The Profile

The Profile is a weekly long-form profiles newsletter by Polina Marinova Pompliano that curates the most compelling stories about influential founders, investors, athletes, and executives and distills actionable lessons from their experiences. Pompliano started The Profile in 2017 while working at Fortune, where she spent five years writing over 1,300 articles and authoring Term Sheet, the publication's flagship daily newsletter covering venture capital and private equity. She left Fortune in March 2020 to pursue The Profile full-time.

The newsletter has grown to tens of thousands of subscribers on Substack, with thousands of paid members, and now generates six-figure annual revenue that significantly exceeds what Pompliano earned in traditional media. Each edition features a curated selection of the best profiles and interviews published across the internet that week, accompanied by a featured profile dossier with original analysis highlighting key takeaways about leadership, resilience, and decision-making.

What makes The Profile stand out from other curation newsletters is Pompliano's editorial eye, trained by years at one of the world's top business publications. Rather than simply linking to interesting articles, she identifies patterns across the stories of successful people and draws out transferable lessons that readers can apply to their own careers and lives. The focus on people rather than abstract business concepts gives the newsletter a narrative quality that makes professional development content genuinely engaging to read.