Cyrus Yari
(*Rational VC Podcast is being relaunched as "Rational Founder". Links will be updated soon!)(Newsletter RSS feed. I've written new essays, will launch them same time as new podcast, sign up!)
(*Hiring course launching by end of October!)
My Current Portfolio of Bets
| Rational Founder Podcast | Exploring Timeless books (formerly Rational VC, Top-25 podcast) |
| Rational Founder Organisation | Lifetime access to Rational Notes, founder support network, meetups |
| Rational.School | Tech hiring course & coaching, helped 500+ people get new roles |
| Codesmith AI-ML Programme | Co-Founder and Lecturer, currently in its fourth cohort |
| RationalX | Contracting & consulting (software & product work if I like the biz) |
| Rational.Fund | Small VC Fund, >$2M AuM & growing, invested w Thiel, OSV, et al. |
| Rational.Software | Indie-hacking for fun, not done much worth mentioning yet |
About Me
Left comfort, turned down VCs. Building a portfolio of small bets. Independence over everything. Seek sanity, not vanity. "Don't be a sheep." Will be sharing more on my X, you can follow along.Rational Founder (formerly Rational VC) is my life's work. In an age of short-form brain rot, I'm going the other way: two-hour podcasts (“conversational audiobooks”) on Timeless texts and Worldly Wisdom.Most recently, I was a Senior Software Engineer at Tesla. I never started my career as a coder. See here for my anti-normie career path and why I'd do such a thing.Past: Lots of senior experience across various fields, building & selling. Was part of a founding team for Silicon Valley Bank in London after university, where I wore several hats as we expanded, before moving into startups & tech. More about my "CV" on my LinkedIn (world's #1 normie conformie platform). What feels like play to me: I’ve been making YouTube videos since 2006 and podcasting since 2016.Early life: I was born in post-revolution Iran (Shiraz, the heart of the old Persian empire) under difficult circumstances. We escaped and moved to London when I was five. I grew up lower class, attending some of the worst-rated schools in England. In high school, I ran businesses and worked jobs like cold-calling and door-to-door sales. Then I worked 40+ hours a week in hit-target-or-die cold sales while completing a full-time degree. I always say: "born in Iran, made in England." God save the King. 🇬🇧Interests: reading Timeless texts, autodidactism, trading of ideas, sovereignty, asymmetric bets, mentoring & helping Iran's youth, Zoroastrianism, steaks after deadlifts, martial arts, architecture, hiking, flâneuring the Alpine region.
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time — none, zero. [...] I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines. They go to bed every night a little wiser than they were when they got up, and boy does that help, particularly when you have a long run ahead of you. [...] Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading and cultivate curiosity...” — Charlie Munger
“Let me insist that erudition is important to me. It signals genuine intellectual curiosity. [...] Indeed, scholarship without erudition can lead to disasters.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
(The "Rational" brand was created in 2020, deeply influenced by the teachings and philosophies of the Incerto series and Poor Charlie's Almanack. I’ve also recorded 40+ hours of evergreen podcast content on these six books. They continue to inspire much of what I do.)