Polly

Market position

Polly operates in the market for feedback and engagement tools layered on collaboration platforms. Its investors have framed the opportunity as enterprise workflows migrating from legacy systems and email to collaboration platforms such as Slack, Teams and Mattermost, with measurement of those workflows becoming a distinct need. The company states that more than 200,000 companies use the product and that over 40% of the Fortune 100 are users, and its leadership has acknowledged several competing Slack-based polling tools.

Polly is purpose-built for collaboration platforms rather than delivered as a separate web application, which the company frames as lowering the technical barrier and saving time for respondents. Management has attributed higher engagement relative to other Slack polling tools to the product's simple and intuitive design, and the platform combines quantitative measurement (polls, surveys, eNPS, analytics, segmentation) with qualitative and team-building formats in a single app.

Technology

Polly is delivered as a native application inside Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Meet, with additional integrations for Google Slides, PowerPoint, JIRA Service Management and ServiceNow. Capabilities include event-triggered automation that connects to external systems of record, real-time results visualization, anonymous responses with retained demographic metadata for segmentation, and pre-built templates.

Go-to-market

Distribution runs through the app directories and integrations of the collaboration platforms Polly supports — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Meet — with a self-serve free trial on its website leading into paid and enterprise usage. Proceeds from its 2019 financing were earmarked for expanding product and go-to-market teams.

Hybrid and distributed work teams of all sizes, including HR, people analytics, managers and team leads, IT service desks and internal communications functions; customers range from small teams to large enterprises, with the company citing use by more than 40% of the Fortune 100.

Geography

The company is based in Issaquah, Washington, in the Seattle area, and has been described as a Seattle startup.

History

Polly was founded in 2015 by former Microsoft engineers Samir Diwan and Bilal Aijazi and participated in the 2016 Techstars Seattle cohort, after which it raised a $1.2 million seed round. The initial product used chatbots to survey employees inside Slack; the company later moved away from a conversational interface toward faster, structured polling interactions. In February 2019 it raised a $7 million round led by Madrona Venture Group, bringing total funding to $10.4 million at that time, with Madrona partner Sudip Chakrabarti joining the board. The company subsequently broadened beyond polls and surveys into a wider engagement suite spanning Q&A, suggestion boxes, stand-ups, pulse checks, icebreakers and trivia, and expanded platform coverage to Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Meet. Barbara Nicholas is listed as CEO, with co-founder Bilal Aijazi still on the team.