In Silicon Valley, where names with the same high-wattage tend to dominate headlines, Ali Pertvi has long been a major influence despite limited name recognition. The Iranian-born Harvard graduate created an impressive resume early on. It joined Linkexchange's founding team (acquired by Microsoft for $265 million in 1998) and launched Ilike (sold to MySpace with a $20 million report in 2009) and non-educational code code.org with Twin Brother Hadi. Together, they also became early investors in high-tech giants such as Facebook, Airbnb, and Dropbox.
Industry insiders have long viewed Partovi Brothers' involvement in startups as a powerful signal, but the Ali star is now rising more widely beyond the tech world. This broader perception comes from his 8-year-old venture company Neo, which promises to revolutionize how exceptional talent was discovered from the start, developing a rather persuasive point of evidence.
Among those bets, Neo is the first institution other than Twitter, a decentralized social network Bluesky, which is said to have been valued at $700 million in the January funding round, and Kalshi, an online forecast market that began its popularity surge in last fall's US presidential election.
“For the first time this year, we can conclude that we are discovering a future superstar before anyone else,” Partovi, known for being an elegant, persistent and equal part of the point of push, told the editor on Friday.
Neo's relationship with Michael Truell helps tell the story.
In 2017, Truell, a freshman at MIT, was intern at Google when a fellow student suggested meeting Partovi. During that hour of sit-down, Partovi gave Truell a coding test that was completed in 15 minutes. For Partovi, that question was not uncommon. When investing with his siblings, the two generally ran their teams through high-tech interviews, as if they wanted to get a job at Google. But it illustrates Partovi's approach in Neo. At Neo, he uses technical assessments not as a rigorous assessment, but as a basis for deeper conversations.
That moment was also the beginning of a relationship that could prove to be beneficial for both Partovi and Truell. In fact, years later, Truell was first supported by Partovi, and Anysphere, the maker of popular AI-powered coding editor cursors, is now flirting with a $10 billion valuation, and could become one of Neo's most successful investments.
Like the previous Y Combinator, Neo's approach represents a fundamental rethink of venture capital. Partovi focuses on identifying extraordinary individuals rather than betting on a specific theme or team.
For those university students, Partiv will run the “Neo Scholars” program, along with partners from Neo, Suzanne Xie and Emily Cohen, which offers a $20,000 grant to win the gap semester. (30 people are selected each year.)
In 2022, for early stage startups, Partovi also set up a more traditional accelerator program that provides funding and guidance to 20 companies each year.
“I'm trying to take a little more risky and take them a little more risky, aiming for a higher perspective than what they're aiming for now,” explained Partovi.
Strategy requires patience. From the early days of Neo, Partovi personally traveled the country, interviewed students, managed coding tests and found “Tomorrow's Changemakers” in his words.
Others clearly think that he is pretty good at it and not surprising. Neo Scholars has found Cognition, a coding assistant company that has recently been valued at $4 billion, in addition to Anysphere and Kalshi. Pika Labs has created a text-to-video generation AI tool, currently valued at $700 million. Also, although Chay Discovery does not share a post-money rating, it raised $30 million from Openai last fall to fuel a multimodal foundation model for molecular structure prediction.
“Last year, all the recruits of Openai's new alumni were Neo Scholar,” Partovi proudly said when we spoke.
When evaluating potential superstars, Partovi focuses primarily on three key qualities: technical capabilities, entrepreneurial tendencies, and willingness to challenge the status quo.
Technical capabilities aren't because founders code all day long, but “computer science really helps. It just helps you think,” Partvi explained, citing examples such as Jeff Bezos, Reed Hastings, and Larry Ellison.
Past entrepreneurs' experiences demonstrate a tendency to take risks and a hunger to build products that people love. The third quality – challenging the status quo – speaks to the founder's willingness to question the basic assumptions.
But there is a fourth quality Partovi, which I consider to be most important: magnetism. Partovi states: [this individual] You've started something, what is the chance that their smartest friends will join them? (This was especially evident in Truell, where “quiet confidence” convinced Partovi that “his cleverest MIT friend would consider joining him.”)
With Neo's growing reputation, applications for both NEO programs double each year as competition progresses. Partovi added that while many venture companies expand to meet demand, Neo made intentional choices to maintain selectivity beyond scale.
Philosophy extends to fund size. VCS, which can generally raise large funds, usually closed by closing $320 million with fresh capital, but NEOs, which exceeded $235 million in capital commitments collected in 2023. (Other Neo supporters include Sheryl Sandberg, Bill Gates and Reid Hoffman.
Partovi is cautious about discussing unrealized returns when expected, but Neo's early funding is working very well. The first fund already has between three or four times its value, saying “the potential room will again be doubled or tripled.” He said the second fund has more than doubled with Anysphere's investment alone.
As for the chilly exit market and how he advises founders to navigate it, Partovi said instead he would encourage founders to build lasting value. “I [tell] “People should get carried away with making money and not get carried away with serving other people,” he said. Money is not a goal, it's an outcome. ”
Photo above, two partners, Partovi and Neo, Suzanne Xie and Emily Cohen.