Francisco Paz

Francisco Paz is a finance and business-design leader at Polymath Ventures, a Bogotá-based venture studio and fund founded in 2011 that builds and invests in human-centered technology companies for Latin America's middle class. He joined the firm around 2019 and has held the roles of CFO, Principal & Business Strategy Director, and Business Design Director; he is currently listed as a Finance/Senior Advisor. In these roles he has overseen the financial management of both the Fund and the Venture Studio while helping create and launch new startups from within the studio.

His career spans more than a decade (his profiles cite "12+ years" to "20+ years") across the real economy, private equity, investment banking, and management consulting throughout Latin America. Before Polymath, he served as CFO and CTO at MesoFoods (owner of the Café OMA and Presto brands, ~2012–2018), one of Colombia's largest food-service groups with 450+ points of sale, where he is credited with helping double the company's size and EBITDA. Earlier, he was a consultant at Mesoamerica, a leading Latin American private-equity firm (~2005–2012), working on M&A and strategy across cement, construction materials, sugar, energy, banking, bakery/coffee, airlines, and telecom.

Born in Honduras and having lived in Costa Rica and Colombia, Francisco brings a multicultural, cross-border perspective to his work. He holds a B.Sc. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from UNITEC (Honduras), graduating summa cum laude, and an MBA from INCAE Business School (Costa Rica), where he graduated with honors. He also writes on company-building, authoring pieces such as "Business Designers: Heart, brain and soul of Company Building" (2022) and "How to Build Startups in Developing Countries" (2020).

• Invests at Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A, with personal checks in the ~$10K–$100K range and a sweet spot around $50K.
• Focus sectors include Retail, EnergyTech, ConstructionTech, and Manufacturing, aligned with Polymath's mission of building tech companies for Latin America's emerging middle class and SMBs in Vertical SaaS, FinTech, and HealthTech.
• Polymath's model blends "the creative agility of a venture studio with the strategic rigor of a VC fund" — it doesn't just write checks, it co-builds companies, so Francisco values ventures where deep operational and financial design adds value.
• His own background biases him toward operationally-intensive, real-economy, and tech-enabled businesses in emerging markets — reflecting his CFO/CTO operating experience and private-equity M&A pedigree.
• Geographic thesis is squarely Spanish-speaking Latin America, serving middle-class consumers and small businesses.