I built a market simulation platform where AI agents have memory, personality, and a social graph. Here is what I learned about making synthetic populations useful.

I have been building a platform that uses agent-based simulation for market validation. The premise is simple: before you build a product, simulate a population of AI agents and run your go-to-market against them. Each agent decides whether to adopt, spread the word, or ignore you entirely. The naive version of this is just prompting an LLM and asking "would you buy this product." That is useless. A real person testing an app brings frustration from their commute, impatience because they have 3 minutes before a meeting, confusion because they misread a button label.