First Funders

A conversation with Taufiq Rahim is a free trip around the world, into the past and into the future. His extensive knowledge of geopolitics is shaped not only by his studies, but also his direct, first-hand experience living and working everywhere from Vancouver to Tajikistan promoting U.S. democracy and supporting revolutions. He’s seen enough to feel confident in proclaiming that 2040 will be the year that technology, sovereignty, and geopolitics converge in a global shift that’s been decades in the making. 

Taufiq’s life arc gives him a unique view of the world in terms of where there might be opportunity that VCs overlook. His work today centers around this idea that 2040 will be a moment of convergence/singularity, and not just in AI (and we think that will probably come sooner), but in the sense of where global powers are converging given the nature of sovereignty. From his point of view, the singularity is not happening in a vacuum with only technology and AI. He sees 2040 as a major point of convergence in tech and simultaneously sovereignty and geopolitics.

His angel investments are a reflection of his world view: they are international, they distribute power and resources, they play into demographic shifts, and they increase access in global markets. Sanctuary AI, Vancouver-based, physical AI for general purpose robots, Responsive, Vancouver-based hybrid wealth advisor for banks and private banks, Kavaken, Turkey-based, AI-powered wind energy solution, BytesBoost, vertical LLM solution, Raptor Games, Pakistan’s first hyperlocal gaming and esports ecosystem. Shovels AI, platform for construction. And while Taufiq spends most of his time seeking the truth about the world and sharing it on his news site he’s also in the throes of building an AI-powered news tool. I am personally excited to beta test it!

Highlights:

• As AI’s role in society replaces labor, countries with direct access to reliable resources to power AI becomes even more critical. Power through capital only is not enough to drive economic growth. As Taufiq calls it, “hard power” the combination of capital and sovereign access to resources is a more complete view of where power will reside geopolitically to support growth.
• As demographics shift globally, some countries will reach a population drop by 2040 while others will open up and “Middle Earth,” which he defines as the area between Morocco and India, more often overlooked, is expected to be a fragmented and growing market of consumer, innovation and enterprise opportunity.
• Even as immigration to the U.S. becomes more complex, chaotic and uncertain, we expect immigration-based innovation to continue. The combination of America’s established capital markets, culture of risk taking and access to risk capital together keep the country’s edge and preference for high-growth, venture backed founders 

  
   00:00 — Taufiq Rahim’s Background & Worldview
   10:24 — The Changing Global Order
   24:48 — Money, Hard Power & America’s Future
   32:15 — Gulf Wealth, Silicon Valley & Global Investing
   38:42 — Immigration, Global Talent & Advice for Founders

This episode of First Funders is a little different… It's a conversation between two friends who made the leap from to VC from two shared and unique paths.

Shaherose is joined by Mel Strong, an operator-turned investor, whom she met while working at Nike. Today, Mel is a founder of NEXT VENTURES, a fund dedicated to supporting early stage companies in the health and wellness space. In this episode, Mel and Shaherose discuss their shared journeys, why they decided to leave the corporate world, and what they're looking forward to investing in next. 

Highlights: 

• Shaherose and Mel met at the same company, but both had very different paths to get there.
• The pair gives a behind-the-scenes look at creating Valiant Labs inside Nike and applying venture-style experimentation within a global corporation. 
• Shaherose leapt first, and then Mel followed after in leaving Nike and going into VC. 
• Mel has often felt like an outsider, but she's turned that into a strength as a VC. 
• Both investors appreciate backing founders who have immigrant or athlete backgrounds, as they've each seen excellent results from people with these profiles. 

00:00:00 – Introduction & Why This Conversation Is Different

00:02:30 – Mel Strong's Journey: Teacher, Journalist, Nike Executive, VC

00:08:15 – Shaherose's Origin Story: Entrepreneurship, Sports & Silicon Valley

00:14:15 – Building Women 2.0, Founder Labs & Early Startup Successes

00:20:00 – Bringing Venture Thinking to Nike & Building Valiant Labs

00:24:15 – From Operators to Investors: Angel Investing, Risk & Reinvention

00:39:45 – Leaving Nike, Finding Conviction & Becoming Fund Managers

00:47:00 – What We Invest In: Venture-Scale Founders, AI, Healthcare & The Future

Shahram Seyedin-Noor isn’t a physician. Nor is he a chemist. And he’s not a software engineer, either. But you wouldn’t know by the way he commands all of these spaces to invest in some truly cutting edge bio technology like genomics, therapeutics, and diagnostics just to name a few. 

He’s been at this for almost 20 years, with almost half of that time spent as the founder and managing partner of Civilization Ventures, where he writes $100k – $5m checks into pre-seed and seed biotech companies. He focuses on the spaces in healthcare that don’t always get their due, such as diagnostics and longevity. In this episode, Shahram takes us through how he’s been able to break down barriers as an outsider, why diagnostics needs a rebrand, and what he looks for in AI-native founders. 

Check size: $100k - $5m

Highlights: 

• Shahram’s winding path to his current role has established him as an outsider who’s able to quickly and easily obtain insider knowledge for almost any domain.
• Civilization Ventures started with just $1 million, but to date its had 17 exits and 3 IPOs including Rocket Pharma, Omada Health, and BillionToOne, with an ever-growing portfolio of companies in the biotech space including companies like Aspect Biosystems, Curai Health, and Foresight Diagnostics.
• Diagnostics has been unfairly maligned, but it shouldn’t be considered a dirty word within the industry.
• Incremental medicine has its place, but it’s curative treatments that get Shahram most excited. 
• These days, Shahram isn’t just looking for AI companies, he’s looking for AI-native founders. 

Chapters: 

00:00 – From Immigrant Kid to Venture Capitalist

08:30 – Building a VC Fund Like a Startup

15:30 – The Contrarian Thesis: Betting on First-Time Founders

20:00 – Why Diagnostics Became the Opportunity Everyone Else Ignored

24:45 – The Three Investment Pillars

30:30 – AI’s Impact on Biotech Investing

38:30 – Contrarian Investing vs Following Hype

41:00 – Beyond Returns: Building Civilization

What could you do with a free weekend and a few subscriptions to some AI tools? Probably start a billion dollar company. 

This is the reality for so many startups and tech companies that can suddenly ship projects that previously would’ve taken a couple of months (and a couple of developers) to deploy. So in a world where everyone can build, what’s the differentiator? 

Monique Woodard has a few ideas. She’s the founding partner of Cake Ventures, a fund writing checks into pre-seed and seed-stage companies at the intersection of technology and demographic shifts. 

She’s interested in how companies can stand out in a crowded, AI-driven environment, the way soft skills have transformed, and what AI means for the humans still in the loop. 

Check size: $250k – $750k

Highlights:
 • Trust is key for any company, and it’s not something that’s going to be replaced by technology any time soon. 
 • Monique is thinking more about the desk-less future of work and what AI means for the white collar workforce. 
 • The skills once labeled as “soft” are now getting rebranded into the “hard” skills that everyone needs to survive and thrive. 

• (00:00) - Monique x Shaherose

Some investors are motivated by the thought of multiplying their fund, securing a bigger slice of the cap table, or, of course, successfully filing for a coveted IPO. But for Tahira Dosani, all she has to do is remember the economic instability of her childhood and she’s immediately re-anchored to her why behind it all.

First came the career, starting as a Bain Capital consultant and moving on to launching cellular service and mobile payment solutions in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Then came the first fund, Accion, a non-for-profit where Tahira cut her teeth in early stage impact investing in emerging markets. 

After Accion, Tahira didn’t set out to start her own fund, but the immigrant-to-entrepreneur pipeline was just too strong and it pulled in this Pakistani native. She co-founded ResilienceVC, a human-centric, early stage fund focused on creating fintech solutions and solving persistent financial challenges for everyday Americans. 

She writes $1 million checks out of ResilienceVC to fintech companies at the seed stage. 

Highlights: 

• Tahira’s why dates back to when she was a child who immigrated to the U.S. from Pakistan. Her family’s financial challenges stuck with her, and ever since, she’s remained focused on helping others boost their economic status through technology. 

• It might be hard to recall a time before cellphone service was ubiquitous, but Tahira was on the ground in Kabul, Afghanistan when the first towers were raised, signalling a new day for citizens’ economic opportunities. She soon after helped launch the first mobile payment solution, bringing even more power to the region. 

• Much of investing in the post-2010s is focused on iterating and refining existing products, but Tahira’s backing OS Benefits, a fintech company with a new answer to an old problem: lack of health insurance coverage for restaurant workers.  

• We often say that AI is changing the game. And now, it’s changing the way we behave. Tahira is exploring how AI can alter people’s financial habits and ultimately, make better choices on their behalf. 

• (00:00) - Resilience as a Thesis- Tahira Dosani on Building for Underserved Markets and AI in Fintech

We’ve welcomed investors with unique backgrounds to First Funders before, but Sundeep Ahuja is our first operator-turned-actor-turned-investor. 

Sundeep is all in on all things climate tech. He’s backing founders leading the way in cleaning up our water, purifying our air, and keeping our planet the way it should be: livable. Today, his micro fund and syndicate platform Climate Capital, has over 400 climate-focused companies in its portfolio. 

Sundeep shares why he thinks real-world, physical tech has the edge over software, how the words we use matter when it comes to addressing climate challenges, and why he’s still optimistic about the future despite current social and political challenges to climate initiatives. 

He writes ~$150k checks out of Climate Capital into pre-seed and seed-stage startups addressing emission reductions and climate adaptation. 

Highlights:

• Sundeep had a winding path to investing, but his passion for the climate has always been there. He talks about how his time at Kiva shaped and expanded his worldview.
• We’re heard a lot about software, but Sundeep is firmly in the hardware camp. He’s seeing startups like Copper and Avalo make incredible strides working with physical products – or focusing on atoms over bits, as he says. 
• The way we talk about issues matters, and Sundeep is seeing the impact of language play out in the climate space. His solution is simple: No vague, moralizing language. Just plainly state what you’re doing to help the environment. 
• Sundeep has a careful eye on what’s going on regarding the climate and the current administration, but he’s not feeling deterred. He believes there’s still plenty of capital – and plenty of people who believe in the mission – to sustain the headwinds. 
• Like a true investor, Sundeep has a story about his worst investment and what he learned from it. Mainly, that the importance of due diligence can’t be overstated. 

• (00:00) - Atoms over bits: Investing in hardware and innovative founders to solve climate challenges - Sundeep Ahuja, Climate Capital

Canadians have been the lifeblood behind some of the biggest unicorn startups of the past few years (think Open AI, Uber, Slack, Instacart, Notion, Databricks, CloudFlare, Roblox, Ethereum, Moderna Health, and Clay to name a few), and yet no one talks about them, except for Andre Charoo. And he’s not just talking – he’s putting his money behind Canadian founders through his fund, Maple VC. 

Andre shares why he thinks Canadian founders are always a strong bet (and bonus points if they’re immigrants, too), what it’s like to wait over 7 years to see a pre-seed investment materialize (in this case, recent unicorn Clay), and how he thinks about moats in the AI age (and why they still matter).

Maple VC writes $500k – $1.5 million industry-agnostic checks into pre-seed and seed stage companies with roots from Canada to Korea to Harvard. 

Highlights

• Even long after he left Uber and Hired, Andre never lost his go-to-market spirit and he’s carried it with him as he’s moved from operator to VC. 
• Andre’s investing framework can best be described as Canadian roots with global reach. He’s been working hard to give Canadian founders their due and show their world that they are some of the most ambitious people out there. 
• Clay, a unicorn in the Maple VC portfolio, is a testament to persistence and patience. Andre urges investors to remember they’re playing the long game – waiting for results that may not materialize for nearly a decade. 
• It’s all about building durable companies, and the 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer still holds true. Andre stresses that defensibility and success come from strategic insight, execution, and taste—not just code.
• While AI is changing the way companies form and scale, Andre still believes in this undefeated combo for founders: inventors, builders, and operators.

• (00:00) - Andre Charoo, Maple VC - Before Clay Was a Unicorn: The First Check, the Thesis, and the Long Game

You can be a founder. You can be an investor. You can be an operator. Or, you can be Shalin Mantri and be all three. This respected product leader got his start by founding a mobile app startup in the early iPhone days in 2011 and followed it up with product leadership in the early days of Uber, Skip and more recently, Google. He angel invests with $5k – $50k checks as a true first believer, usually in companies where he has a personal connection with the founder. 

He shares his tiered angel investment system, where he sees autonomous vehicles going (and not going), his thoughts on AI, how AI might have transformed Uber’s early days, and what he thinks of the rise of multi-billion-dollar, 1-pizza companies. 

Highlights

• Shalin has a tiered system for evaluating angel deals, and ultimately, determining how much he’s willing to invest.

• Uber experienced incredible growth from its founding in 2009 through the 2010s when Shalin came aboard as a product manager. He chats about how he thinks AI would’ve changed Uber’s story if it had been around at the time. 

• Shalin explains how AI is running a parallel path with autonomous vehicles, especially when it comes to scaling up without losing product integrity. Just like with AVs, the bar is high for reliability, safety, and performance for AI tech. 

• Recently, the search bar has been less of a source of information and more of a source of frustration. Shalin is focusing on building a solution to improve search, with the help of AI, of course. 

• Company headcounts are getting smaller, and yet their valuations are getting bigger. Shalin’s not necessarily sold on the 1-company, 1-billion dollar company just yet, but he sees the trendline moving in that direction. 

• (00:00) - 01 - Shalin/Shaherose A/V

We’ve had a lot of cool people on the pod, but Sheel Mohnot is our first guest to achieve this trifecta: 100X an investment, have a founder in his portfolio go to prison, and have his wedding sponsored by Taco Bell. He invests at the pre-seed and seed stages into startups in the financial technology (fintech) space, and he’s quick to tell you that just about everything is fintech. Through his fund, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Sheel writes $500k to $3M pre-seed and seed checks into fintech companies. He came by to talk about that time he got defrauded by a company, how he sparked a bidding war that led to him returning most of his fund, and why speed of execution is one of his favorite traits in founders. 

Highlights:

• Sheel is beginning to think that pre-seed is the new seed, and seed is the new Series A. He unpacks these thoughts and outlines what he needs to see in order to believe in a founder at the early stages.
• Secondaries and early exits and two ways investors can realize an outcome in a shorter time frame than an IPO. Sheel explains how he did this with two companies, Flexport and Indio, and how he feels about his decisions retrospectively. 
• Major companies like Toast and Shopify are synonymous with fintech, but there is a vast network of less-thought-of companies making transactions happen in nearly every imaginable space. Hair salons, golf clubs, and garbage trucks are just a few of the places where Sheel is seeing fintech potential and why he believes that everything is fintech and fintech is everything.
• Sheel could’ve saved himself some trouble (and money!) if he would’ve heeded the warnings of fellow investors about a deal. However, he learned his lesson and now he doesn’t invest unless he thoroughly vets the founder through someone else in his network.

• (00:00) - FIFU 16 - Sheel Mohnot

One day soon when you see a robot squirrel on a 10-foot unicycle, think of Danielle Strachman. These are the types of ideas Danielle Strachman sees and backs on a regular basis at her VC fund, 1517. 

The fund, which proudly backs “dropouts, students, and sci-fi,” has had several fund multipliers in their portfolio, including Loom (Acquired by Atlassian) and Luminar Technologies (IPO 2020). Plus, her star-studded community includes Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum, Laura Deming of The Longevity Fund, and Dylan Field of Figma – all of whom she first met when they were teenagers. 

Danielle’s commitment to bringing freedom and autonomy to young people is much of the reason behind 1517’s work with upcoming founders — which includes children as young as 10 years old! 

We talk to Danielle about why her firm hands out cash grants to kids, where she sees the future of deep tech headed and how she’s helping it get there, the right characteristics (and anti-characteristics) to look for in founders. 

Danielle invests $100k angel checks and $500k pre-seed checks out 1517 Fund focusing on dropouts and sci-fi / deep tech founders.

Highlights:

• 1517 exists to address the lack of capital for young people and for the deep-tech sci-fi space. Danielle is particularly drawn to “dropouts” who skipped the higher education path to focus on their work and start their companies. 

• Danielle likes to think of her fund as Grand Central Station, a place that helps people get to where they want to go next. She uses her relationship building skills to stay in touch with founders and connect them with new opportunities.  

• Danielle loves meeting “crazy scientists” and people who are working on solving the future’s problems. 1517 is unique because it makes two investments in these types of companies: a $100k angel check for R&D and a $500k pre-seed follow-on check. 

• Danielle understands the power or relationships and mentorship in a space that can often feel impersonal and transactional. She’s kept in touch with many founders over the years, including the founders of Loom and Luminar Technologies – whom she met back when they were teenagers! 

• (00:00) - FIFU 15 - Danielle Strachman