Prolific is a company building the biggest pool of quality human data and the ultimate platform to access it. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Prolific Chief Revenue Officer Nick Mills to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Nick Mills’ Background
What is Nick Mills’ background? Mills said:
“I’ve spent 25 years working in technology companies at various growth stages. I started at Microsoft in enterprise and then joined Facebook pre- and post-IPO as Head of EMEA Sales, where we scaled the London office from 20 to 800 people. I’ve also worked extensively for several high-growth companies, typically joining them around the Seed and Series A stages when they’re ready to scale beyond early Product-Market Fit into tens or hundreds of millions in revenue and expansion across multiple regions.”
“At Stripe, I led UK operations when the company had around 800 employees globally, driving regional expansion, new product launches in Europe, and an upmarket shift toward enterprise customers. More recently, I was first on the ground outside the US for CircleCI. I led their international expansion, accelerated growth to beyond $100m in revenue, and scaled the company from 200 to around 700 employees. Throughout my career, I’ve been responsible for the full spectrum of go-to-market roles, which has prepared me well for my current CRO position at Prolific.”
“As CRO, I oversee all customer-facing aspects of the business. This includes our full marketing operation, from acquisition and demand generation to brand, communications, and product marketing. I also lead our sales and customer success teams, including strategic accounts and our traditional sales organization.”
“I also manage our growing services team, which provides additional support for customers using our self-serve and API-first product. We recently launched a first-line support team to provide 24/7 global coverage.”
“I also oversee our growing partnerships team, which is building strategic relationships with major cloud platforms like Google, Azure, AWS, and emerging AI technology companies.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Mills explained:
“Prolific operates a comprehensive platform for human-generated data. Our foundation is a marketplace that connects researchers with research participants, serving academic institutions and corporate environments. We work with companies building frontier AI models and application ands traditional research teams.”
“Our core marketplace proposition is complemented by an API-first version for AI-related customers and larger enterprises, which allows deep integration with their existing tools. We recently launched AI Task Builder and are developing additional specialized tools for different research types. Each product enhances AI development and research, covering everything from data collection to model evaluation.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Mills and the team face in building the company? Mills acknowledged:
“A major challenge in the AI era is the rapid evolution of go-to-market strategies. The traditional software company playbook of relying solely on inbound and outbound marketing is no longer sufficient. Considering the entire ecosystem we operate in, we’ve had to think more expansively about our approach.”
“To address this, we’ve implemented several strategic changes. Most importantly, we’ve stopped viewing the customer journey as a linear funnel and adopted a more holistic approach that reflects how AI companies evaluate and integrate new technologies.”
“This shift required better cross-functional collaboration, aligning previously siloed teams. We’ve built a holistic go-to-market team structure and are implementing innovative AI uses, such as AI-powered chatbots for customer interaction.”
“We’re actively working on this challenge. Still, it’s also an opportunity to better serve our customers in the AI space, who have unique needs regarding data quality and model evaluation.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Mills noted:
“Our technology journey has been fascinating, driven by how we’ve seen our customers’ needs evolve. We started with a straightforward UI platform serving academic researchers. But as we watched these researchers move into industry, particularly into AI companies, we knew we needed to transform our technology stack.”
“The game-changer was launching our API-first platform, which allows customers to seamlessly integrate Prolific into their workflows. Most recently, we launched AI Task Builder, our first specialized tool specifically for AI development and evaluation. What used to take weeks in academia can now be completed in hours, which is crucial for the rapid iteration needed in modern AI development.”
“What’s exciting is seeing how this evolution has enabled us to support the entire research lifecycle – from participant sourcing to complex data collection and analysis – whether you’re in academia or building the next generation of AI applications.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Mills cited:
“Our most significant impact is how we’ve grown to serve more than 35,000 researcher customers worldwide. The platform sees more than 700 studies launch daily – equivalent to a new study launching every two minutes – with researchers typically receiving their completed datasets in just over two hours.
This speaks to the high levels of engagement in our participant community.”
“Our platform has expanded significantly, hosting over 200,000 active, verified participants in 40+ countries who speak 80+ languages. Our global reach now extends across more than 200 territories, with more than 50% of our revenue coming from the US market. This demonstrates our strong international presence, particularly in key research markets.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Mills about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“We’re fortunate to be working with some of the most exciting players in the AI space who are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with human-in-the-loop processes. While I can’t talk about all of them, I can share some insights from recent customer successes.”
“Layer 6 AI leveraged Prolific for groundbreaking generative AI evaluation research, which NVIDIA, Google, and Meta have cited. In a matter of hours, they collected responses from over 1,000 participants, enabling them to rapidly validate their hypotheses about AI evaluation metrics.”
“AI2 is another great example. They’re using our platform for critical model evaluation and alignment work. Their MULTIREF project created a large-scale human preference dataset. What’s particularly interesting is how they’ve leveraged Prolific’s general and expert participant pools to ensure robust human-in-the-loop assessments for their OLMO model.”
“The Alan Turing Institute is also leveraging our platform, investigating AI’s societal impact, particularly its persuasiveness in political messaging. On the commercial side, companies like Shovels are using our specialist participants to create high-quality training datasets for AI models in the construction industry.”
“These success stories validate our approach of combining verified human participants with robust technical infrastructure – enabling results that wouldn’t be possible with traditional crowdsourcing platforms.”
Funding
When asking Mills about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“Several key organizational metrics are behind our commercial milestones and customer successes. In 2023, we raised a $32 million Series A—one of the UK’s largest that year—fueling our growth trajectory. This investment has enabled us to significantly expand our team, adding 70 new team members in 2024 to reach 170 people, with hiring continuing throughout 2025.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Mills affirmed:
“In AI, most companies providing data for AI training operate as ablack-boxx managed service model. What fundamentally sets us apart is not just our scal but alsot our transparency around data sourcing and ethical treatment of participants. We’re completely open about where our participants are located and how they compensate— things you don’t see with other platforms.”
“Our European heritage, particularly our strong roots in Oxford University and deep connections to the London-Oxford-Cambridge tech ecosystem, gives us a unique market position. While we currently generate more than 50% of our revenue in the US, that European foundation gives us a different perspective compared to the US-focused or Asia-Pacific players.”
“I think what’s critical is that we’ve built this business in the right order. We first focused on building a robust global participant pool with specialized expertise, then built our software products on top of that foundation. Many of our competitors did it the other way around – they started with tooling and then realized later that the real value is in access to quality human data. Plus, while other platforms might take days or weeks to get you data, our active participant community means you’re typically getting completed datasets within hours.”
“This approach means we can offer something unique: an integrated technology stack that handles your full spectrum of needs and is backed by a proven, established marketplace of participants. It’s not just about the technology—it’s about having both pieces work seamlessly together.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Mills concluded:
“Our vision is to become the global standard for human-in-the-loop processes in AI development. While the industry has significant focus on building models and applications, we see a crucial need for human validation and alignment that will only grow as AI systems become more prevalent.”
“We’re planning significant expansion in the US market to support our growing base of multinational customers. We aim to establish ourselves as one of Europe’s standout AI infrastructure companies while building a global presence.”
“Looking ahead, we see opportunities to expand beyond our current offerings into new AI development and validation areas. We want to be the partner of choice for companies building responsible, effective AI systems, providing them with the comprehensive tools and capabilities they need to succeed.”
