Ivan Rapin-Smith is the founding Managing Director of Watsco Ventures, the startup studio and Corporate VC arm of Watsco, Inc. Prior to joining the Miami-based Fortune 500 company, Ivan was the inaugural Managing Director of Venture Hive, a startup accelerator spun out of the University of Miami. Raised and educated in Belgium, Ivan earned a Master of Science in Electromechanical Engineering from the Catholic University of Leuven, and began his career in management consulting before co-founding two Belgian startups and Belgium's first startup accelerator. He moved to Miami in 2011, where he quickly became a key figure in the burgeoning local tech sector, dedicating his expertise to guiding startups toward sustainable, innovative growth and technological progress.
