ZK

LinkedIn Email

Hi, my name is Ziyaad. I'm a Texas-raised, Mauritian-American based in San Francisco. I'm an investor fortunate to spend time with true game-breakers across technology—especially where AI bends behaviors, numbers, and outcomes.

Give me a shout if you want to go for a walk.

Thinking About

  • Disaggregated systems and where workloads are actually migrating
  • Sparse attention primitives and decode-time compute allocation
  • Inference architectures and custom silicon for the next decade
  • Structured power delivery as the binding constraint, and what happens next
  • Oligopoly durability in foundation models vs. the next entrant's wedge
  • Token economics, arbitrage, and time-to-equilibrium
  • Quantum compute timelines and building resilience
  • The next Wiz moment in cybersecurity is brewing but won't surface for years
  • Why the best investments (public or private) feel obvious in retrospect

Work Experience

Factorial Funds
Joined Sol Bier to back generational companies where technical depth compounds. Writing angel checks outside of the fund as well.
The D. E. Shaw Group
Co-head, founding member, and IC of D. E. Shaw's private venture and growth investing arm. Built fund infrastructure from scratch and deployed the first few investments in that strategy with some phenomenal people at the firm.
Summit Partners
Cut my teeth as an investor in Summit's venture fund, focused on capital-efficient growers, often in vertical market segments. Led a few and co-invested across 40+ companies. I'd recommend anyone start their investing career at a place like Summit.
Prior
M&A and other strategies at Evercore and J.P. Morgan in NYC. My first paid job was an event coordinator and professional coach — ask me about driving U-Hauls full of audiovisual equipment around Las Vegas. My first unpaid job was with the House of Representatives — we certainly have passionate constituents.
Academic Thesis Work
Brexit's Effect On Venture Capital And Startup Investing In The UK — a three year journey of understanding macro ambiguity with Dr. Michael Hasler and Dr. Lorinc Redei.