Michael Polansky operates in a corner of the world known for its outsize egos, but he stands out for his uncommon modesty. Sitting in a tree-lined courtyard outside a popular bakery in Mill Valley, an affluent town about 24 kilometres north of San Francisco, Polansky, in glasses and dark salt-and-pepper hair, has the appearance and friendly manner of a young professor.
He is co-founder of Outer Biosciences, an AI and biology startup that has generated considerable interest, and also the creative, business and romantic partner of Stefani Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga. He leads an unlikely double life: whilst the couple moves in celebrity circles, he runs a company that has spent years learning to keep human tissue alive outside the body for more than a month, with scarcely anyone outside the company knowing about it.
Polansky grew up in Minnesota and studied applied mathematics and computer science at Harvard, from which he graduated in 2006. He later worked for three years at the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates. He came to Silicon Valley through Minnesota, when an assistant to Sean Parker turned out to be his childhood neighbour. At a wedding in 2009 in his home state, she mentioned that Parker was looking for someone to work with him. Polansky moved to San Francisco after dinner with Parker and, by his account, resigned from Bridgewater the next day.
When Parker decided to establish his own family office after gaining liquidity from his stake in Facebook, he brought Polansky along. Polansky ran that office, handling Parker's business, investment and philanthropic affairs, including helping to establish the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunology, where he continues as executive director. His life "took a different direction" during the COVID pandemic, a change that had much to do with Germanotta, whom he met in late 2019 at one of Parker's birthday parties.
Outer Biosciences, co-founded in 2022 by Polansky, Kyung-Jin Jang, Chris Hinojosa and Stanley King, emerged from frustration that the pace of innovation in biology and chemistry has never matched that of software, largely because there is no ethical way to conduct experiments directly on people. The company obtains human skin that would otherwise be discarded after surgery, principally plastic surgery, through what it describes as verified tissue banks and non-profit and commercial intermediaries, operating under the oversight of institutional review boards and with documented donor consent. Polansky noted that the company took approximately two years to build that system and handle the necessary protocols to receive that tissue "within hours" after surgery, whilst it is still alive.
