Few things matter more than what the world’s most talented individuals do with their lives.
Unfortunately, discovering the path which will lead them to the right life’s work is seldom straightforward, and the process is too often hampered by institutions which promise clarity and direction only to deliver a narrow list of sanitised options within which work is primarily justified as preparation for eventual real, impactful work, to be taken on later, elsewhere.
Even for those individuals who resist the dampening pressures the world throws on the ambitious and the weird, transforming fuzzy aspirations into concrete action on one’s own is a painful process prone to failure because the expression of talent is fundamentally social.
The right peers hold you accountable, egg you on, raise your aspirations, and ultimately enable you to progress. But forming such a peer group is rare and difficult, even when embedded within institutions which gather the world’s smartest and most ambitious people.
History is proof of the fact that these peer groups matter immensely. The most interesting and impactful work rarely starts within the brightly illuminated and fully legible spaces curated by universities and other institutions of becoming.
Instead, it happens in Café Guerbois, after hours in room 20E-214, or late into the night at the Eagle and Child pub.
These are spaces where bad ideas, incomplete thoughts, and cringe obsessions are taken seriously, allowed to be explored and played with. They are also spaces of high expectations and competition. They are, in other words, spaces of radicalisation, where individuals and groups shape and concretise an idea until they feel impelled to action.
Polaris is a 9 month programme built to give you and 24 other exceptional fellows just such an environment. To help you think concretely about the path you want to take we will take you through a curated curriculum of books, essays, and talks. We give you money to spend on projects (be it for materials, hosting, or content), and (when needed) we support you with thoughtful guidance. We will also give you access to EF's broad network of founders, researchers, and thinkers.
Polaris is a part-time programme which rewards serious and committed participation. While we're eager to help you start a company if that is the path you choose, Polaris is not an entrepreneurship programme. We are here to help you find your life's work, whatever it turns out to look like.
The Polaris Manifesto
You want to pursue big, meaningful work. You have been searching for the right environment and field in which to apply this ambition, but you still find yourself uncertain about whether you're on the right path.
You've proven to yourself that you can take on challenging ideas and problems, and you're eager to find ways to use this ability in service of real goals, instead of artificial ones.
You frequently find yourself excited about topics which most people (including a plurality of your peers) don't seem to fully understand, and you find it occasionally difficult to explain your interests.
You have high expectations for yourself and the people around you. You want to confront your ideas and ideals to reality.
About You
About the programme
Polaris is a 9 month programme running from January 2024 to September 2024, you will join a cohort of 24 smart, earnest, and high-expectation individuals.
The first 3 months are lightly structured, with weekly meetings to get to know your peers, and explore and discuss the curriculum (detailed below).
Thereafter, you will have free rein to work on whatever you deem to be a good use of your programme time and resources. There will be standing get-togethers and dinners, and you can expect your peers to be a source of accountability, but your time and your priorities are your own.
You will always be able to get guidance and help from your Community Leader or the EF team.
Curriculum
The Polaris curriculum is a deep dive into the very early days of some of the groups and movements which have come to define our present.
From our privileged position, their visions for the future seem obvious; we regularly fail to remember that the edifices they built over decades or millennia started as messy projects pursued by marginal people, seen by their contemporaries as unserious, cringe-worthy, radical, and dangerous.
Over the first 11 weeks of the fellowship, we will be meeting as a group to discuss the ways our distance from the past might mislead us about our ability to impact the future. Our exploration of the early days of the Enlightenment, the arrival of the Counterculture, and the emergence of Cyberculture will give us stories, anecdotes, and frames with which to interpret the present, and give you more context and better judgement with which to think about your future.
Support
Polaris programmes are led by dedicated Community Leaders, peers of yours who are deeply embedded in the university community/network and beyond.
Community Leaders are your point of contact and support for the duration of the programme. During the first half of the programme, you will be provided with your own personal copies of texts from the Polaris curriculum. For the second part of the programme, we will assist you with financial support for your projects. Support may also be provided from the wider EF network, in the form of introductions and fireside chats.
About Us
Polaris is run by Entrepreneur First. We have a track record of bringing together exceptional people who mistakenly think they are peerless. We collect stories like that of the Magic Pony Technology founders who were both at Imperial at the same time, but who failed to meet until joining us at EF.
10 years of backing individuals before they have a track record has taught us to take you and your potential seriously. We are comfortable being the first source of institutional support you experience.
EF is funded and backed by some of the world's best tech founders and company builders, including Patrick and John Collison (Stripe); Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Tom Blomfield (GoCardless and Monzo), Sara Clemens (Pandora and Twitch); Nat Friedman (GitHub); and Matt Mullenweg (Wordpress).
We have been helping people do great things for over 10 years through our company formation programme FORM, which has helped more than 3000 individuals start over 500 companies worth a combined $10B. They include Tractable (a computer vision unicorn), Cleo, Omnipresent, Aztec, and many more.
What’s next?
The selection process for Polaris in 2024 has closed.