Laurent Kott spent many years inside Inria, France's national research institute for digital science, where he directed the Rennes center and led Inria-Transfert to spin out startups from academic research, giving him deep insider knowledge of how to turn university research into venture-backed companies. As an academic computer scientist with a doctorate in programming and distributed systems who became Chairman of IT-Translation and helped design France's first digital seed funds, he specializes in backing PhD-heavy teams building companies from scientific discoveries in AI, IoT, and robotics.