Draft:Marcus Dantus

Marcus Dantus
Citizenship	Mexican
Occupation(s)	Entrepreneur, Angel Investor

Marcus Dantus is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, known for creating, operating, investing in, and advising startups across Mexico, the United States, and Latin America.

Early life

Dantus was born in Mexico City on November 7th, 1967. He has russian, bielorussian, ucranian and polish ancestry. His mother, Olga Mochán, (1946-2012) was a Montessori teacher and a  Montessori guide trainer, she owned a Montessori Kindergarden and Primary School (Casa de los Niños NAN). His father, Leon Dantus, (b. 1945) was a  factory general manager (Productos MetalicosStandard) and is currently a Director in a Montessori High School in Phoenix, Arizona. Marcus´grandparents emigrated in the early 20^th century to Mexico where they resided until their passing.

Marcus was born into a middle class family and had a normal childhood. He was a good student but had disciplinary problems since early childhood. His maternal grandfather, Isaac Mochán was a successful entrepreneur, arriving in Mexico as an Mechanical Engineer and early in his career set up the electricity in Mexico City´s Périferico, the City´s main beltway. His paternal grandfather, the original Marcus Dantus, was a merchant and owned a couple of stores in downtown Mexico.

After finishing High School he took a sabbatical year in which he traveled to several countries in Europe, Israel and Egypt where worked several jobs and played guitar on the streets to earn a living during his travels. During college he worked as a boucer and bartender in order to pay partially for his education.

Education and academia

Marcus studied high school at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) at the state of Mexico campus. He attended a bicultural program which helped him refine his English skills (1982-1984).

He continued as a college student at the same institution (1985-1987) majoring as a B.A. in Computer Science and Administration (LSCA), he maintained a 3.9 GPA during his 2 years of college in Mexico. In 1987 he received a partial scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania´s Annenberg School of Communications, where he graduated as a B.A. in Communications, Mass Media and Modes in 1989.

In 2021 he received an honorary PhD from the Claustro Doctoral Honoris Causa for his contrubutions to society in the field of entrepreneurship. And in 2022 he received a second honorary doctorate degree in Human Rights from the Inter American Institute for Research and Teaching in Human Rights (IIIDDH) for his contributions to society and innovation in human rights.

Since 2003 he began giving lectures as a guest professor in several universities in Mexico such as UAM, UNAM, ITESM, IBERO, Anahuac and ITAM and in the US for MIT and Harvard. In 2007 he became a guest professor at IPADE, Mexico´s most important business university, where business cases on two of the companies he cofounded and/or directed were part of the curricula (Innovamedica and Startup Mexico). In 2010 he became a full-time professor of entrepreneurship at Centro where he co-created the Entrepreneurial Center for the University. Marcus was also part of the founding team of ISDI Mexico where he directed the Startup Module for the Masters in Internet Business (2013-2016). He has currently joined Instituto Expansion as a partner, a tertiary education institution both in-premises and online based in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Marcus has also participated as a Keynote speaker in a plethora of corporate, entrepreneurial and government in Mexico, the US & Canada, Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. events including TedX, Ciudad de las Ideas, SemanaPyME, Semana del Emprendedor, Campus Party, Talent Land, Emerge Americas, South Summith, The Global Youth Leadership Forum, Montreal´s Startup Fest and many others.

Business career

Marcus began his business career in 1989 after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. He was hired by Leo Burnett, an advertising agency that same year as an assistant account executive for the Camino Real Hotels account. After 6 months in the job he was promoted to account executive and 3 months later as a supervisor of the account. In 1990 he quit his job to be with his girlfriend (now his wife) after her father´s passing.

That same year he was hired by Camino Real Hotels as a quality manager and later he was promoted to the sales team of Camino Real Guadalajara and later to the corporate sales team.

After his sting in tourism Marcus worked as an assistant director for a film and commercial production company and a sales director and general manager of a couple of passenger bus production companies until 1993 where he participated as a freelance writer for grupo Medcom and discovered the Internet. He began working in his personal website by the end of that year.

In 1994 he created his first company, Latin American Telecom, an internet telephony distribution company for IDT and Net2Phone. He created a network of over 120 distributors in 18 countries in Latin America.

By the end of that year his personal website had become a growing Internet company which eventually became Mexico.com after he purchased the domain in 1996. In early 2000, right before the Internet bubble burst, Mexico.com got funded by several investors and in that same year, after a fight with his partner, he separated from the company in late-2001. In January 2001 the company was featured in Red Herring Magazine, then the most influential technology and startup media, alongside Craig Barret, then CEO of Intel.

After the article was featured, Marcus was contacted by several Internet companies as a potential candidate to lead them in their Latin American expansion, he chose to partner with Serge Kruppa, a brilliant Swiss telecommunications engineer and together they formed Simitel, a software development company focused on contact center technology. The company was awarded the Intel Technology Award in 2004, ironically handed out by Craig Barret in Mexico City to bothe Serge and Marcus. The company underwent a couple rounds of funding and grew steadily from 2001 until early 2005 where they spun-off Peerant Inc, a new company based in Silicon Valley that routed calls over Skype. Peerantwas a company that caught the eye of Skype´s investors and was in talks about being acquired by Skype when in 2005 Skype was acquired by Ebay in September of that same year. Peerant was eventually acquired by their British investors and Simitel shut down in 2007 after bad management and diminished relevance in the market.

In 2007, Marcus was hired as the new CEO of Innovamedica, a medical device developer and incubator created by Emilio Sacristan Rock, one of the top biomedical experts in the region and the winner of the National Science Prize in 2017. They spun-off a couple of companies in Silicon Valley, Abdeo Medical and Critical Care. In 2010 Innovamedica and Critical Care were acquired by Alandra Medical.

In 2010 Marcus was hired as a full-time professor of entrepreneurship for Centro, a creative university in Mexico focused on Design, Film and TV. He created Centro´s Entrepreneurship Center and ran it until mid-2011 where he was invited to found Wayra Mexico, Telefonica´s IT accelerator that same year.

As part of Wayra Marcus accelerated 4 generations of companies and in early 2014 he created Startup Mexico, Mexico´s most ambitious Entrepreneurship and innovation program. He lead Startup Mexico until 2021 where he became its Chairman. Startup Mexico´s programs have created over 1000 new companies since its inception, aided over 4500 entrepreneurs and reviewed over 25,000 startups in Mexico and abroad. The company expanded its programs to include incubation, acceleration, soft-landing, corporate innovation and ecosystem creation amongst many others. At its peak in 2019 the company had 24 offices in cities in Mexico and Latin America.

In 2017, while still at Startup Mexico, he co-founded Dux Capital alongside Daniel Santamarina and Jose Luis Silva, a seed fund based in Mexico City that invested in 16 companies in the retail, impact and tech spaces both in Mexico and in the US.

In 2018 Mr. Dantus is invited as a shark in the TV program Shark Tank Mexico and has participated since that year, he is currently in his 6^th season with the show.

In 2022 Marcus became a Venture Partner for Impacta.vc, a fund based in Chile that supports impact-driven startups in Latin America. He also co-founded Mexico Limited with partner Hector Romero, a marketplace for Mexican entrepreneurs to promote their products and professionalize their SMBs as well as an Angel Fund in Guadalajara, Mexico focused on green field startups.

In 2023 Marcus co-founded Ananda Ventures a new breed of early-stage fund combining the benefits of venture capital and a micro private equity models.