customers and 20% had stock damaged or spoiled. More than 1 in 5 lost at least a full working week. The figures are published by Caribou in The Lost Working Week.
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