Polly Barnes

Operating Partner at EQT Partners

Speaker

Polly Barnes is Talent Operating Partner for Early Stage Tech at EQT, where she leads the use of AI and behavioural science to bring greater predictability to venture capital investing and value creation.

By building a proprietary database of 58,000 leadership psychometric profiles Polly developed The Founder Six, a data-driven framework identifying the leadership characteristics associated with exceptional founder performance. The framework is now embedded in EQT's Talent AI platform, with emerging analysis revealing exciting correlations between founder leadership profiles and fund outcomes.

Her work sits at the intersection of AI, human potential and investment performance. Her mission is to transform how investors identify, assess and support exceptional founders, ultimately making talent a more measurable and predictive driver of investment returns.