Elise Polezel
CEO
,
HigherMe
Search Type
Solo
Search launch
2020
Investment year
2021
“Treat investors as part of your team. They’re your thought partners, helping you think through problems really quickly - which is key during the search process.”
“Treat investors as part of your team. They’re your thought partners, helping you think through problems really quickly - which is key during the search process.”
Elise's search journey has been one focused on relationships — a fitting theme for someone who now leads HigherMe, a company known for its human-focused HR and hiring tools.
Why Elise chose to search
As the daughter of two entrepreneurs, Elise grew up around small businesses and developed a great deal of empathy and admiration for business owners. After working in private equity, co-founding a startup and graduating from Harvard Business School, Elise was ready to write her next chapter as a search fund entrepreneur.
Why we backed Elise
"Relationships First" is one of our core values at Pacific Lake, and we found in Elise someone also wholly relationship oriented. She understood early on just how important building meaningful relationships is for a successful search. She quickly found she had the most success when connecting personally with sellers. At the end of the day, acquiring her company HigherMe was very much not a transaction: "It wasn’t just knocking on someone’s door where they were ready to hand over the keys. It was a personal relationship that took a lot of time to build."
