Syed Natif Nawaz
Managing Partner at Aurum Equity Partners
Syed Natif Nawaz
Managing Partner at Aurum Equity Partners
San Francisco Bay Area
Overview
Work Experience
Managing Partner , CTO
2023 - Current
Aurum Equity Partners is private equity firm of $250M global fund, invest in real estate asset class (Data Centers) and Growth Equity. the global fund will expand its investments in the United States, MENA, and India
Managing Partner
2022
Aurum Venture Partners is a community powered Global Venture Capital Fund creating the next wave of unicorns in Smart Enterprise, Fin tech, and Crypto/NFT/Web 3.0. A $50M Diversified Global Fund-1 deployed across different Asset Classes . With our Presence in US , Lat Am , Asia-Pacific & MENA with investments at an early stage across tech driven companies www.AurumVenturePartners.vc
Senior Principal
2022 - 2023
Responsible to raise, invest and manage, Diversified Fund-1 which is $100M AUM for Alternative Assets ( Real Estate , Growth Equity, Pre-IPO, Buyouts, Venture Capital) 1. Primary and secondary lead across sectors in the private equity and Real Estate opportunities 2. Facilitate strategic dialogue, clear communication, and thought leadership between external managers, management teams, and VU Capital Partners’ investment team and senior leadership. 3. Conduct due diligence reviews on current and prospective managers and investments to include: onsite meetings and conference calls with senior personnel; review and analysis of fund/investment documents and information, such as offering memoranda, financial statements, due diligence questionnaires, audit reports. 4. Execute investment strategies 5. Contribute to portfolio construction, investment allocation, and planning process 6. Help establish long term investment objectives 7. Work closely with internal business units, legal, accounting, operations, and data analytics teams 8. Generate reports and analytics to monitor the ongoing performance of managers and specific investment strategies. 9. Contribute to the idea generation process and identify appropriate investment response to key themes, opportunities, and risks in the capital markets broadly
5G Edge Startup - Head of Customer Experience Engineering
2019 - 2022
I lead the Customer Experience, Product Management, and Engineering initiatives, establishing the framework for Customer/User Experience and driving the innovation engine (focus on filing patents). I oversee all aspects of the product build, including cloud and platform components. I organized the team for UI/UX, Cloud, and Edge, and defined the charter to focus on key aspects of each area. I assisted in competitive research and built marketing collateral.
CTO/Co-Founder/Management Consultant
2017 - 2022
I drove the customer migration and infrastructure consolidation for different enterprises. I led customers’ technological, network, and data center modernization roadmap discussions. I created the blueprint for infrastructure consolidation at multiple enterprises, and consulted on network automation strategies to initiate the journey for SDN and Datacenter network automation. Notably, I: ❖Delivered the first release for the MVP of the product by transferring the customer requirements and maximizing team efforts. ❖Analyzed and identified a cloud partner as an ideal strategic fit to provide the CI/CD release by setting up the git hub, including code review, analysis, and build using AWS. ❖Implemented continuous process improvement and new systems that supported technology service delivery efforts to meet company and clients’ current and future growth needs consistently. I serve as a management consultant to multiple start-ups in a variety of roles and responsibilities. Specific engagements included the following: Co-Founder: MUN3 Inc. (2017-2018) I co-founded and expanded the development of an enterprise software company specializing in the agro-tech industry (SaaS platform). I partnered with 2 vendors (cloud partners) to build customized SaaS software for meeting the needs of the agriculture market segment. I built and scaled a diverse, cross-functional, onshore/offshore team of 23 from scratch, including 12 software developers, 4 principal engineers, and 7 consultants. Key highlights: ❖Served as a key catalyst to achieve product success, including assembling the team, establishing the release cycle, selecting the software and cloud options, and instituting the overarching vision. ❖Collaborated with Agro-firms, tool vendors, and the cloud partner to build the customized SaaS deployment model to meet multi-tenant, security, scalability, and compliance needs of the customer. CTO / Cloud Architect: Cloud Trident (2017-2019)
Senior Director, Network and Cloud Operations, North America
2015 - 2017
I was hired as a technology visionary to build a network service delivery team to work on customer onboarding/experience initiatives, including identification of software, processes, tools, and resources to improve the overall customer experience. I managed a portfolio of security and infrastructure products with revenues of over $1B annually. I led a team of 200+ and managed a $40M budget for rolling out new products while maintaining existing products. ❖Reduced CAPEX by $40M and improved customer onboarding by 50%, as well as improving serviceability (MTTR) by 40%. Directed and executed a complex system integration project to consolidate multiple cloud offering products into a single, scalable, secured infrastructure solution. ❖Created and defined operational process for change, incident, and performance management, all within the cloud environment. ❖ Led the Architecture Advisory Board. ❖Improved network uptime SLA to 5 9s and reduced Opex by 50%. Built top-performing, highly diverse global teams (270 in 14 countries) to manage engineering and operations of products and services. ❖Led the integration of the Verizon (U.S. and Colombia) Telecity(Europe) & ALOG(Brazil) portfolio into Equinix and exceeded all targets including Revenue, Network SLA, CSAT, timeline and integration costs o As the M&A Integration Lead for ALOG, Verizon and Telecity, I led global teams and was responsible for pipeline management, diligence, and integration or separation activities across the business transition, business process migration, IT systems and tools migration, IP protection, functional on- or off-boarding, and employee training (NOC & NSE). o Led integrations for new acquisitions ( 60+ Datacenters through M&A) for in-service execution management, asset performance management, and network operations center domains. Delivered business outcomes that enabled process standardization and optimization, revenue growth, productivity, and operational efficiencies.
Director, Customer Engineering
2013 - 2015
I was hired to build a common automation framework, hire and retain top talent, and establish the vision/motivation. I assembled and led a best-in-class, global software engineering team of 120 (U.S., India, and Canada) delivering SDN service insertion solutions to Brocade’s largest service provider customers. I managed release engineering, Agile/Scrum, localization, documentation, DevOps, security, QA, and escalations for datacenter and cloud product timelines. I am proud to have: ❖Improved the escalation and information gathering processes to reduce time to resolve and email traffic as well as implementing FAQs. ❖Reduced test infrastructure footprint by 50% and increased test runs by 30% through building sandbox simulation setups and establishing consolidated, shared-infrastructure utilization charts and automation deployment. ❖Decreased the customer upgrade cycle from 2-3 days to under 4 hours, as well as increasing revenue recognition time by 40%, through implementing an automation build process using Jenkins to provide daily automated builds. ❖Improved code coverage from 40% to 100% and reduced Capex needs by 60% through building a common automation framework that leveraged multiple product lines. Defined customer profile automation and SMU update automation policy, created a common testbed to redefine per needs, and assisted in all maintenance and customer validation activities, from 100% manual to fully automated.
Sr. Manager – Customer Solutions for Converged (Wired & Wireless) Platforms
2001 - 2012
I planned and managed customer success and quality ownership for the $7B Cat 2000/3000/4000 product line and next generation converged platforms. I led and mentored offshore team of 40 direct-report engineers, and administered a $10M annual operating budget. I directed the full cycle of network infrastructure projects, including positioning and validating designs for access, distribution, and core switches across healthcare, financial, retail, and education verticals. My accomplishments include: ❖Improved first line of defense against cyber-attacks and network failures by implementing a stability monitoring system (for the overall switch platform) and analyzing network traffic. ❖Automated self-serve qualification service and improved reliability in test environments, fast-tracking certification processes and reducing qualification time (weeks to hours) to enable weekly and monthly updates for customers. ❖Drove multiple successful releases of the products using Agile methodologies. Closely monitored release and sprint planning, CI/CD, Dev Ops, quality, resource management, component, and other factors. ❖Spearheaded GSR’s engineering transformation from the core to the edge of the network in leading transformation of IOS-XR OS from the core to the Business VPN edge. ❖Directed a 24x7 support roster for several dozen teams to support the upgrade/patching activity, as well as implementing robust processes for escalations.
Lead Software Development Engineer
2000 - 2001
Assured Access Technologies Startup - Acquired by Alcatel
Education
SCPM
2007 - 2008
Master's degree
1998 - 2000