Professional Affiliation

Former Director of the Founder Institute; Kauffman Fellow

Expert Bio

Marcos Polanco has helped launch over 50 startups across Silicon Valley and Latin America via the Founder Institute. He established the information technology business development unit for the Government of Puerto Rico, facilitating the creation of 1,700 technology jobs by attracting $110 million of corporate investment from such companies as Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, and Honeywell Aerospace. Now as a member of the Kauffman Fellows Society, a global network of venture investors, he focuses on scalable deal sourcing, due diligence, and investment monitoring. As a Stanford-trained software engineer, Marcos co-invented and patented a widely-cited machine learning algorithm, subsequently founding a startup to commercialize the technology. Polanco also came up with the idea and secured funding for a pioneering open source laboratory to teach computer science. Polanco holds open office hours for early stage startup founders.