Tell us a bit about your idea or organisation

Hi, I'm Sophie O'Brien. I'm the founder of Pollen Careers: a careers community for entry level job seekers. We help them with resources, guidance and support that they need when entering the world of work. And we also connect them with really amazing employers and give them the fair job opportunities that they deserve.

What spurred you on when you reached a challenging time with fundraising?

You know what, I have a lot of cheerleaders around me; I've got friends, my partner, and my family who are like, you can do this! They're empowering. They really are.

I've had situations in my life where I've really needed that before. Because I feel like society and most systems that we live in are there to protect the patriarchy. I'm very fortunate that I surround myself with empowered feminists, both male and female, who are give the finger up to that. You go for it, you don't hold back, you've got an amazing business, keep going. And then when you've got all of this around you, it's like, "yeah! I can do this!" It's absolutely critical.

Even if you don't have those direct people now, go and find them. Because those cheerleaders are out there rallying you on from the sidelines, I don't have a co founder. So that's been really critical for me to have that support network.

You raised 103% of your target raise in just ONE week. How?

It sounds like one week, but the reality is the practical aspects & the legal aspects of it took one week.

The relationships and the journey probably took more like a year. When I set out to start the business, I didn't really know what I was going to do. All I knew is, there was something that I wanted to fix, I didn't really know how to go about fixing it.

But I also knew I needed to grow my personal brand, as everybody talks about, you need to build a network, as everybody talks about, and I couldn't like argue with those things, I guess, but I didn't have them at all a year ago.

So I was like, right, I need to address those things. I'm just going to break through the social media anxiety, start posting on LinkedIn, about the problems that job seekers face. And I have met in that time, literally hundreds of amazing, amazingly supportive individuals who just want to help. They see the issues, they might resonate with the issues themselves, they might have children that are going through those issues, the amount of messages that I've received, I can't even count of just people reaching out to me saying "keep going".

And I have met in that time, literally hundreds of amazing, amazingly supportive individuals who just want to help.

Some of those people have ended up becoming my investors. I didn't even know that they had money, or that they were wealthy, I don't think most of them wouldn't even consider themselves investors, to be honest. But they saw the tax relief that they can get from investing, they really believe in what we're trying to do. And therefore they were like "Yeah, I like I'll happily put some money in."

There was also people that I didn't know, were following what I was doing. But it turns out, they read all of my LinkedIn posts, they love what I'm doing. But they're quite introverted, and would never "like" anything or comment or reach out to me. And I might have known them from a previous job, or just extended friendships, and they've ended up being on my radar. The reason why all went so quickly is because I built this big network of really great people; they were all like messaging me all the time, like how's it going? We need to catch up! It was becoming quite overwhelming as I just couldn't keep track.

So I was like, right, I'm gonna just set up a newsletter. I've got at least 100 people that I'm connected with. And I'm going to set up a newsletter and every month, I'm just going to tell them what's going on. And if we do create any initiatives, then it's just an easy way for me to speak to them and get their involvement.

That first issue was "right, we're going to do fundraise." Now, let me know if you want to get involved. And then I had a flurry of people just responding. Some people didn't even ask to see the pitch deck! They were just like, "yeah, count me in!" I sent out that email, within one week, I'd already reached my target. We ended up closing the round within two or three weeks at 112%.

Speak to people, you can't have all the knowledge, nobody can possibly know everything.

And nobody expects you to know everything. So go and acquire that knowledge from the people that do know about that. The best things I did was take the time to learn speak to as many people that I could that have gone through these experiences.

I feel a bit strange giving this advice now because I guess it was only nine months ago where I was the one soaking up all of the content that I could on how to do this and was trying to learn from people's experiences.

There is no one size fits all. I know some founders that we've had amazing success by doing cold outreach. They literally just went like just got databases of people did cold outreach and got funded, they reached their funding goals quite quickly. There are different paths.

For me, I've really enjoyed this path because it's all being authentic and organic, it's happenned quickly because I've spent the time developing, nurturing people developing those relationships. And like the fact that I am so keen to learn as much as I can is, I guess, also considered quite a positive thing, if you're going to invest in somebody and they want to soak up as much as they can, which is probably from an investor's perspective, quite a compelling trait.

Sophie graduated from The Alternative Funding School (Cohort 6). Want to join our next cohort?