How one guy who barely spoke English landed in the Bay Area, sold Persian rugs to venture capitalists and became one of the most successful angels in tech
It’s a balmy February evening in Palo Alto, and Pejman Nozad is sipping tea on the deck of the Rosewood Hotel, the hot spot of venture capital’s capital, Sand Hill Road. He’s chosen a table situated just central enough so that he can see everyone who walks in. As usual, it’s packed with the startup crowd— entrepreneurs in thick-rimmed glasses and jeans mingling with their backers, finance types in pressed slacks and camel-colored Italian leather loafers. Nozad has the peppered-hair look of one of the money guys, but in his soft blue blazer, adorned with a pastel paisley pocket square, he buoyantly bridges both groups.
“There’s Mike Abbott. You know him? One of the smartest guys I know, just brilliant,” says Nozad, waving him over for a warm hello. He asks about the kids. Abbott just left Twitter, where he ran engineering, for a partner spot at venture shop Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. As Abbott leaves, Nozad leaps up. “My gosh, how are you?” he says, motioning over Lorenzo Thione, the Italian-born cofounder of search firm Powerset (which sold to Microsoft for $100 million four years ago). “I knew you wouldn’t last at Microsoft,” says Nozad, an early investor in Powerset. “Starting things is in your DNA.”
Thione beams a wide smile as he describes his latest “passion,” a Netflix-like service for high-end contemporary art. He mentions how much money he’s looking for. Nozad leans in a little: “This is so fascinating. I have people you should talk to. I know the top interior designers in New York. And I want to meet your cofounder. I never invest without that.”
As the patio cools, Nozad, 43, scans the bar. The Rosewood is morphing into the night. The tech set has scuttled their iPads, settling in for cocktails, as a few coiffed call girls work the crowd—perhaps the surest sign yet that money again flows freely in techland. Nozad wants the L-shaped couch just at the corner of the entrance. “I’m afraid my friends might not find me,” he tells a buxom waitress.
Ensconced in his new perch, he spots Darian Shirazi, who joined Facebook out of high school as its first intern and early hire. Within minutes Nozad is listing names of key investors and possible board members Shirazi should seek out for his business data startup, Radius. In the same breath Nozad mentions a friend Shirazi should set up his cousin with. “He is the nicest guy, but she has to move from London,” says Nozad emphatically. “She belongs here.” Shirazi chimes in, acting as cultural translator: “Persians are always matchmaking.”
And, yes, that’s exactly what he’s doing, all day of every day. Nozad is one of Silicon Valley’s greatest connectors. Top investors take his calls. Hit-making entrepreneurs consider him an uncle.
And somewhere in between he’s piling up small stakes in some of the hottest startups in the world. Yet Nozad doesn’t have the staple calling card of Silicon Valley. No MBA. No PhD. No “technical background whatsoever” (his words). He’s never even worked at a technology company. Nozad’s path to Silicon Valley power broker—and VC investor with a net worth in the ballpark of $50 million— was a far simpler one: He sold carpets.
University Avenue reflects Palo Alto’s diversity in full. It starts as an exit off the Dumbarton Bridge, which cuts across the southern edge of San Francisco Bay, runs though rough-and-tumble East Palo Alto, then tree-lined stretches dotted with multimillion-dollar mansions, and eventually hits, as the name implies, the Stanford campus. A few hundred feet before that terminus, across from a Starbucks and a Thai restaurant, sits the Medallion Rug Gallery, a warehouse-like store where for 34 years the Amidi family has been selling “exquisite art forms” that just happen to cover your floor.
In 1994 the family patriarch, Amir Amidi, found himself on the phone with Nozad, who despite no tangible experience and poor command in English had answered a television ad for a salesperson. “Have you ever sold anything?” Amidi asked the brash caller in Farsi.
“No, but give me a chance,” Nozad responded. “How can you deny someone you haven’t even met?”
Nozad had already learned that you can’t get something if you don’t ask. He grew up in Tehran, but in the 1980s Nozad’s family fled to Germany.
Nozad intended to join them after his compulsory stint in Iran’s military service, which he would satisfy by playing soccer for the country’s premier team. When a military officer questioned his discharge, on account of his sporty tour of duty, Nozad found a high-level cleric and published an interview with him on the benefits of soccer—and then had that cleric expedite his discharge.
Within a month of rejoining his family in Mannheim, Germany with the intent of playing more soccer, his brother persuaded him to show up at the US consulate and ask for a visa. It was a set-up of sorts. His brother was obsessed with American culture and went to the consulate almost daily only to be denied. Nozad showed up one morning, mentioned his soccer interviewing days and promptly scored a journalism visa. Two months after that he was on a plane to San Francisco, where an uncle lived, with $700 and a few words of English.
Nozad recognised his weakness and began doing deals only if someone more experienced, and whom he liked, was willing to put up funds, too. One of his first such helpers was Babak “Bobby” Yazdani, an early investor in Google and Salesforce.com. He advised Marc Benioff on his first key recruits and also founded Saba, a human resources software company. Nozad sold Yazdani a few rugs and then asked him to meet a chip designer with a startup idea. Why didn’t Yazdani just blow him off politely? Yazdani explains, “There’s a lot of humility in our culture. I’m talking about immigrants and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. We all had just our families and our educations when we came here. So when someone who you have a relationship with asks you to do something, you do it. It’s a courtesy but also a discipline.”
IT’S A WEDNESDAY evening in January, and Nozad is on a typical adventure. He’s wandering through a wood-paneled library at Stonebrook Court, a 30,000- square-foot Tudor mansion and estate owned by his buddy Kelly Porter in Los Altos Hills just north of San Jose. Dreary 19th-century paintings cover the walls. A warm flame crackles in a carved marble fireplace. “Can you believe this exists here?” Nozad says. He peeks into the ballroom to admire the 16th-century painted Venetian ceiling. “I’m talking to Lady Gaga’s people. I want to host a party here for all of my entrepreneurs. Wouldn’t that be amazing?” he says. This isn’t totally absurd. Nozad is an investor in the musician’s startup, Backplane.
(This story appears in the 27 April, 2012 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)