Pollen

Pollen is a New York City-based marketing automation startup founded in 2016 by CEO and co-founder Zack Werner, and a graduate of the Techstars NYC Summer 2016 accelerator program. The company built a marketing automation platform designed to help small and mid-sized online retailers acquire new customers more simply and cost-effectively than through Facebook and Google advertising, giving e-commerce merchants an alternative acquisition channel outside the two dominant ad duopolies. Pollen operated in the adtech and marketing-tech space, targeting online retail and travel/hospitality merchants facing rising customer-acquisition costs on paid social and search. Werner later went on to found other ventures, including Function Health.