British-Persian. Based between Zurich and Munich, Europe's hard tech heartland. Built Rational from 2020, rooted in the (technical) Incerto and Poor Charlie's Almanack. Seek sanity, not vanity.

Now

• Rational Founder — long-form monologue podcast on enduring texts and worldly wisdom. Launching soon with fellows membership and notes library.

Also

• Rational.Fund — fund and independent research. Co-invested with Founders Fund, OSV, Balderton, OpenAI, Paul Graham, et al.
• RationalX — consulting companies/creators on content, AI, technical product & growth. Selective.
• Rational.School — tech hiring accelerator. 500+ people hired.
• RemoteStreet.com — boutique tech talent placement for companies. Vetted, not volume.

Past

• Co-founded & hosted Rational VC, a podcast ranked Top 25.
• Senior Software & AI Engineer at Tesla, Gigafactory. Zero to one products.
• Investment Banker + founding team at Silicon Valley Bank London. Wore many hats.
• Broad operator experience across US, UK and EU. Several acquired, several failed.
• Behind brands and creators on YouTube since 2006. In the podcasting world since 2016.
• Co-Founder, AI/ML Programme at Codesmith.

Origin

Born in Shiraz, heart of the old Persian empire, under difficult circumstances. Escaped to London at five. Grew up lower class, attending some of the worst-rated schools in England. Ran businesses in high school. Worked 40+ hours a week in hit-target-or-die cold sales while completing a full-time degree in financial engineering. Learnt to sell, then build. "Born in Iran, made in England."

Conversations

Stephen Wolfram, Jim O'Shaughnessy, Will Bruey, Eric Jorgenson, Ben Awad

Interests

Flâneuring old cities, steaks after deadlifts, mentoring Iran's youth, Zoroastrianism, Achaemenid history, entrepreneurial policy and the compounding of human knowledge.

Elsewhere

Essays, RSS, 𝕏, LinkedIn, yari [at] hey [dot] com