“Twitter meets LinkedIn” social network secures $13m investment

A new social network aiming to ‘humanise’ professional social media has secured multi-million dollar investment.

Polywork has announced that it has raised $13m in Series A financing round led by A16Z with participation from the founders of Stripe, Instagram, Reddit, Behance, and Product Hunt.

Caffeinated Capital, Goldcrest Capital; Bungalow Capital and Harry Stebbings’ 20VC and a number of angel investors including Elad Gil, Nat Friedman, Anthony Pompliano and Ari Emanuel also participated in the round.

Founded by Northern Irish entrepreneur Peter Johnston, Polywork - which is currently in invite only beta mode - is a professional social network that enables people to share highlights in a timeline format, aiming to blend both personal and professional updates.

The Series A funding will be used to increase the team from 15 to 25 people, as well as investing in product, design, engineering and data science.

Peter Johnston, founder of Polywork, commented: “We’re really excited to welcome Sriram and the wider Andreesen Horowitz team on board to help grow Polywork.

“Who we are as people and professionals is hard to confine to a single label - the reality is our identities are much more complex and wonderful than that. We are empowering people to represent all the different things they do, both personally and professionally, inside and outside of their 9-5pm work.

“So far Polywork has resonated with professionals because it acknowledges and empowers people to represent all the quirks of being human.

“It’s been amazing to see people share highlights of the things they’ve actually accomplished at work while also sharing more personal updates like how they started homeschooling their children, travelled to a new city, or suffered from imposter syndrome.”