Why we work inside the
companies we invest in.

Before Polanco, I co-founded Outer Insights, a software company that gives private and public companies investor data and the workflow to build relationships with financing partners. The product put me in front of a lot of founders at the moment they were raising. I expected the problem to be access: not enough investors, not enough introductions. It usually was not.

The pattern I saw again and again was companies that had raised money and then stalled. Not for lack of ambition or product. They stalled because the work that sits between a business and its next stage was nobody’s job. The investor narrative was out of date. The data room was half built. A strategic partner had gone quiet because nobody had followed up with a clear proposal. A listing had been discussed for a year without anyone owning the checklist. The founder was running the company, which is what a founder should be doing. The board met quarterly. The investors were waiting for an update.

Capital does not fix this. Capital is what you get once this work is done.

So when I set up Polanco Ventures, the question was not what to invest in. It was what role to take. The usual options are a cheque and a board seat. A cheque gives you exposure and very little else. A board seat gives you a vote and a quarterly view. Neither puts anyone on the work.

Polanco’s answer is to invest its own capital, at times alongside co-investors, and to take a working role inside the company at the same time. Not an adviser who sends a memo. Part of the team, with a title and responsibilities. In practice the work falls into four areas: the investor narrative and the materials behind it; the financing process itself, from the first conversation to coordinating counsel; strategic partnerships and commercial agreements with the counterparties that matter; and, where a public listing is the path, the readiness work that goes with it.

The model has an obvious cost, and it is worth stating plainly. We can only do this in two or three companies at a time. That is not a marketing number. It is the number of companies a small team can genuinely work inside before the work turns back into an adviser’s memo. It means we say no to good companies, including some we would be happy to own shares in, because there is no room to do the job properly. It also means we are slower to say yes than a fund. We would rather work alongside a leadership team for a while and know what the role is before we invest.

What we get in return is the thing passive capital never has: the ability to affect the outcome. Our positions are minority positions. Our influence comes from the work, not the shareholding. When the narrative is right, the financing closes, the partner signs or the listing happens, we were in the room when it was done, not reading about it afterwards.

That is the whole idea. The companies we work with have their own ambitions and their own teams. Our commitment is to carry part of the load that sits between where they are and where they are going. Invested, and at the working table.

Santiago Herrera
Dubai, October 2026

Notes are written from Polanco’s own experience and published for general information. They are not investment advice and do not describe any company’s plans or prospects beyond what that company has itself announced.