Max Pollard is Co-Founder and CEO at Cotool, an AI-powered security automation platform that helps security teams eliminate manual and repetitive work. Cotool was founded in 2025 and recently raised a $7.4 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Max studied Business Administration and Computer Science at UC Berkeley, graduating in 2016. He previously worked as Solutions Engineer at Okta and led the forward deployed engineering team at Material Security, scaling it from 1 to 8 engineers.

Max embedded himself with elite security programs at companies like OpenAI, Coinbase, Figma, and DoorDash to deeply understand security workflows and pain points. He holds a dual BA in Business and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.

Cotool completed Y Combinator's Spring 2025 batch and raised $7.4M seed funding led by a16z in March 2026. Early users have cut investigation time by 90% and increased detection quality using Cotool's AI agents.

Cotool's platform enables security teams to automate repetitive workflows, cutting time spent on investigation and detection engineering by 70%. The company is based in San Francisco and serves security operations teams at leading technology companies.