Recently started tinkering with a new idea in AI -- bear with me as I share more soon. Left comfort to chase curiosity and avoid the rot -- back to zero again.
On the side, co-founded and currently lecture in the AI-ML Programme for Codesmith, the world's leading coding school. The programme is now in its fourth cohort.
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.
Building Rational VC as a hobby, a Timeless media project featuring long-form podcasts and essays. Launched in 2020, pivoted in 2024, and since hit the Top 25 charts multiple times. Our essays reach hundreds of thousands, with books on the way. In an age of short-form brain rot, we’re going the other way: four-hour podcasts (“conversational audiobooks”) on Timeless texts. Just getting started.
The podcast led to ever-increasing deal flow, so we started investing on the side through rational.fund. The fund has co-invested alongside Founders Fund, Jim O'Shaughnessy, YC, a16z, Sam Altman, Paul Graham, et al. Our LPs include family offices, funds, exited founders, and operators.
Past: Previously operated my own indie startups (several failed, two sold), worked in VC-backed startups (such as Hofy, later acquired by Deel), and advised several others. Prior to that I had no skin in the game and was part of a founding team for Silicon Valley Bank in London after university 😱 where I wore several hats as we expanded like the Achaemenid empire (I left in 2019, years before the collapse). Having a business/sales background while also being technical has allowed me to combine the two skill sets.Early life: I was born in post-revolution Iran (Shiraz, the heart of the old Persian empire) under unfavourable circumstances. We escaped and moved to London when I was five. I attended some of the worst-rated schools in the entirety of England. In high school I ran businesses and held jobs (cold-calling or door-to-door sales), which I then did >40-hours per week while studying a full-time degree at university. I always say: "born in Iran, made in England."Interests: reading (preferably Lindy), indie hacking, autodidactism, cross-domain curiosity, podcasting, writing, asymmetric bets, sovereignty, mentoring & helping Iran's youth, barbell training, martial arts, architecture, hiking, and Achaemenid history.
My most popular/"viral" essays:
📝 Becoming a Micro Angel Investor
📝 Financial Minimalism In Life, Investing, And Startups
📝 Tech Markets Are Irrational: What To Focus On
📝 My Personal Story - The Black Swan
Podcast & Essays - rationalvc.com
Investments - rational.fundTwitter
LinkedIn
GitHub
"Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day."—Charlie Munger.
— Cyrus Yari (@CyrusYari) April 8, 2023
Your career is not a ladder, it's a game. Those who treat it like ladder will make linear progress at best and let their fear hold them back. Those who treat it like a game will collect the resources, find the people, and build the skills that compound — and have fun doing it!
— Kevin Yien (@kevinyien) August 25, 2020
“Learn to sell, learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.”
“The new oil is ideas. It’s all digital. All the new fortunes are being created in ideas space. In fact, if you’re starting out today as a young, ambitious person, you don’t learn real estate; you don’t learn coal and oil mining; you don’t go into the extraction of physical resources to create wealth. You go into ideas space. You go into programming, books, movies, blogs and podcasts and building robots, which are mostly intellectual property underneath. Even as a human civilisation, we’re moving away from conquering physical resources and moving much more into trading of ideas.”—Naval Ravikant.
