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Meet Kendall Tucker of Polis in Cambridge

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kendall Tucker.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Kendall. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I am the CEO and Founder of Polis, the fastest growing data and Analytics Company in the country. I founded Polis in 2015 after working on political campaigns in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. What I realized was that there are fascinating data sources in the world right now that can help organizations understand who consumers are and what they care about, but they weren’t being used to improve the efficacy of political campaigns. Since starting Polis, our mobile canvassing app has become one of the most praised tools in politics and it has been used by over 200 political campaigns including 2 presidential campaigns to talk to over 10 million Americans. At the end of 2017, we expanded our software to support door-to-door sales groups and have seen unprecedented success in signing two of the largest energy companies in the country to use our in-person data and our software. Our fast growing revenue is now firmly in the seven-digits after being in business for only 2.5 years, and is showing no signs of slowing. Polis has now touched over 30 million Americans in not only energy and politics, but also home security, solar and telecoms. Our data repository has become the largest, most accurate, and most sought after within several industries with in person marketing platforms and I am proud to be one of the few female tech CEOs in Boston. I have raised over $2M from top VCs and angel investors and I have been named a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree, a finalist for Americaninno’s 50-on-Fire awards and a rising star by Campaigns and Elections Magazine. Polis has also been featured in Forbes, TechCrunch, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Utah Valley Business Magazine and on the TODAY Show.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Startups are inherently challenging endeavors (otherwise everyone would do it!). I have loved the journey but it has never been easy. My most consistent challenges have to do with leading a tech company as a young female leader. I find that my decisions are questioned more often than my male-CEO peers and I have had to prove my company’s value proposition more to investors. These challenges, despite being remediable (our space needs to do better), have made me and my team stronger. Our investors-who are fantastic, partner with us because they know Polis has strong, inherent value (and not because I remind them of Mark Zuckerberg). Our team is filled with open-minded, hard-working people (80% of whom are immigrants) and this makes our work culture and product better. And lastly the groups we sell to often value working with a female-led company and we’ve been able to broker partnerships across industries that we otherwise may not have been able to. I believe our fortitude in facing obstacles has been among the most important reasons for our incredible innovation and skyrocketing success.

Polis – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I founded Polis (which is a Greek word signifying state characterized by a sense of community) to better connect people to the issues, and organizations they care about. Rather than thinking of people as demographic groups to be advertised to, Polis invests in, and learns about everyone as individuals and then communicates more intelligently, and more personally with them about what they care about. We believe that people are people, not numbers, and we use that to influence all of the internal and external work that we do. I have been a leader in my company by building a meaningful culture that has become a special place to work. Our mission is to bring the personal back into business, and build an organization for passionate people to learn, grow, develop and have fun. Polis is a place where we all care about what we do. Right now, we create canvassing software tomorrow we are reinventing how organizations and people communicate with each other to make interactions personal and meaningful again. Our vision is to interact with 300M Americans (100%) face-to-face.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I can think of a lot of moments to be proud of in my career (Forbes 30-Under-30, Campaigns and Elections Rising Star Award, Americaninno 50-on-fire finalist) but the Polis team moments stand out to me more than the public accolades. Recently my entire team came to Boston (we also have a Utah office) and we got to introduce all our new hires and facilitate inter-office discussions. Their immediate connections and joy in brainstorming meetings showed me how much bigger Polis is than me and made me extremely proud about the future this company is working to bring about.

The other moment I’m most proud of is the first time I saw one of my employees present about Polis. For so long Polis was an idea just in my head, but to see my head of sales get up in front of a crowd of 250+ people to present on our new features and our expansive data made me realize that Polis has grown into a movement that will improve in-person communications and connect neighborhoods once again. My team is creating connections and miracles.

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Image Credit:
Polis, Inc.

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