The world's first AI researcher powered by verified buyers

AI research, powered by verified buyers - and $32M to build it

Today we’re launching a platform that puts brands in direct conversation with thousands of purchase-verified buyers: any product, any category, in a matter of hours. It’s the first of many research products we’ll be releasing this year.

We’re also announcing $32 million in funding to date from leading investors, founders, and creators, including Josh Buckley (Buckley Ventures), Mantis (The Chainsmokers), 20VC (Harry Stebbings), Village Global, Lenny Rachitsky, the founders of Honey, and more.

The broken history of consumer research

Consumer research has been running on a broken foundation for decades. The industry has long been plagued by fraud: survey bots and people lying to qualify for interviews. Brands making billion-dollar decisions based on data they can’t trust. Consumers haven’t fared much better, sitting through endless screener questions, getting disqualified before the study begins, and receiving little in return for their time and data. It’s a broken experience on both sides.

Everyone accepted it because there was no alternative. Pogo is that alternative.

Our 3-phase master plan

Six years ago, we set out to build a data company on a different foundation. Three phases:

First, build a consumer app where people could earn real rewards by sharing data from their everyday lives.

Second, scale that value to millions of users through rewards, savings, fee refunds, and more, while building a national-scale data asset that reflects how America actually buys.

Third, use that trusted consumer network to build a platform where brands get verified consumer truth, and where the people who made it possible share in the value they create. This was the step we always knew was coming.

We’ve spent years on phases one and two, and are incredibly proud of what we built: 3M+ opted-in users, $470B in transaction volume, visibility into 1 in every 150 shopping trips in America, and the largest community of consumers who have actively, knowingly chosen to share their data.

The first part of our new platform

With Pogo, brands describe the audience they want to reach. Pogo's AI instantly finds verified buyers or users of that exact product, generates a discussion guide, launches thousands of AI-moderated video interviews simultaneously, and delivers transcripts, highlight reels, and actionable insights in hours. No more bots and professional survey takers lying to qualify for surveys. Just real humans brands have always needed to understand but never could reach.
 
Our customers choose us over other consumer research platforms because we’re the first solution that gives them the ability to talk to real, purchase-verified respondents. And to do so at a level of granularity that's never existed before: buyers of a product you just launched in stores last week, or a high-value customer who just churned to a competitor, reached right after the transaction when recall is freshest.
 
We work with many of the world’s leading brands, including Hershey, Chomps, Funko, Bain, OFI, Crossmark, Nestle Purina, The Trade Desk, Bojangles, and many more.

Customers use Pogo today for a wide breadth of use-cases:

• A leading CPG interviewed buyers of a newly launched product, uncovered packaging flaws, and quickly adjusted its supply chain before broader rollout
• A top tech company interviewed robotaxi users to understand why some ride again - and why others churn after their first ride
  
• A Fortune 500 food manufacturer built a data-backed multi-year view of how GLP-1s are changing what people buy
• A leading investor used Pogo to identify paying Gen Z subscribers of an AI tool as part of investment due diligence

We're hiring

In the AI era, software commoditizes fast. Proprietary data and access to real humans are enduring advantages - both for our customers and for Pogo as a company.

As AI exhausts public data, it’s clear that the consumer permissioned data economy is only getting more important. The question has always been who it works for, and we believe the answer should be everyone.

If we do our job right, Pogo becomes the world's most trusted source of human truth - the facts of what people bought, when, and how often, but also the story behind it: the emotion, the context, what drove them.
 
The result is a better system for all sides: smarter decisions for businesses, better products and services for consumers, and a new way for people to earn by sharing their lived experiences.

We’re already driving meaningful value for customers, with brands signing six- and even seven-figure ARR contracts for the platform.

If you're interested in building the future of consumer data and research, check out our Careers page for open roles.