Saalim Chowdhury
Former Managing Director at Techstars London
Saalim Chowdhury
Former Managing Director at Techstars London
London, England
Overview
Work Experience
Angel Investor / Mentor
2019 - Current
Met and mentored Trung, Aleks and Jeff “Jihos” in Vietnam in 2019. Proud to be there for them as they build the NFT, “Play to Earn” community and incredibly adorable Axies. Currently Series B, $3.2Bn Valuation, A16Z
Angel Investor
2020
Super proud to be playing a small part as an early stage backer of one of the nicest humans in tech, who's building an ecosystem of smart devices.
Angel Investor
2017
Proud to have personally backed this amazingly passionate team doing amazing work freeing people from harmful addictions at the ‘friends, family and fools’ seed stage.
Managing Director
2021 - 2024
Leading the Techstars London Accelerators, running two batches every year in Q2 and Q4. Investing in early stage, talent-led startups, with a keen focus on underestimated talent.
Partner
2016 - 2020
500 Startups is a pre-eminent global VC & accelerator - #1 most active investor & most exits (Pitchbook), most diverse fund (3000+ investments, 70+ countries, 52% diverse, 34% female). Notable investments include Twillio, Hinge, GitLab, Intercom, TheRealReal, Grab. Alongside more traditional investment work (I evaluate about 250+ deals a year), I've led and devised the curriculum and ran most of the non-SF Investment-based Accelerators at pre-seed, seed and pre-series A stages, across four continents, working globally on 500's mission of investing in a diverse breadth of startups and helping them thrive through leading growth programs and hands-on support.
CTO & Co-Founder of Skillbridge
2013 - 2016
Skillbridge, now Toptal Finance, was an intelligent end-to-end marketplace that makes it easy, quick and reliable for businesses to engage elite business freelancers for short-term projects. It leveraged his experience in machine learning, 'big data' and unstructured content. Started as an advisor after needing Skillbridge's services as a client in 2013, joined full time in 7 months later. Skillbridge was backed by 500 Startups and acquired by Toptal. Toptal is an 'unicorn', backed by Andreessen Horowitz.
Head of Digital Strategy
2012 - 2014
Working with the senior management team shaping Trinity Mirror's Digital Transformation Strategy as well as overseeing the growth of the Emerging Platforms / Digital Editions business and identifying emergent new businesses and opportunities, reporting to the CEO and CDO.
Principal Consultant
2010 - 2014
Freelance consulting in Media and Venture Capital, typically as an advisor or interim management to a Partner or CxO. Highlights include architecting the Tablet launch of The Week Magazine, a #1 news app in the UK & winner of PPA magazine of the year. Clients include Telegraph Media Group, Daily Mail & General Trust, Trinity Mirror.
GM / Head of Digital, NIFN
2007 - 2010
Digital GM. Owned 7-figure P&L, overseeing technology / editorial / commercial at award-winning thelondonpaper - a multi-million pound 'future-of-media' news start-up targeting 18-35's. Grew business to 1.5m readers a day cross-platform and London's most read newspaper. Secondments: Corporate Strategy, News of the World, The Times.
Product Manager
2005 - 2007
As an early employee, he launched Scandoo, leveraging machine learning to pioneer predictive safe-search technology now used by millions worldwide (Notably featuring in Time Magazine's Top 50 Websites of year). Firm was acquired by Cisco for $183m.