The Portfolio Collective

Idea

Introduction

According to Henley Business School, 25% of UK adults currently have a side hustle, and that number could rise to 50% by 2028. Yet it’s not just side hustles that are increasing in popularity. The pandemic inspired more professionals around the world to work independently as freelancers, focused experts and everything in between.

Launching a portfolio career on your own can be difficult. That’s why The Portfolio Collective is working hard to both support and accelerate this shift, revolutionising how work gets done in three stages:

1. Community. Build the world's most talented and collaborative community of portfolio professionals.

2. Talent matching. Match these amazing professionals with great work opportunities (primarily in the startup and scaleup ecosystem).

3. Virtual teams. Help our members take on larger / more complex projects by enabling the rapid creation of virtual companies staffed up through the community.

Substantial accomplishments to date

We built an online community designed specifically for portfolio professionals. Our awesome team of 12 has delivered:

• A platform with 16,000+ unique visitors per month
• Hands-on, practical career support for thousands of professionals
• 90+ articles answering top portfolio career questions
• Expert-led learning through courses and live events
• Virtual networking and peer-to-peer mentoring
• Countless collaboration and work opportunities

In less than two years, we surpassed 125,000 unique visitors on our site and created a thriving online community with 5,000+ professionals across 191 countries. We have hosted 200+ events, launched two masterclasses, introduced a burgeoning talent match service and run 10 cohorts of our Catapult course, which has received 100% five star ratings on Trustpilot.

The future of work is changing, and we’re determined to equip professionals with the skills, support and opportunity they need as they step into a more flexible and globalised world of work.

Monetisation strategy

In the next three years, we aim to grow our revenue through:
• SaaS fees - for automated talent matching and virtual collaboration
• Premium membership fees
• Ticketed events
• Sponsorships & advertising
• Our ‘white glove’ talent matching service

Currently, our two main offerings are talent matching and our premium memberships.

1. Talent matching: Our database consists of thousands of high-calibre portfolio professionals. As a result, we are helping several startups / scaleups find talent for part-time and permanent roles. We deliver a vetted candidate shortlist in two weeks at £6,000 per role (up to 90% cheaper than headhunters). With volume, we will automate this within the platform, enabling faster and more efficient scaling.

2. Premium subscriptions: Our paid memberships offer members unlimited access to all our courses, masterclasses, events and workshops for a set monthly fee - starting with £15/month for Pioneer Lite.

Use of proceeds

..We are targeting another fundraise later this year, once we have sufficient proof points that our scaling is going well.

Funds from this round will be spent on:

✔️ Growing our talent match service, which includes expanding our talent team (to service clients) and building automated functions that allow us to take on a higher volume of roles.

✔️ Bringing more developers on board to improve other parts of our platform (learning suite, talent match automation, messaging, collaboration tools, etc.), plus a mobile and desktop app.

✔️ Building a partnerships team to grow our membership, generate new revenue streams and secure exclusive offers/ discounts for premium members.

✔️ Increasing marketing to grow our membership even faster.

✔️Growing total headcount from 12 now to 22 by December 2022.