Pollen: Accelerate Your Independent Career
Here at XYZ, we have a belief that certain networks attract exceptional talent and help shape the trajectory of an entrepreneur's journey. We’ve invested heavily against this thesis in the Palantir network — whether you consider yourself a part of the Palumni or a Palantirian or whatever other nomenclature you subscribe to, you develop a unique skill set while building at Palantir. Through the forward deployed engineer role, Palantirians have a rare combination of technical and commercial acumen that makes them well suited to hunting out business problems. We believe the same is true about the Dorm Room Fund network.
Dorm Room Fund is a network of undergrads, MBAs, and graduate student investors who source and invest in their student peers’ companies. If you are the type to start a company while also completing a full time degree you must be highly ambitious and ruthlessly focused. Enter Hillary Bush who we first met while she was an investor at Dorm Room Fund (while also maintaining a freelancing business and working at a VC firm). Hillary immediately impressed us with her intellectual curiosity and bias towards action. She had already completed stints in Product at breakout companies like Kiva, MasterClass and Bungalow and was pursuing her MBA at NYU Stern while asking the question: Why is there no equivalent of an MBA for freelancers?
Enter Pollen — the professional membership that enables freelancers to build lucrative and sustainable independent careers. After her personal experience as a freelancer running into the bad SEO and snake oil that currently dominates freelancer’s professional development options, Hillary started building against this thesis that there is a gap in the market for freelancers to find the knowledge that they need to run and grow their businesses. From expert mentors to playbooks to peer connections, Pollen offers all the knowledge and networking that this professional group needs to go from landing their first client to thinking through new revenue streams.
We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Hillary and the entire Pollen team as they come out of private beta and announce their seed round led by our good friends at Animo VC, alongside Founders Collective and Precursor. If you or someone you know is looking to accelerate your independent career, join Pollen at www.runpollen.com
