Patrick Bet-David is an Iranian-American entrepreneur, author, and media personality who fled Iran as a child refugee, served in the 101st Airborne Division, and built PHP Agency into a 40,000-agent life insurance firm before selling it for roughly $250 million. He founded Valuetainment, one of the most-watched business YouTube channels in the world, and hosts the PBD Podcast - a long-form show spanning politics, culture, and business with millions of listeners. A Wall Street Journal bestselling author of 'Your Next Five Moves' and 'Choose Your Enemies Wisely,' Bet-David is known for blunt straight talk, a relentless work ethic forged in a German refugee camp, and a genuine belief that every refugee or immigrant story can have a second act.
Dara Khosrowshahi is the CEO of Uber, the global ride-hailing and delivery platform he has led since September 2017. An Iranian-American who fled Tehran as a child during the Revolution, he spent 12 years building Expedia into a travel giant before inheriting Uber at its most turbulent moment. Under his leadership, Uber went public in 2019, achieved sustained profitability, and expanded into a multi-service platform operating across 70+ countries with $193+ billion in annual gross bookings. A self-described gamer, sci-fi geek, and cycling enthusiast who once wore a Slayer T-shirt to his wedding, Khosrowshahi has rebuilt Uber's culture around a simple principle: 'We do the right thing. Period.'
Ali Amin-Javaheri is the co-founder and CEO of Knowde, the B2B digital marketplace and data platform transforming how the $5 trillion global chemicals industry does business online. With 11 years of experience at ChemPoint - where he helped scale the chemical distribution startup to over $400M in revenue - Ali built Knowde from a PowerPoint vision into a platform hosting 8,000+ supplier storefronts and 230,000+ chemical products. Backed by Sequoia Capital, Coatue, and Sound Ventures (Ashton Kutcher's fund), Knowde has raised $180.8M total, including a $60M Series C in August 2024. Ali's drive is deeply personal: his father Mehdi fled Iran in 1985 and struggled to find work commensurate with his chemical engineering degree, and Ali grew up reading chemistry trade magazines, determined to modernize an industry built on relationships and paper catalogs.
Kayvon Beykpour is the co-founder and CEO of Macroscope, an AI-powered code intelligence platform that raised $40M in funding. Before Macroscope, he co-founded Periscope - the live video streaming app acquired by Twitter in 2015 for a reported $100 million - and spent seven years at Twitter rising to Head of Consumer Product. A Stanford Computer Science graduate of Iranian heritage who grew up in Northern California, Beykpour has a pattern of building tools that make invisible things visible: first the world's live moments, now the inner workings of engineering teams.
Malekeh Amini is the Founder and CEO of Trayt Health, a patient-centric behavioral health platform powering 25 statewide mental health programs and covering 10 million+ lives across the US. A Harvard MBA and USC-trained engineer with 25+ years in digital health, she built Trayt after personally navigating the fractured US mental health system with her son. The company raised $7.17M in April 2026 and was selected by Kentucky's KyCOMPASS program to power maternal mental health access statewide.
Pejman Nozad is the Founding Managing Partner of Pear VC, a $800M+ AUM seed-stage venture firm he co-founded in 2013. Born in Tehran, he arrived in Silicon Valley in 1992 with $700 and no English, worked as a car washer, lived in a yogurt shop attic, then became the top Persian rug salesman on University Avenue in Palo Alto — selling $8M in a single year to the Valley's most powerful VCs and founders. Those relationships became deal flow. He backed Dropbox, DoorDash ($1.9M seed → $440M), AppLovin, and Andy Rubin's pre-Android company Danger. Forbes ranked him #1 on its Midas Seed List three consecutive years (2023, 2024, 2025). He has no CS degree, no MBA, and never worked in tech — yet built one of the highest-performing seed funds ever and joined the board of Sheffield United FC in 2025.
Leila Hormozi is a first-generation Iranian-American entrepreneur, executive, and business builder who co-founded Acquisition.com alongside her husband Alex Hormozi. After a turbulent childhood marked by a mother's addiction and six alcohol-related arrests in college, she transformed her life — lost 85 lbs, got certified as a personal trainer, then co-built Gym Launch from $0 to $50M in two years. She helped sell Gym Launch and Prestige Labs for $46.2M in 2021, then co-founded Acquisition.com, which now manages a $250M+ annual revenue portfolio. By 28, she reached a $100M combined net worth with Alex. In 2025, she transitioned from CEO to Executive Chairwoman to focus on long-term strategy, while hosting the 'Build with Leila Hormozi' podcast and publishing unfiltered leadership memos at leilahormozi.com.
Yashar Ali is an Iranian-American journalist, newsletter publisher, and social media powerhouse who built one of the most influential independent media presences in the US almost entirely through Twitter/X. Known for breaking stories that bigger outlets fear to touch - from Fox News sexual misconduct to Scientology cover-ups - Ali runs The Reset newsletter on Substack with over 61,000 subscribers. Time magazine named him one of the most influential people on the internet in 2019. His career is anything but linear: TV production assistant, personal cook for Kathy Griffin, political operative for Hillary Clinton and Gavin Newsom, and now independent journalist with a devoted following.