Ahmad Takatkah

Bio:

With a deep-rooted expertise in Silicon Valley's dynamic ecosystem, Ahmad firmly believes that venture capital (VC) is evolving to be more data-driven, emphasizing the importance of quantitative analysis over qualitative instincts. This conviction is backed by over 10 years of active venture experience. To further hone his skills, Ahmad took on a pivotal role as a data scientist at the SaaS FinTech startup, Carta, for three years. 

Subsequently, he transitioned to KingsCrowd, another FinTech startup, where he applied his data acumen to aggregate, analyze, score, and rate startups. This comprehensive analysis spanned from pre-seed to pre-IPO stages, encompassing over 70 online private markets, such as SeedInvest, Republic, WeFunder, and StartEngine. His work there was instrumental in offering both retail and institutions actionable investment insights, in addition to identifying highly rated investment opportunities for KingsCrowd’s venture arm, KC Capital, that he manages today.

As an investment expert, Ahmad is a Kauffman Fellow, and an avid VC blogger and podcaster at VCpreneur.com. Ahmad also authored three books on venture capital: VC Evolve, Contrarian Cycles, and Unlocking Liquidity.

His academic credentials include an electronics engineering bachelor's degree, an MBA from NYiT, and executive training in venture capital and private equity from Harvard. With more than 10 years of active VC investing in Seed and Series A & B Startups, his investment portfolio is both diverse and impressive, including stops at N2V, Leap Ventures, Arzan VC, and KC Capital.

His technical prowess is further amplified by his enrollment in Udacity's Data Analyst and Data Scientist Nano Degrees, where he acquired proficiency in tools like SQL, Looker, Mode Analytics, Tableau, R, Python, Scikit-learn, and other ML/AI libraries. Moreover, his recent participation in UC Berkeley's FinTech Bootcamp 2023 enriched his understanding of both traditional and decentralized financial technology programming, encompassing areas like Web3, Blockchain, Solidity, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Smart Contracts, and more.

As a founder, Ahmad founded three startups. First: e-Traindex in 2006, an EdTech marketplace, an early to market attempt to create something similar to today’s Udemy.com. Second: dCap in 2019, a robo-advisor for crypto hodlers. None of those startups survived, but hey, third time is a charm with nmbr, a neo-telecom company!