#8 Darian Shirazi

Darian Shirazi #8 General partner, Gradient Ventures Darian Shirazi knows a thing or two about getting in at the ground level of a successful startup: He was one of Mark Zuckerberg’s first outside hires for Facebook in 2005. He also founded the customer-data platform Radius and stayed on as its CEO for about seven years. As a seed investor, Shirazi has backed successful companies, such as the online learning platform Udemy, which debuted on the public market in a $421 million initial public offering in October. Shirazi cites having been a founder himself as one of his keys to success. “At the seed stage, founders now want to raise money from former founders. Building a company is intense and mostly about managing chaos,” he said. “My role as an investor is to defend, protect, and problem-solve with founders.” Source: businessInsider