ImpactTech entrepreneur Tristan Pollock launches new book animation to help families during COVID
MINNEAPOLIS, May 11, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As Coronavirus (COVID-19) started to spread across the world, Tristan Pollock and his family decided they needed to take action.
Not one to sit on the sidelines, Tristan had spent the majority of the last decade in Silicon Valley and San Francisco as a tech startup founder and venture capital partner working on triple bottom line businesses that support social impact and urban innovation.
The first startup Tristan was a co-founder of was SocialEarth, a social entrepreneurship media network acquired by 3BL Media with 200 authors in 25 countries. The next, Storefront, an Airbnb for Retail, that merged with Oui Open to expand globally. His work for Storefront with brands like Nike and artists like Kanye West put him on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and was featured in a TEDx Talk.
The intersection of impact and technology is where he thrived. After building and selling two startups, he joined one of his investors, 500 Startups, as an EIR or entrepreneur in residence, eventually becoming a venture partner.
Following traveling around the world launching startup accelerator programs supporting young entrepreneurs in places like Russia and Saudi Arabia, Tristan and his wife Dany Pollock decided to return to Minnesota to visit their family. And that's when COVID hit the United States hard, and many parts of the world were going into lockdowns.
No one knew how long COVID would last, but Tristan and his family didn't want to wait to support families in need. They immediately started sketching out a children's book that would help families explain to their kids what was going on. And not just what was going on, but how to cope and turn the lockdown and quarantine time into positive memories with the family.
The book was called Stay at Home, Dog! and featured a dog named Mabel (based on his grandmother Marilyn Abel who passed at the beginning of 2020), who shared lessons on each page on what was expected during COVID and how to make the best of the situation. Julie and Rick Pollock, Tristan's parents, did the design and illustration, and Danyelle, Tristan's wife, did the copyediting. It was a whole family affair and all the profits were donated to families most in need.
Tristan also wasn't new to writing and has contributed articles to major publications, including The Guardian, The StarTribune, Forbes, Entrepreneur.com, VentureBeat, and Net Worth.
After the book was produced, over a thousand copies sold in less than a month, making it the top-selling children's book on Amazon.com.
That led Tristan to work with his friends in Santiago, Chile, to translate the book into Spanish to make it more widely accessible.
Tristan and his family also have donated all of the book's profits to charities and nonprofits supporting the families hit hardest by COVID, like Second Harvest Heartland in Minnesota, which feeds families that are low on cash and are missing meals.
After seeing the book do so well in the US and start to be offered in Latin America, Tristan turned to his close friend Pierce Larick, founder of New Revolution Media, to turn the book into an animated video to expand the reach and support for kids coping with the repercussions of COVID.
"It was a chance to give back and triple our impact," explains Tristan Pollock. "We designed the book, gave it away for free as much as possible, donated all of the profits to families in need, translated it into Spanish, and turned it into a free YouTube video animation for everyone to take advantage of."
And utilize they did. Teachers from Serbia to California did book readings to their classrooms of young students. Tristan's mother is a teacher of young kids, and she created her own fireside reading of the book. Then her principal did, too. It was infectious. Everyone was excited to have something to support this long, crazy COVID journey we've been on from 2020 to 2021.
The animation is brand new, but the positive feedback for Stay at Home, Dog! keep coming. Out of 50 reviews on Amazon.com, the book has nearly a perfect 5-star rating. Parents are also sending their feedback about the book to Tristan and his family.
One 4-year-old girl from Australia said, "I loved seeing the doggy being clean. He looks funny. Do we have to be clean too, Daddy?"
Mike, a dad of four kids, said, "This book helped broach the sometimes scary subject of COVID-19 with my kids."
The positive feedback keeps Tristan and his family excited to continue supporting families affected by COVID as long as it takes for us to come out of this pandemic together.
Follow Tristan's writing & work.
SOURCE Tristan Pollock
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