Marisa Murgatroyd
Discover Marisa Murgatroyd’s Founders 2.0 Conference Journey
Discover Marisa Murgatroyd’s Founders 2.0 Conference Journey
(Speaker)
Marisa Murgatroyd, Co-founder, Lead Strategist & Facilitator of The Experience Group, brought her expertise in behavioral design and customer experience strategy to the Founders 2.0 Conference’s Las Vegas 2026 Edition, where she engaged in thoughtful discussions around AI, experience design, and startup growth.
As Founder of The Experience Group, Marisa helps organizations close the gap between their AI and digital investments and the experiences their customers actually have. Drawing on behavioral science frameworks from mentors Yu-kai Chou and BJ Fogg, she has designed and optimized thousands of customer journeys across industries while consistently outperforming benchmarks in retention, completion, and referrals.
Shared Human-Centered Perspectives On AI And Customer Experience!
Marisa participated as a speaker at the Founders 2.0 Conference and contributed to broader conversations around AI, customer experience, and behavioral design.
She also delivered a keynote and participated in a panel discussion at the CXO 2.0 Conference.
Her conversations with founders reflected a growing shift toward human-focused design and more thoughtful AI adoption.
Marisa Murgatroyd approaches business growth through the lens of behavioral design and human experience. Through The Experience Group and her X-Factor Experience Design methodology, she helps leaders understand why technology and automation alone often fail to create meaningful customer connections. Her work is grounded in a simple yet often overlooked idea: organizations frequently design experiences around their own operational goals rather than what customers actually need in a particular moment.
Drawing on behavioral science frameworks inspired by BJ Fogg and Yu-kai Chou, Marisa focuses on the relationship between motivation, ability, and prompts across the customer journey. She believes AI is highly effective at supporting efficiency and execution, but genuine motivation emerges through trust, emotional understanding, and recognizing the reality of the customer's experience. Through this work, she helps organizations identify where customer experiences break down across Discovery, Onboarding, Scaffolding, and Endgame, and redesign those moments so technology supports people rather than simply optimizing workflow.
Within a few months, AI will be table stakes. What separates the winners from the companies quietly losing customers will be their ability to create experiences an algorithm cannot replicate.
Marisa described her experience at the Founders 2.0 Conference’s 2026 Edition as illuminating. Throughout the entrepreneur conference, she particularly valued the honesty that emerged in conversations beyond the formal sessions. Hallway discussions, coffee conversations, and quieter moments after panels created space for founders to openly explore questions around AI investment, business strategy, and customer experience. She shared that many entrepreneurs were candid about challenges they were navigating, including uncertainty around whether their AI initiatives were solving the right problems.
For Marisa, these conversations revealed something encouraging: curiosity and openness among leaders willing to reconsider traditional approaches and think more intentionally about human-focused design. She also appreciated the strong entrepreneurial energy and willingness to engage across industries. Reflecting on our three-day business event, Marisa offered simple advice to future attendees: “Talk to everyone.”
Throughout our entrepreneur conference, Marisa contributed to conversations centered on startup growth, AI adoption, and human-centered organizational strategy through multiple speaking engagements.
During her panel discussion at the Founders 2.0 Conference, “Competing With Legacy Brands: How Startups Can Win In Stale Markets,” Marisa shared practical strategies for startups and solopreneurs seeking to differentiate themselves in competitive markets. She emphasized the importance of identifying highly specific micro niches, leveraging value drivers to create meaningful market disruption, and refining messaging through direct customer understanding. Marisa also highlighted how storytelling, an authentic brand voice, and deep knowledge of customer context help businesses build stronger connections and stand out in increasingly AI-driven, crowded marketplaces.
She also participated in two sessions at the CXO 2.0 Conference. In her keynote, “The AI Experience Gap: Why Every Industry Keeps Making The Same Mistake,” Marisa explored how organizations often approach AI through a function-focused lens that prioritizes efficiency over human experience. Drawing from behavioral science and customer journey design, she examined how AI deployments across industries frequently overlook customer needs and emotional context. She introduced the concept of the “AI Experience Gap,” emphasizing the importance of designing AI systems around human behavior, trust, and customer journey phases to create more meaningful and sustainable outcomes.
Marisa also joined the CXO 2.0 Conference’s panel discussion, “From Surviving To Thriving: The 2026 Recession-Proofing Blueprint,” where she spoke about customer success and value delivery as leading indicators of long-term business sustainability. She highlighted the importance of defining clear customer value, measuring how quickly clients experience meaningful outcomes, and ensuring organizations consistently deliver on their promises. Marisa also emphasized protecting brand-defining moments and maintaining customer value delivery, even as operations are streamlined and overhead is reduced.
One of the ideas Marisa returned to repeatedly in her conversations was that organizations often spend significant resources addressing symptoms rather than identifying the underlying experience gap. She shared an example of a female-owned health technology company serving more than 300 entrepreneurs in functional medicine. While acquisition remained strong, progression into premium programs had stalled. Initially treated as a sales challenge, the issue ultimately revealed something different: the customer journey itself had not been intentionally designed between stages. Once milestone experiences and clearer transition points were introduced, advancement became a natural next step rather than a sales challenge.
For Marisa, this example reflects a broader principle that shapes her work and our business conference conversations alike. She also reflected on emerging conversations around agentic AI and the growing role autonomous systems will play in customer interactions. While many organizations focus on the technology itself, Marisa believes the future competitive advantage will come from thoughtfully designing the moments where AI and humans interact. She also encourages women entering technology and strategy spaces to trust what they notice and speak with confidence about the experiences others may overlook.
The Founders 2.0 Conference creates opportunities for entrepreneurs, strategists, and innovators to exchange perspectives and explore the questions shaping business today. Marisa Murgatroyd’s experience engaging in candid founder discussions and conversations around AI and experience design highlights the collaborative spirit awaiting attendees at our upcoming entrepreneurship conference.
Join us at our three-day business conference for engaging discussions, entrepreneurial insights, and conversations that encourage innovation and strategic thinking. It is an opportunity to exchange ideas, learn from diverse experiences, and become a part of a business conference designed to inspire growth and meaningful dialogue. Contact us to learn more.