Winning customers in the age of technology requires more than a fancy product and brilliant marketing.
With the average consumer being spoiled for choice when comparing vendors by product functionality, businesses can differentiate themselves from competition by optimizing their trust layer which spans from regulatory adherence, data practices, end-to-end support and embodying their mission statement authentically.
Preply’s mission is to elevate human potential by fostering effective learning via its platform and as it recently achieved unicorn status (>$1B Valuation), we sat down with June Chaikovska, Senior Legal Counsel at Preply, to learn more about Preply’s trust building layer, privacy challenges as an edtech company and the company’s 5 year long collaboration with Legal Nodes in the Data Protection Officer (vDPO) capacity.
The Northstar
For Preply, privacy is not treated as a late-stage compliance exercise.
June describes it as part of the platform’s trust and safety foundation.
As the company scales across markets and user volumes increase, the expectation is simple: users should clearly understand how their data is used, what control they have over it, and feel confident interacting on the platform.
That means staying grounded in core GDPR principles like transparency and fairness, while steadily moving toward privacy by design and by default across product decisions.
In practice, this looks like
- Clear communication
- Responsive support when users exercise their rights (e.g: Data Subject Access Rights)
- An enabling environment where users’ requests like data access or data deletion is straightforward rather than intimidating.
Preply aims to operate a system where privacy feels normal, predictable and embedded into the businesses core functionality.
Preply’s Unique Challenge
Like many growing tech companies, the challenge was translating legal requirements into tangible frameworks that product and engineering teams could actually execute.
June highlighted the gap between legal wording and real-life implementation.
It is one thing to know what GDPR requires. It is another to figure out how that requirement maps to flows inside the platform, features being shipped, and day-to-day operations.
Without that bridge, compliance becomes theoretical.
For Preply, the work has been about turning regulation into practical examples and repeatable playbooks so teams can act with clarity rather than hesitation.
Legal Nodes and Preply: A Synergy of Expertise
If an outsider were asked to guess the legal team size, for a high growth company like Preply, they would likely mention around 50-100 in-house experts.
The reality is that Preply has maintained a small team as this has allowed for efficiency and speed while being lean. However, as GDPR regulations and demands got even more complex, in-depth expertise for GDPR was required.
Rather than increase overhead costs, Preply turned to Legal Nodes.
Legal Nodes offers in depth GDPR expertise with experts who are CIPP/E certified, versed across multiple industries and have what June referred to as a “deep external perspective”.
The internal team at Preply understands the product deeply ;
- how tutors and students interact
- how features are prioritised
- how decisions get made
While Legal Nodes understands Data Protection from regulation to context application. This synergy ensures no blind spots exist in executing for regulatory adherence in a way that works for Preply as a business entity and its end users.
In Conclusion
Securing customer trust in a crowded market requires intentionality from Day 1.
For Preply, it comes from deliberate choices around safety, transparency and respecting users’ data at every stage of the journey.
For Legal Nodes, it comes from strongly enabling teams with the legal infrastructure to navigate operations without regulatory mishaps.
This collaboration is over 5 years in the making and we believe we are just getting started.
