Daring voices: Sophie O’brien
Welcome to Daring Voices, our series spotlighting the founders in the Daring Capital community. In each edition, we sit down with a founder to hear their journey in their own words: from their origin story, to the challenges they’ve faced, and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.
This week, we talk to Sophie O’Brien, founder of Pollen.
What problem is your business solving, and what inspired you to tackle it?
Pollen exists to fix the broken process of early careers recruitment.
Looking for a job is often soul-destroying, even for someone with experience. When I was job hunting myself, I realised how much worse it must be for young people who have little experience, no connections, and perhaps no emotional or financial support at home. Having spent 14 years in media and advertising, I saw the challenge from both sides. It’s difficult to attract and assess early talent effectively and far too easy to miss out on brilliant candidates, due to outdated hiring processes. Pollen bridges the gap between young people and employers. We match values-aligned businesses with emerging talent and build a more inclusive, sustainable workforce, while offering support and dignity to those at the very start of their journey.
Why does solving this problem matter to you personally?
I’ve always had a desire to support young people, possibly inherited from my dad, who was a teacher. I briefly pursued teaching myself but found the education system too restrictive to make the impact I wanted. Years ago, I sat down with a careers advisor and told them my interests. Because I liked maths, I was told I should either become a maths teacher or an accountant. That was it. No one ever told me about creative industries, or the breadth of careers that might suit me. I carried that frustration for years, especially as I met brilliant young people who were being overlooked or misdirected by a system that still hasn’t evolved. Pollen is my way of changing that. It’s built on lived experience, mine and that of the many jobseekers we serve.
Why is now the right time to solve this problem?
We're at a critical inflection point. Nearly one million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training. Unemployment is rising and frustration with the job market is high. Many employers are overwhelmed with applications, so they raise the barrier to entry unnecessarily, requiring two or three years’ experience for entry-level roles. At the same time, automation is replacing human interaction in hiring. Timed video interviews with no interviewer are becoming the norm, even though they knock confidence and exclude brilliant candidates.
We need urgent, systemic change before we see a full-blown workforce crisis. That starts with how we hire and who we include in the process.
How does your solution stand out from existing alternatives?
We’ve completely ditched the CV. It was invented in 1482, and it’s no longer fit for purpose. At entry level, most young people don’t have much to put on a CV anyway – and it doesn’t tell you who they are. We use engaging, dynamic assessments that help candidates understand their strengths and what kind of roles they’re suited to. These assessments also provide evidence to employers about their potential and cultural fit.
It’s not only more inclusive, it’s more effective. Half of first hires fail within 18 months, and 90% of those failures are down to attitude, not skill. So why are we still obsessed with a document that only shows skills? We believe behaviour, values and potential matter more, especially in a world where AI is replacing technical tasks.
What does success look like to you, not just financially but in terms of impact?
Success is when a young person lands a job they never thought they could access and it changes their life. One young man we supported said that getting the job felt like winning a golden ticket, like that scene in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He’d done everything “right” -worked hard, followed the system and was still being locked out. When he finally got through, he said it was the first time he felt seen. That’s real impact. Financially, we’re building a scalable business. But our guiding light is always: how many lives are we changing? How many employers are shifting the way they think about early talent?
Have you ever had to choose between your mission and making a profit? What happened?
Yes and we chose the mission. We’ve had employers try to impose hiring filters like requiring a university degree, even for roles where it’s not necessary. That directly contradicts what Pollen stands for. We can’t offer a values-driven community to candidates while quietly filtering them out behind the scenes. In one case, we turned down a revenue opportunity when an employer insisted on screening out non-graduates. We knew the best candidate for the role didn’t have a degree, but they had everything else: ability, attitude, potential. Walking away from revenue is tough, but it’s the right choice long-term. If we lose the trust of our candidate community, we lose everything.
What has been your biggest challenge so far, and how did you get through it?
The biggest challenge is filtering out the noise. When you’re a founder, everyone has an opinion: advisors, investors, peers, other founders. It’s easy to second-guess yourself and become distracted. The hardest thing is staying focused on your vision and building the business you believe in. I’m still learning to block out the noise. But I’ve found that coming back to our mission and to the voices of the young people we serve helps reset my direction every time.
What achievement are you most proud of to date?
We recently partnered with the Jobs Foundation on a research project about youth employment. As part of that, we invited members of our community to share their experiences. One young man, who had found a job through Pollen, spoke about growing up without support, being rejected repeatedly and reaching a point of despair. He said getting that job was life-changing, that it gave him hope again. That was a moment I’ll never forget. Knowing we help people feel like they finally have a place in the world, that’s why we do this.
What is your long-term vision for the business and the change you want to create?
I want us to completely revolutionise early careers hiring. We need to stop putting people into boxes: “elite graduate”, “disadvantaged route”, “non-university”. Entry-level is entry-level. We want to create a world where people are hired for who they are and what they can do, not where they went to school. Our long-term goal is to shift employer mindsets and rebuild the infrastructure of early careers. That includes removing pay disparities between different schemes, eliminating tokenistic inclusion practices, and ensuring all candidates – regardless of background – are given the tools and feedback to succeed. When you design truly inclusive processes, you naturally get diverse teams. That’s the future we’re working towards.
What challenges have you faced raising investment, and how have you navigated them?
I’ve been fortunate that our investment journey so far has been positive. But I was also extremely cautious. I waited as long as I could to raise capital, and I prepared thoroughly. I knew the stats around female founders and the biases that exist in the system. I’ve seen what happens when founders take the wrong money from the wrong people. It can derail the mission, sap motivation and force decisions that don’t align with the founder’s vision. I didn’t want that. We walked away from investors who didn’t share our values. The result is a brilliant cap table full of people who care about our mission and back us wholeheartedly.
What advice would you give to other underrepresented founders just starting their fundraising journey?
Raise as little as you need. Investment isn’t a badge of honour – it’s a tool. The more you can do with less, the more freedom you retain. Secondly, get really clear on who your ideal investor is. Just like building a customer persona, think deeply about what kind of investor you want, their values, involvement, experience and motivation. You’ll waste far less time if you’re laser-focused. And lastly, use the tools available to you. I’ve used AI agents to streamline back-end development and there are so many low-cost tools out there. The more self-sufficient you can be early on, the less you’ll need to dilute equity or spend time pitching.
What do you think needs to change about the fundraising ecosystem?
So much. Only 2% of venture funding goes to female founders. That’s shocking, especially given that businesses with female leadership statistically outperform on profitability and growth. We need more women in decision-making roles in VC and angel investment. I’m proud that over half of our investment to date has come from women – and I’m keen to protect that. I’ve heard horror stories of women being asked if they plan to have children, being challenged on their ability to raise a family and a business. It’s like we’re still in the 1950s.
We need to make fundraising equitable. There are striking parallels between the experience of raising investment and looking for a job: both systems are full of unconscious bias and barriers to entry. That’s why I’m passionate about fixing both.
If you’d like to find out more about Pollen, you can visit their website.
A big thank you to Sophie for sharing her journey. You can catch the next in the Daring Voices series next week.
Jem
and the team at Daring Capital