Medium:

Today marked another milestone for the Iranian-American tech community in Silicon Valley. Uber’s board of directors appointed Tehran-Born Dara Khosrowshahi as its new CEO after the controversies around its founder, Travis Kalanick. As Pejman Nozad eloquently puts, “The Persian Mafia in Tech gets $70B bigger!”.

Dara Khosrowshahi is not the only Iranian-American executive in tech. Many Iranian-Americans have founded, invested in, or reached the top ranks of some of the most prominent Silicon Valley companies. The close-knit community of Iranian-Americans and the high value of education in the Iranian culture and families is one of the reasons our community is getting more powerful day by day.
Shervin Pishevar on cover of the Forbes Magazine

Let’s take look at some of the most prominent founders, funders, and executives in tech of Iranian heritage.

Dara Khosrowshahi: CEO of Uber. Ex-CEO of Expedia.

Ali & Hadi Partovi: Ali c0-founded LinkExchange and Hadi co-founded Tellme Networks. Both companies were acquired by Microsoft. The brothers are early investors in Facebook, Dropbox, AirBnB, Uber, Zappos, and many other startups. They then started Code.org, a non-profit organization which teaches computer science and coding to students.

Amir Khosrowshahi: co-founder of Nervana (AI company) acq. by Intel for $400M. Bonus point: the 4 people above, as well as some other prominent entrepreneurs are all relatives. Check this Washington Post article.

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