I'm currently based in SF/LA. Before, I was an early hire on the growth and product team at Perplexity. I'm Iranian-American, I like martial arts (BJJ, Muay Thai, Silat, third-degree black belt in TKD, etc), and the best way to reach me is on X.

Growing up, my older brother had a major impact on me. When I was four, he showed me his first-gen iPad.

Around seven, I stumbled onto clips of Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, and Chuck Norris on YouTube. For more than two years, I couldn't sleep at night because I wanted to be the closest thing to a modern ninja or samurai. I found a martial arts studio in my hometown in Maryland and never stopped.

When I was 14, my first job was instructing at a small martial arts school. At that time, I spent six hours a day preparing for my third-degree black belt test while coaching underbelt students and competing in tournaments. By 18, I was awarded a black top gi (I wore it around the house more than I should admit).

For 17 months I'd been telling my brother I hadn't figured out what I wanted to do as a career, let alone pick a college major.

But I kept tinkering with every AI tool I could get my hands on. One day my brother sent me a link to a startup called Perplexity with a short text: "might be worth sending a cold email."

That email eventually led me to join Perplexity's ~10-person growth team, where I worked for about a year. I led the company's consumer verticals (focused primarily on education expansion), and realized startups were what I wanted all along.

So I packed my bags, left the East Coast, and moved west to get closer to Silicon Valley.

Coming soon on what’s next.