Persian Rug Tech Network

A story about how a Persian rug shop in Palo Alto became an unexpected gateway into Silicon Valley tech investing.

"This guy's story is crazy. A Persian guy starts a rug shop in Silicon Valley, right in the heart of Palo Alto selling luxury Persian rugs. Above his rug shop there's office space, which he ends up renting to early PayPal founders and others.

He's selling rugs to these people, gets to know them, and realizes 'Wow, Google, PayPal - these companies made a killing.' So they start taking their rug money and become angel investors. They don't know anything about technology really, but they decide to just invest in the people that come in to buy the rugs if they seem interesting.

One of their best investments came when Andy Rubin walked in. He sells him a $5,000 Persian rug, and during the negotiation, he's so impressed with Andy, asks what he does. Andy tells him about his company called Danger. They end up writing a $400,000 check into Danger. Andy later went on to create Android.

They also invested in Dropbox because one of the cofounders was Persian - speaking Farsi, building relationships. They invested in Applovin which is now a $100+ billion company. This whole tech investing mafia got created off of this rug shop.

Their strategy was unique - for example, when they met Joe Lonsdale after he'd done Palantir, instead of having him come to the shop, they'd bring 100 rugs to his house. Their philosophy was 'You learn a lot more about a person when you go to their house than if you meet them for coffee or they come into your shop.'"