William Polkinghorn and the education of a second-time founder

William Polkinghorn once handed a restaurant waiter two things to charge: his laptop and his phone. It was 2018, and the co-founder of Driver was moving between meetings, investors, and cities. The devices had reached their limit before the itinerary had. There is something appealingly ordinary about that detail. Even an international founder with Oxford and Harvard in his biography still needs somebody to point him toward a socket.

The same year's business story ended much less comfortably. Driver launched publicly in September. In October, it let its staff go. A career that had included a Rhodes Scholarship now included a company that had run out of money. Polkinghorn subsequently returned to company building. Need's co-founder and CEO is the same person who helped start Driver. The sequence gives his biography an unresolved present, which is more interesting than a polished procession of accomplishments.

Before any of this came a postgraduate year at Taft. He pitched and played first base for coach Larry Stone. He credited teachers and an advisor with changing his academic direction. “At Taft I learned discipline,” he said. Then came Colby, Oxford, Harvard, and the quite different education of trying to keep a business alive.

The syllabus with two subjects

At Colby College, Polkinghorn studied chemistry and religious studies. He graduated in 1999, and the college's Phi Beta Kappa alumni list records both subjects beside his name. The combination is a useful early detail. Two disciplines sit together on the same line, before an executive title or a venture investor enters the picture.

Chemistry and religious studies make an arresting pair on a founder's résumé. One asks for attention to the material world; the other examines traditions, texts, and questions of meaning. Neither subject supplies a shortcut to running a company. Together, they give the education a breadth that a list of institutions alone would conceal. The interesting entry is the comma between the majors.

In December 1998, he was named among the American Rhodes Scholars selected for the following year. Rhodes records associate him with Maine and Brasenose College, Oxford. Harvard followed; his public professional profile lists his years there as 2001 to 2006. The chronology crosses institutions and countries before his startup career begins.

These are accomplishments with dates attached. Their significance should remain precise. An academic selection recognizes achievement and promise at a particular moment. A company has to answer fresh questions every day. The customers do not arrive because an admissions committee once said yes. The investor may admire the degree, then turn the page to the financial model.

A company with more than one clock

Polkinghorn co-founded Driver with Petros Giannikopoulos in 2015. They had met at Harvard. By September 2018, their company was introducing itself publicly in the United States and China. San Francisco and Shanghai were part of its footprint. Driver was asking an international organization to take shape around a young business.

The public introduction had an extensive creative operation behind it. Mother in Los Angeles served as lead strategic and creative agency, working with Turner Duckworth in New York, Colors and the Kids in Berlin, Sunshine Sachs, and Your Majesty in Amsterdam. Even the launch's address book crossed several borders. A product's public face can require a surprisingly crowded backstage.

Driver's board included Jennifer Doudna and fashion designer Tory Burch. Its financial backers included Horizons Ventures, associated with Li Ka-shing. Those connections were visible parts of the company's identity. They also make its subsequent closure harder to flatten into a simple story about an obscure team struggling to attract attention.

The business had attention. It had experienced people around it. It had a public launch. Each of those facts matters, and each measures something different. Brand work can make a proposition recognizable. A board can bring advice and relationships. Investment can finance the work. Revenue must still arrive through a transaction. A company can advance on several of those fronts while the cash account keeps its own schedule.

The arithmetic after the applause

On October 16, Driver laid off approximately 85 employees. The company had been seeking further funding, but its revenue had not developed fast enough to secure the next round. Its short public chapter followed years spent building. The launch date and the company's age were different clocks, and neither offered protection when the funding stopped.

Polkinghorn spoke publicly about what had gone wrong. He acknowledged excessive scope and the need to have brought in revenue earlier. That puts a specific operating question at the center of the story: how much should a company build before it has established the income needed to support the operation?

“One of the biggest things we got wrong is, we tried to do too much.”

William Polkinghorn, November 2018

The pronoun carries some weight. “We” includes the person speaking. The admission does not explain every decision or distribute every responsibility, but it identifies a mistake in the work the company chose to undertake. It is a more useful sentence than a vague reference to difficult conditions. Scope is something an operator must decide.

There is also a difference between work completed and a business sustained. A team may produce software, establish offices, hire colleagues, and form relationships. Those achievements can be real while the organization remains financially fragile. Driver's ending requires those facts to occupy the same frame. Leaving either side out would make the story easier and less useful.

Polkinghorn's public acknowledgment leaves an awkward passage in his biography. That passage belongs there. Removing it would make the later appearance of Need feel weightless, as though companies were simply successive entries on a professional profile. A closure carries consequences for colleagues as well as founders. A subsequent venture begins after those consequences, with its own obligations still ahead.

A familiar name on a new door

Need's public company page now names Polkinghorn as co-founder and CEO. It lists Giannikopoulos among its co-founders too, alongside Bryan Roberts and Bob Kocher. The classmate from the Driver chapter appears again. For a story told through company names, the recurrence of a person provides a quieter and more revealing point of continuity.

The four names also change the composition of the portrait. A CEO may receive the headline, but company formation is shared work. Need presents a group of co-founders. Their presence matters when describing what Polkinghorn is doing now, just as Giannikopoulos matters when describing how Driver began.

Starting again invites a familiar temptation in business writing: announce a comeback before the business has supplied an ending. The chronology supports a narrower, sturdier observation. Driver closed. Polkinghorn is leading another company. There is a continuing working relationship and a new organization. The next outcome remains something to establish through the operation itself.

The name Need is brief enough to fit on a small sign. The responsibilities beneath it are less compact. A co-founder must assemble people, make choices about resources, and decide which opportunities to pursue. In Polkinghorn's case, those ordinary executive duties follow a public acknowledgment that an earlier company took on too much. That is the tension a second venture brings to his story.

Across the Pacific, again

In July 2023, Japan-U.S. Research Collaboration Week at Stanford included Polkinghorn as Need's co-founder and CEO. The event brought together academic, business, and investment participants. Its program placed him in a discussion about the relationship between research and global business, a setting where an idea's journey beyond an institution was part of the agenda.

In October 2024, the UnlockJAPAN program in Tokyo listed him with Phil Wickham of Sozo Ventures in a session about launching a global company in Asia. The agenda described Need's Asia launch in partnership with a large insurance company. Geography and distribution were part of the business discussion from the outset.

Need's company page lists locations in San Francisco, Seoul, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. These are concrete places rather than an abstract claim to international ambition. They put several time zones into the picture and make coordination part of the daily work. An international footprint appears in both the Driver chapter and the Need chapter, though each company has its own history.

The next examination

Polkinghorn's biography now contains several kinds of learning: a school year he remembered for discipline, two undergraduate subjects, a scholarship, and the experience of founding companies. Some of that learning came with formal recognition. Some came with an admission made after a business closed. The record is more human with both present.

There is no final grade to put beside Need. There is a current role, a group of co-founders, and continuing work across borders. For William Polkinghorn, the next chapter is already underway. Its questions are practical ones: what to build, whom to build with, and how to make the organization last long enough to do the work.