Founders, investors and figures who have shaped the startup ecosystem in Iran and the world.
165 entries
Aileen Lee
Ecosystem figure
Founder of Cowboy Ventures, who coined the term unicorn.
Alexandr Wang
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Scale AI.
Alexis Ohanian
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Reddit and founder of the venture firm 776.
Ali Ghodsi
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Databricks, born in Iran.
Ali Partovi
Ecosystem figure
Founder of the venture firm Neo and co-founder of Code.org.
Ali Rowghani
Ecosystem figure
Former managing director of YC Continuity and former chief operating officer of Twitter.
Amir Fassihi
Ecosystem figure
Studio director of Dead Mage, the Iranian studio behind Children of Morta.
Amjad Masad
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Replit, born in Amman.
Andrew Ng
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Coursera and Google Brain, founder of DeepLearning.AI.
Anne Boden
Ecosystem figure
Founder of Starling Bank.
Anne Wojcicki
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of the genetics company 23andMe.
Anousheh Ansari
Ecosystem figure
Iranian-American entrepreneur, chief executive of the XPRIZE Foundation and the first female private space explorer.
Anthony Tan
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Grab.
Apoorva Mehta
Ecosystem figure
Founder of Instacart.
Arash Ferdowsi
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Dropbox, who left MIT to build the company.
Aravind Srinivas
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Perplexity.
Arthur Mensch
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Mistral AI.
Babak Nivi
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of AngelList and the Venture Hacks blog.
Ben Horowitz
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of a16z and author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things.
Ben Thompson
Ecosystem figure
Analyst and writer behind Stratechery.
Bijan Sabet
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Spark Capital and early investor in Twitter and Oculus.
Bill Gates
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Microsoft and the Gates Foundation.
Bill Gurley
Ecosystem figure
Former Benchmark general partner and early Uber board member.
Bob Miner
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Oracle, born to Assyrian parents from Iran.
Brad Feld
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Techstars and Foundry, author of Venture Deals.
Brandon Beck
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Riot Games.
Brian Armstrong
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Coinbase.
Brian Chesky
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Airbnb.
Byju Raveendran
Ecosystem figure
Founder of the Indian edtech company Byju's.
Cai Haoyu
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of miHoYo, the studio behind Genshin Impact.
Chris Sacca
Ecosystem figure
Early investor in Twitter, Uber and Instagram, later founder of Lowercarbon Capital.
Clément Delangue
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Hugging Face.
Courtland Allen
Ecosystem figure
Founder of Indie Hackers.
Daniel Ek
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Spotify.
Daniela Amodei
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and president of Anthropic.
Daphne Koller
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Coursera and founder of insitro.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Ecosystem figure
Chief executive of Uber and former chief executive of Expedia, born in Tehran.
Dario Amodei
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Anthropic.
David Baszucki
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Roblox.
David Cohen
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder of Techstars.
David Vélez
Ecosystem figure
Founder and chief executive of Nubank.
Deepinder Goyal
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Zomato, now Eternal.
Demis Hassabis
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Google DeepMind and Nobel laureate in chemistry.
Drew Houston
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Dropbox.
Dylan Field
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and chief executive of Figma.
Elon Musk
Ecosystem figure
Entrepreneur behind Tesla and SpaceX and an early PayPal founder.
Emmett Shear
Ecosystem figure
Co-founder and former chief executive of Twitch.
Eric Migicovsky
Ecosystem figure
Founder of Pebble, the Kickstarter-funded smartwatch.