Darian Shirazi from Gradient Ventures - Empathy, Curiosity, and the Immigrant Mindset

?This article is part of?Fintech Leaders , a newsletter with almost 70,000 builders, entrepreneurs, investors, regulators, and students of financial services. I invite you to share and?sign up! ?Also, if you enjoy this conversation, please consider leaving a review on?Apple Podcasts ?or?Spotify ?so more people can learn about us.

Darian Shirazi is a General Partner at Gradient Ventures , an early-stage venture fund focused on AI and data-rich companies, with Google as its major LP. Prior to Gradient, Darian founded and sold Radius, a B2B Customer Data Platform. He is also an early investor in companies including Lyft, Udemy, Carbon Health, Palantir, and Niva. Fun fact, he was Facebook’s first intern back when the company had only 10 people.

In this episode, we discuss:

Joining Facebook as its first intern and working directly for Mark Zuckerberg. Why is Mark such a special tech leader?

"He [Mark Zuckerberg] used to spend, I remember, hours on end taking notes on what his vision for different features of the product would be, and they were very detailed, extremely detailed. And then he would walk around the office and hand us a stack of notes that had been Xeroxed that he had spent hours writing down."

Working at Facebook in 2005 was a surreal experience for Darian. The team was small, with around 10-12 members, and the office had a fun, weird culture—complete with graffiti and a rooftop barbecue area. Shirazi, being just 17, was initially daunted by the oddness but also found it exhilarating. Given that he was still in high school and Facebook was only available for college students back then, he was the only person at the company who couldn't use the product.

Darian remembers Mark Zuckerberg, even in those years, standing out as a "one in a billion" founder with an extraordinary product sense. Deeply thoughtful about the user experience, spending countless hours detailing his vision for features like the News Feed and photo tagging. Additionally, Mark’s ability to remain focused on what was best for the company, despite external pressures and distractions from competitors or investors, was pivotal in Facebook's success. Shirazi was also impressed about Zuckerberg's deep empathy for the customer. He thinks this empathy was crucial in making Facebook a great company and is an essential ingredient for any product-driven company.

Gradient’s three different strategies to invest in AI

Gradient Ventures has been investing in AI since 2017. The landscape has obviously evolved a ton in the last seven years, and Darian is still as bullish as ever about the future of the category. Today, Darian is investing in three types of AI companies:

• Horizontal AI/ML Tooling Investments: companies that provide AI/ML tools and infrastructure, which serve as foundational building blocks for other businesses to develop AI applications. Examples include companies like Last Mile AI, Cake AI, and Stack AI, which specialize in enabling retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), graph-based AI, synthetic data generation, and improved AI training capabilities. These horizontal investments support a wide range of industries in adopting and integrating AI technologies.
• Transforming Low Gross Margin Businesses: companies that leverage AI to transform traditionally low gross margin businesses into high-margin operations. These AI-driven solutions can automate complex processes, like migrating from one software platform to another, which traditionally required expensive consulting services. By automating these processes, this group of companies can significantly reduce costs and improve efficiency, positioning themselves as valuable assets for firms like Accenture and Deloitte that could resell these AI-powered solutions.
• New Disruptive Vertical Applications: companies developing vertical applications that can disrupt existing industries. These include new marketing automation tools, advanced workplace collaboration solutions, and enhanced Know Your Business (KYB) automation using large language models (LLMs). These vertical-specific applications capitalize on the growing capabilities of AI to create more efficient, data-driven solutions tailored to the unique needs of various industries.

Why the future of AI development will be exponential and not linear

“It's gotten more difficult to separate all the noise and find the right companies... I would say that we're now starting to see real businesses being built on top of AI at the seed and pre-seed stage again.”

Darian predicts that investment in AI/ML infrastructure will continue to surpass expectations, driven by the increasing need for compute power to train larger models, particularly with synthetic data. He believes that demand for GPUs will grow exponentially, not linearly, as AI applications proliferate throughout the economy, underscoring the importance of infrastructure investment to support the scaling of AI. As AI infrastructure will continue to demand more power, the necessity for innovations in renewable energy sources and power storage solutions will become more urgent by the day.

The incredible story of how Darian’s family had to escape Iran and rebuilt itself into one of the strongest tech families in the US… and a lot more!

Darian's family had to escape Iran during the 1979 revolution when the theocratic regime seized their business assets. At the time, the family was running what was essentially the "Procter & Gamble of Iran." His grandfather, who had established a base in New York as the American liaison for the family business, played a crucial role in bringing the family to the United States, along with his American wife (Darian’s grandmother), who helped secure their escape.

The family lost most of their assets, but over time rebuilt itself as a powerhouse in the US and global tech scene. Darian's father was instrumental in pioneering the family's deep integration into the tech community. After moving to the U.S. and studying electrical engineering at MIT, he attended Stanford for an MBA, where he connected with future tech luminaries like Vinod Khosla and Steve Ballmer. His involvement in early-stage startups helped launch not only his career but also those of many family members, turning their home into a hub for technological curiosity and growth. One of the most well-known members of Darian’s family today is Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s CEO.

According to Darian, curiosity has been the driving force behind the family's success across generations. Whether it was his father’s desire to explore new frontiers in tech or the broader family's engagement in politics or global issues, this trait has fueled their continuous pursuit of innovation and opportunity. I would also add that the success of this family can be attributed to the unwavering support for each other across every generation – that’s how business dynasties are created.

Want more podcast episodes? Join me and follow Fintech Leaders today on Apple , Spotify , or your favorite podcast app for weekly conversations with today’s global leaders that will dominate the 21st century in fintech, business, and beyond.?

Previous Episodes You May Enjoy:

Video Highlights You Will Definitely Like:

Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures , a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.