#podcast #startup #entrepreneur #mentalhealth
Samir Mirza is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Fifth Star Funds - a venture philanthropy fund investing in Black tech entrepreneurs at the pre-seed / "Friends & Family" stage in Chicago. He was formerly the Co-Founder and CTO of TapCommerce (acquired by Twitter for $100M).
He began his career in Chicago consulting for Fortune 500 clients while building robust content management applications, APIs, and backend distributed systems. In 2012, he co-founded TapCommerce in New York and created the industry's first mobile ad retargeting solution. As the Chief Technology Officer, he led the engineering team and built a backend platform that processes over 40 billion ad auctions per day with the ability to show ads to over 1 billion mobile users for the world's top mobile brands.
Samir then lived in Berlin, Germany where he served as a coding instructor at the ReDI School for Refugees and worked as a consultant for the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Digital Transformation Team.
Samir has a Computer Science degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.
To connect with Samir: www.fifthstarfunds.com/
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Time Stamps:
[00:00 - 0:42] - Intro
[0:43 - 3:58] - Religion
[3:58 - 7:20] - Identity
[7:21 - 13:59] - Parents & Education
[13:49 - 19:40] - Early Days of TapCommerce
[19:40 - 30:23] - Scaling & Privilege
[30:23 - 38:55] - Imposter Syndrome
[38:55 - 43:03] - Exiting to Twitter for $100M
[43:03 - 47:46 ] - Ego & Finding Purpose
[47:47 - 54:30] - Investing in Underrepresented Founders
[54:30 - 57:11] - Advice for Aspiring Founders
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A little about me:
I'm a sales & marketing professional with a background in finance and the DNA of an entrepreneur. By day, I'm a Vice President in Capital Markets, by night I'm a podcaster & content creator.
Let's connect!
linktr.ee/khalifestyle​