Sohail Prasad
Founder of Destiny
Sohail Prasad
Founder of Destiny
Austin, Texas
Overview
Work Experience
Founder & CEO
2020 - Current
Public access to private tech.
Founder, Former CEO
2014
In 2014, we founded Forge. Forge started as a trading platform, and over the last six years, has expanded to provide a comprehensive suite of infrastructure products (trading, custody, data, company services) for innovative private technology companies: an operating system for the private market. Today, Forge transacts billions in pre-IPO stock annually, has over $14B in assets under custody, and has raised over $250M in financing from key institutional partners, including Deutsche Börse, Temasek, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, and Munich Re. Forge also acquired SharesPost in 2020 for $160M and an alternative asset custodian for $55M, to accelerate our expansion into new verticals. In building Forge, we've focused on building infrastructure to support private companies on their missions to create the future.
Founder, President
2014 - 2020
Equidate is now Forge. The evolution of our company marks the expansion of our services for institutions and companies and celebrates our success as a secondary market. Announced $50M Series B in July 2018 to further accelerate global expansion and new product launches, and recruited Kelly Rodriques (fintech veteran, former CEO of PENSCO) to join Equidate as CEO.
Founder, Co-CEO
2014 - 2018
Equidate is the stock market for private companies. Equidate gives accredited investors access to the most successful private companies in the world. Our secure platform makes it easier than ever to add pre-IPO equity to your portfolio—or gain liquidity if you're a shareholder—in a reliable, legal, and company-friendly way. Equidate is led by Y Combinator, Goldman Sachs, SecondMarket, Nasdaq, and BCG alumni, and backed by some of the best investors in the world including Peter Thiel and Tim Draper (among many others). https://equidateinc.com/
Founder & CEO
2014 - 2016
Equidate is the stock market for private companies. Equidate gives accredited investors access to the most successful private companies in the world. Our secure platform makes it easier than ever to add pre-IPO equity to your portfolio—or gain liquidity if you're a shareholder—in a reliable, legal, and company-friendly way. Equidate is led by Y Combinator, Goldman Sachs, SecondMarket, Nasdaq, and BCG alumni, and backed by some of the best investors in the world including Peter Thiel and Tim Draper (among many others).
Angel Investor
2013
Seed / early stage investor in amazing startups. I look for things that improve the way people go about their everyday lives, things that make people say "what would I do without that?". My investment thesis: I'm not trying to find the latest cool app or me-too company. Instead, I invest in companies that have a real business. I look for startups that leverage emerging trends and are led by technical founders. Investor in 100+ companies. Seed Portfolio Highlights: Rappi — Logistics, Delivery, Commerce marketplace for Latin America. Rippling — Automate HR & IT. Retool — No-code internal tool platform. Superhuman — Blazing fast email experience. Notion — All-in-one workspace. Astranis — Small, low-cost telecommunications satellites. Mux — Stripe for video. Lambda School — ISA based coding school. Mattermost — High trust messaging for enterprises. NURX — Medication, prescribed and delivered. Mercury — Bank for startups. PayFazz — Payments for Indonesia. Zeus — Tech-enabled property manager focused on corporate rentals Clearbit — Business Intelligence APIs. Eligible — Healthcare APIs. Numerai — A global artificial intelligence tournament to predict the stock market. Alphaflow — Schwab for real estate. Superhuman — Blazingly fast, visually gorgeous email. Kite — Programming copilot. Soothe — Massage delivered to you. Zeus — Tech driven property manager. Marble — Autonomous last-mile logistics. Next Caller — The most advanced caller identification platform in the world. Second Measure — Insights from consumer spending data. Reach Labs — Wireless power that works like WiFi. Zenysis — Data analytics for developing countries. Pathmind — Reinforcement learning for enterprise decision making. Lucid VR — World's first consumer camera for VR. Doc.AI — AI for medical research & health data. Vise AI — Tech for Wealth Advisors. Handl — Smart OCR API for enterprises Nearpe — Payments for India. Yassir — Super-commerce app for french speaking Africa.
Founding Partner
2014 - 2021
We are a micro-VC fund focused on seed-stage investments. Over the last few years, our seed portfolio companies have cumulatively increased in value by over $8 Billion. http://s2capital.vc/
Mentor
2016 - 2021
Highway1 is the premier hardware startup accelerator, run & backed by PCH International. I advise startups on fundraising, business strategy, product launch & go to market strategy, and marketing. http://highway1.io/team-member/sohail-prasad/
Product Manager, Mobile
2013 - 2014
Focused on growing mobile franchises in the With Friends / Casual categories. Previously: • PRODUCT MANAGER, REAL-MONEY GAMING: Responsible for Zynga's Real-Money Gaming products (Poker & Casino) on the Facebook platform from concept-stage to launch in the UK.
Founder, CTO
2012 - 2013
Hiptype brings analytics and targeted advertising capabilities to the most popular eBook platforms, where these powerful features have never before been possible. Our patent-pending plugin for books captures demographic and book performance data that can be used to power in-book targeted advertising and automated book marketing campaign optimizations. Our founding team has previously designed and engineered products at Google, Turntable.fm, and mobile advertising platform Chartboost.
Early Engineer
2012 - 2012
Mobile advertising and such. Joined as 2nd engineering hire, helped grow the platform to billions of ads served every month.
Software Engineering Intern
2011 - 2011
• Envisioned the future of the internet at Google Research (Speech Technology Group) • Put the "Voice" in "Voice Search for Maps" - responsible for end-to-end deployment of Voice Search for Google Maps (in Google Chrome) • Worked on voice dictation functionality in Google Chrome
Founder, CEO
2005 - 2010
• Awarded TCU Texas Youth Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2010 • An umbrella company created to explore my interests in technology • Created web design company, developed proprietary network security software, and managed a business based on server optimization architecture • Performed freelance development and testing work for various companies. • Created and sold PrivacyPlease, a software to secure and encrypt a user’s internet activity