Ali Partovi

Helped start Code.org (and the "Hour of Code") and funded it together with my twin brother Hadi Partovi. My role in this has been marketing, PR, evangelizing, and proudly watching my brother kill it.

Early investor and active advisor to Dropbox.

I've backed many startups including Airbnb, Dropbox, Facebook, Uber, and Zappos.

Current portfolio includes: Convoy, FiveStars, Thrive Market, Thumbtack, Viagogo.

Past portfolio: Nervana (acquired by Intel), OPOWER (IPO 2014), BlueKai (acquired by Oracle), IronPort (acquired by Cisco), XL2Web (now Google Spreadsheets), Flixster (acquired by Warner Bros), Tellme (acquired by Microsoft), Edusoft (bought by Houghton Mifflin).

9 days. Draw your own conclusion: https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/former-hampton-creek-executive-says-he-will-not-advise-company/

I served as head of Business Development following the successful sale of my startup, iLike, to Myspace. During this time, I brought together multiple different biz-dev groups and established processes and databases to coordinate their efforts. I personally focused on deals in the music and ticketing space. In Apr 2010, I stepped down from this role to become a "Strategic Advisor," freeing up my time to focus on other interests.

Acquired by Myspace in late 2009, iLike was a rapid-growth social music discovery startup, best-known for its highly successful Facebook app, iPhone app, iTunes Plug-in, and iGoogle gadget. The iLike brand was launched in late 2006 thanks primarily to the efforts of my twin brother and co-founder Hadi Partovi, who joined me as part of an effort to re-invent Garageband.com. (I had been running Garageband.com since 2002, having bought the assets from prior shareholders and bringing it from the brink of bankruptcy to profitability.)

Attempted to co-write a feature film screenplay with roommate and close friend Alan "Shusterbaby" Shusterman. Highlights included a trip to LA where we tried to make some connections, and instead had all our luggage including laptops stolen.

Following Microsoft's acquisition of LinkExchange, I spent two years trying to get Microsoft into paid search, long before Google AdWords. In early 2000, my efforts yielded fruit and MSN launched a trial service called "MSN Keywords" that was quite similar to what Google would launch years later. I set the product vision, developed every technical spec, oversaw the database architecture, and designed the UI, as well as personally managed all the marketing and sales/support staffing for the project, and led biz-dev overtures to other search engines (Yahoo, Google, Excite, etc) in hopes they would let us resell their spots. Keywords grew fast but threatened to cannibalize banner ads, so Microsoft shut it down, and I left.

I joined fellow Harvard alumni Tony Hsieh and Sanjay Madan who started LinkExchange in 1996. Although I was initially recruited because of my proficiency in computer programming, it quickly became obvious that what the company needed even more badly was not my coding skills but a "business guy." I was responsible initially for sales, marketing and finance; and eventually focused on biz dev. LinkExchange was acquired by Microsoft in Nov 1998 for $265 million and became Microsoft Small Business.

This was my first job out of college. I worked on one of Oracle's most important projects (at the time), namely the "Interactive TV" / "Media Server" strategy. I was an engineer in the field and helped build custom deployments of interactive TV trials for major telco or cable customers such as BellSouth, British Telecom, etc.