Bobby Yazdani

Bobby Yazdani
Born 1963 (age 51–52)
Residence San Francisco, California
Ethnicity Persian
Citizenship American
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley
Occupation Founder & Managing Partner of Signatures Capital
Website
Signatures Capital

Bobby Yazdani is an Iranian-American entrepreneur and angel investor. He is the founder of Saba Software and venture capital firm Signatures Capital. Yazdani founded Saba in 1997 and took the company public in 2000. Yazdani grew Saba into a US$100+ million business, making Saba Software one of the fastest growing software companies in the world.[1]

Yazdani began investing in 1989 and officially founded his investment firm, Signatures Capital, in 2006. As the firm’s founder and Managing Partner, he has grown the portfolio to over 100 companies in the technology sector.[2]

In 2014, Yazdani was ranked #1 out of 2000 angel investors in a report by CB Insights as having the most successful track record for investing in companies that received follow-on funding.[3]

He holds a bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley and has over 25 years of entrepreneurial and venture capital experience in Silicon Valley.

Career

Yazdani started Saba in 1997. Saba Learning was the first product; since then, the product line has integrated and expanded into a unified suite of People Cloud Applications delivered as software-as-a-service. Under his leadership, Saba acquired THINQ Learning Solutions[4] in May 2005, Centra Software[5] in 2006 and Pedagogue Solutions and Comartis in June 2011.

Through his personal and Signatures Capital investments, Bobby’s portfolio includes Dropbox, Google,[6] Uber, Bonobos,[7] Bina, Salesforce.com, Klout, KISSmetrics,[8] Qwiki,[9] Webs.com,[10] Masimo,[11] Boticca,[12] Clearspring,[13] Atheer Labs,[14] Nextbio[15] and SoundHound.[16]

In 2001, Yazdani was named a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.[17]

In 2014, Yazdani agreed to an SEC-negotiated 'clawback' of USD $2.5 million in earnings and bonuses to be reimbursed to Saba.[18]

References

  1. ↑ "Executive Profiles: Disruptive Tech Leaders In Social Business -- Bobby Yazdani, Saba". Forbes. October 25, 2011. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  2. ↑ Bobby Yazdani at CrunchBase
  3. ↑ "We Analyzed 2000 Angel Investors. Here are the Top 1%.". CB Insights. June 21, 2014. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  4. ↑ "Growing through challenges at Saba". Silicon Valley Business Journal. December 16, 2007. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  5. ↑ "Saba Software to acquire Centra for $60M". Boston Business Journal. October 6, 2005. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  6. ↑ "FundersClub’s New "Partnerships" Let You Start A Venture Capital Fund Or Invest In One". TechCrunch. July 15, 2014. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  7. ↑ "Meet the Uber Rich". Fortune. June 5, 2014. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  8. ↑ "With $6.25M In Tow, Bina Technologies Wants To Bring Big Data Insight To Genomic Sequencing". TechCrunch. March 25, 2013. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  9. ↑ "Facebook Billionaire Eduardo Saverin Leads Qwiki's $8 Million Round". TechCrunch. January 20, 2011. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  10. ↑ "Freewebs takes aim at new funding, MySpace.com". Washington Business Journal. April 3, 2006. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  11. ↑ "Masimo: 25th Anniversary Report — P. 20" (PDF). Masimo. November 6, 2014. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  12. ↑ "Boticca's high-end designer marketplace scores £1.5 million". TechCrunch. May 16, 2011. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  13. ↑ "Venture-Backed Clearspring Technologies Introduces Widget Syndication Services". FinanzNachrichten. November 6, 2006. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  14. ↑ "Atheer Labs launches Indiegogo campaign for 3D wearable computer glasses". VentureBeat. December 19, 2003. Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  15. ↑ "NextBio on AngelList". Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  16. ↑ "SoundHound on AngelList". Retrieved January 9, 2015.
  17. ↑ http://www.ey.com/GL/en/About-us/Entrepreneur-Of-The-Year
  18. ↑ http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2014/34-73201.pdf

External links