Left comfort, turned down VCs. Building a portfolio of small bets in software & AI. Independence over everything. Seek sanity, not vanity. Will be sharing more on my X, you can follow along.
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.
Built 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. In an age of short-form brain rot, we’re going the other way: four-hour podcasts (“conversational audiobooks”) on Timeless texts.
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 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 Lindy texts, asymmetric bets, sovereignty, autodidactism, mentoring & helping Iran's youth, steaks after deadlifts, martial arts, architecture, hiking, and Achaemenid history.
My most popular/"viral" essays:
📝 Becoming a Micro Angel Investor
📝 Financial Minimalism In Life, Investing, And Startups
X
LinkedIn
GitHubInvestments - rational.fund
Podcast & Essays - rationalvc.com
(or grab the RSS feed)
"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.
