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XAmid a Changing Privacy Landscape, Prodege Hits Unicorn Status By Helping Companies Monetize Consumer Data
Francesca Billington is a freelance reporter. Prior to that, she was a general assignment reporter for dot.LA and has also reported for KCRW, the Santa Monica Daily Press and local publications in New Jersey. She graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in anthropology.

When Apple changed its privacy rules in April 2021 to require that companies get permission before collecting user data online, retailers and digital brands were left scrambling to find new avenues to amass information about shoppers.
The answer may lie in online surveys.
Prodege, a market research and consumer polling startup, attained unicorn status last month thanks to a service that rewards users for completing questionnaires and making purchases on its apps and websites like Swagbucks and MyPoints. The El Segundo-based company then sells information about shoppers’ habits and preferences back to market research firms and retail clients such as Walmart, Clorox and DoorDash.
“We get the member—the consumer—to give us their permission to have a quid pro quo,” said Prodege Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Chuck Davis, who was named CEO in 2014 and previously held the same role at movie ticket retailer Fandango and ecommerce website Shopzilla.
Founded in 2005 as a charity donation platform, the startup pivoted a year later to launching search engines for entertainers and sports teams. In exchange for using the search engines, consumers were entered in raffles to win merchandise. In 2008, Prodege introduced its first rewards site, Swagbucks, which gives cash back to members for filling out surveys, buying gift cards, and shopping at some 1,500 partner retailers. The company has since acquired six similar platforms, and has doled out a total of $1.8 billion in rewards to an audience of 120 million registered members.
Recent years have seen Prodege go on a buying spree as it has looked to grow its audience footprint. In 2020, it bought Massachusetts-based Upromise, a platform for cash-back rewards in the form of a 529 college savings plan. Earlier that year, it snapped up the Santa Monica-based coupon-cutter company Coupon Cause, which works with retailers like Target and Amazon. YSense, which it acquired in 2019, compensates users for testing new services and watching product videos.
In December, the company announced a “major” investment from Boston-based private equity firm Great Hill Partners. Though both Great Hill and Prodege declined to disclose details of the transaction, sources with knowledge of the deal confirmed that it valued Prodege at north of $1 billion.
“More and more, there’s recognition from consumers that their data and their attention and time is worth something,” said Prodege founder and President Josef Gorowitz. “There are trillion-dollar companies built off of it and [consumers] now see the opportunity to leverage that and take some of that home.”
But the other half of Prodege’s business is built on understanding consumer behavior—polling users about their habits and analyzing that data for brands. For example, Prodege members earn a $15 reward for subscribing to Dollar Shave Club, the Marina del Rey-based grooming product delivery service. Prodege can then survey those new customers and send the results back to Dollar Shave Club to build a clearer picture of its consumer base.
And soon, with a new on-demand desktop app, corporate clients will have direct access to the Prodege audience to design and host campaigns. It’s a strategy that could become the norm as advertisers struggle to reach consumers they once could monitor almost instantly.
“It’s not surprising that a company like Prodege is thriving in this environment,” said Allison Schiff, managing editor of AdExchanger, a digital advertising analysis website. Schiff noted that many new startups, in particular, are looking to join an industry built on the idea that consumers are willing to share personal information in return for some type of reward.
That service has only become more valuable as tech companies continue to alter the privacy landscape. Last spring, Apple introduced its App Tracking Transparency feature, which displays an alert for users to consent to being tracked online. The change meant that many brands and advertisers would lose access to shoppers’ browsing activity and which discounts or promotions led to them making a purchase. Google, meanwhile, has also announced plans to ban third-party cookies from its Chrome web browser.
Of the iOS users running Apple’s updated software, 38% are opting-in and 62% are opting-out of data sharing, according to an October report from marketing analytics company AppsFlyer.
“The gold standard of data is behavior,” said Tina Moffett, principal analyst of business-to-consumer marketing at Forrester Research. “That pipeline is getting cut off by data deprivation and privacy-preserving measures.”
Moffett said she expects more marketers will turn to surveys and polls given the privacy protections. What they’ll miss out on is behavioral data—how long consumers spend looking at a product, or which items get paired together in their shopping cart.
Not that Prodege is complaining. The company takes around 5% from each purchase made on any of its seven platforms. In 2021, it pulled in roughly $300 million in revenue and added about 3,800 new clients.
“Brands buy into it—they’re happy to share instead of putting it all into Google’s profits,” Gorowitz said. “It builds a relationship with the consumer and they feel more comfortable sharing their data, their opinions, their time.”
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Francesca Billington is a freelance reporter. Prior to that, she was a general assignment reporter for dot.LA and has also reported for KCRW, the Santa Monica Daily Press and local publications in New Jersey. She graduated from Princeton in 2019 with a degree in anthropology.
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California Debates Data Privacy as SCOTUS Allows Abortion Bans
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
The United States Supreme Court called a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks constitutional on Friday, overturning the country’s founding abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court also upheld that there cannot be any restriction on how far into a pregnancy abortion can be banned.
When Politico first broke the news months before SCOTUS’s final ruling, a slew of bills entered Congress to protect data privacy and prevent the sale of data, which can be triangulated to see if a person has had an abortion or if they are seeking an abortion and have historically been used by antiabortion individuals who would collect this information during their free time.
Democratic lawmakers led by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo called on Google to stop collecting location data. The chair of the Federal Trade Commission has long voiced plans for the agency to prevent data collection. A week after the news, California Assembly passed A.B. 2091, a law that would prevent insurance companies and medical providers from sharing information in abortion-related cases (the state Senate is scheduled to deliberate on it in five days).
These scattered bills attempt to do what health privacy laws do not. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, was established in 1996 when the Internet was still young and most people carried flip phones. The act declared health institutions were not allowed to share or disclose patients’ health information. Google, Apple and a slew of fertility and health apps are not covered under HIPAA, and fertility app data can be subpoenaed by law enforcement.
California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (or CMIA), goes further than HIPAA by encompassing apps that store medical information under the broader umbrella of health institutions that include insurance companies and medical providers. And several how-tos on protecting data privacy during Roe v. Wade have been published in the hours of the announcement.
But reproductive rights organizations say data privacy alone cannot fix the problem. According to reproductive health policy think tank Guttmacher Institute, the closest state with abortion access to 1.3 million out-of-state women of reproductive age is California. One report from the UCLA Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy estimates as many as 9,400 people will travel to Los Angeles County every year to get abortions, and that number will grow as more states criminalize abortions.
Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.
LA Tech ‘Moves’: Adtech Firm OpenX Lures New SVP, Getlabs and DISQO Tap New VPs
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
“Moves,” our roundup of job changes in L.A. tech, is presented by Interchange.LA, dot.LA's recruiting and career platform connecting Southern California's most exciting companies with top tech talent. Create a free Interchange.LA profile here—and if you're looking for ways to supercharge your recruiting efforts, find out more about Interchange.LA's white-glove recruiting service by emailing Sharmineh O’Farrill Lewis (sharmineh@dot.la). Please send job changes and personnel moves to moves@dot.la.
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Advertising technology company OpenX Technologies appointed Geoff Wolinetz as senior vice president of demand platforms. Wolinetz was most recently senior vice president of growth at Chalice Custom Algorithms.
Remote health care infrastructure provider Getlabs hired Jaime LaFontaine as its vice president of business development. L.A.-based LaFontaine was previously director of business development for Alto Pharmacy.
Customer experience platform DISQO tapped Andrew Duke as its vice president of product, consumer applications. Duke previously served as Oracle’s senior director of strategy and product.
Media company Wheelhouse DNA named Michael Senzer as senior manager of Additive Creative, its newly launched digital talent management division. Senzer was previously vice president of business development at TalentX Entertainment.
Fintech lending platform Camino Financial hired Dana Rainford as vice president of people and talent. Rainford previously served as head of human resources at Westwood Financial.
Kourtney Day returned to entertainment company Jim Henson’s Creature Shop as senior director of business development. Day mostly recently served as business development manager for themed entertainment at Solomon Group.
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
This Week in ‘Raises’: Miracle Miles Lands $100M, Fintech Startup Tapcheck Hauls $20M
Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.
In this week’s edition of “Raises”: An L.A.-based footwear company closed $100 million to boost its expansion into the global market, while there were Series A raises for local fintech, biotech and space startups.
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Venture Capital
Miracle Miles Group, an L.A.-based footwear company, raised a $100 million Series A funding round co-led by IDG Capital and Sequoia Capital China.
Deno, a San Diego-based software development startup, raised a $21 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
Tapcheck, an L.A.-based financial wellness startup that helps workers access their paycheck before payday, raised a $20 million Series A funding round led by PeakSpan Capital.
Gemelli Biotech, an L.A.- and Raleigh, N.C.-based biotech startup focused on gastrointestinal diseases, raised a $19 million Series A financing round led by Blue Ox Healthcare Partners.
Epsilon3, an L.A.-based space operations software startup, raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by Lux Capital.
Global Premier Fertility, an Irvine-based fertility company, raised an $11 million Series C funding round led by Triangle Capital Corporation.
Vamstar, an L.A.- and London-based medical supply chain platform, raised a $9.5 million Series A funding round co-led by Alpha Intelligence Capital and Dutch Founders Fund.
System 9, an L.A.-based digital asset market-making firm focused on the crypto altcoin market, raised a $5.7 million Series A funding round led by Capital6 Eagle.
Myria, an L.A.-based online marketplace of luxury goods and services, raised a $4.3 million seed round from Y Combinator, Backend Capital, Cathexis Ventures and other angel investors.
Binarly, an L.A.-based firmware cybersecurity company, raised a $3.6 million seed round from WestWave Capital and Acrobator Ventures.
Raises is dot.LA’s weekly feature highlighting venture capital funding news across Southern California’s tech and startup ecosystem. Please send fundraising news to Decerry Donato (decerrydonato@dot.la).
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Decerry Donato is dot.LA's Editorial Fellow. Prior to that, she was an editorial intern at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.