Naeem Zafar

Naeem is a serial entrepreneur and devoted to mentorship.  Naeem is based in Silicon Valley (California) and has worked at six startups.  He is the founding partner of Concordia Ventures, a company dedicated to educating and advising entrepreneurs with all aspects of their startups.  He is also a partner with Altair Ventures, a company that makes seed level investments in early stage companies.  Naeem is a part of the faculty at Haas business school at University of California Berkeley where he co-teaches an MBA course in entrepreneurship and innovation.

His last assignment was the president and CEO of Pyxis Technology Inc., a company specializing in advanced chip design software for nanometer technology.  Until December 2004 Naeem was the president and CEO of Silicon Design Systems, an Israeli ASIC design and EDA software company.

Prior to SDS, he was president and CEO of Veridicom, Inc., a Lucent/Bell Labs spin-off specializing in silicon fingerprint sensors and authentication software. Previously, Naeem spent 11 years at Quickturn Design Systems, serving as vice president of technology strategy and later as the VP of worldwide marketing. Naeem began his career at Honeywell Research Labs in Minneapolis, Minn. as a VLSI design engineer and research scientist, and is the founder of two EDA companies.

Naeem holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Brown University (magna cum laude), Rhode Island, and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota. 

Naeem has been a frequent lecturer on entrepreneurship and high-tech startups.  He has lectured or co-taught at Columbia/Berkeley executive MBA program, Haas Business School at UC Berkeley, ISEMI (Israel), Brown University and at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan where he serves as an advisor to Entrepreneurship & Small & Medium Enterprise Center (ESMEC).  He also conducts educational seminars to entrepreneurs as a part of Business Education (www.bizeducation.org).

Naeem is the charter member at TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), a 12,000 member strong global non-profit with 44-chapters worldwide focused on fostering entrepreneurship and mentorship of entrepreneurs.  He is also a charter member of OPEN (Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs of North America).