Parham Aghdasi is the founder and CEO of AICrete, a Richmond, California climate-tech company that uses artificial intelligence to optimize concrete recipes in real time, cutting both cost and carbon. A structural materials engineer with a PhD from UC Berkeley, he spent a decade developing concrete composites for earthquake-resistant structures and ultra-high-speed train tunnels before turning his attention to one of the planet's dirtiest materials. Born in Iran and barred from higher education for his Baha'i faith, he studied at an underground university, came to the US with $6,000, and built a company that has raised over $9 million to give concrete producers, in his words, 'sustainable concrete superpowers.'
Frank Zamani is the Founder, President, and CEO of Caspio, a pioneering low-code platform that has powered over one million business applications in 150+ countries. Born Farhang Zamani in Tehran, Iran, he fled religious persecution as a Baha'i in 1986, was smuggled across the border to Pakistan, and received U.S. asylum in 1988 - arriving in San Francisco with his brother and just $70 between them. After earning a CS degree from Cal State Chico, working on Microsoft's PowerPoint team, and co-founding Autoweb.com (which IPO'd in 1999 at a $938 million valuation), he started Caspio in 2000 with a single conviction: business professionals should not need to code to build the tools their organizations need. By 2024, Caspio had grown to $120.7 million in annual revenue, 15,000+ customers, and roughly 230 employees.