Asher Siddiqui is a technology investor and entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience. He brings deep experience across venture capital, private equity and M&A, with over $7Bn in capital deployed, $15Bn in M&A transactions closed and $3.5Bn in realized profits. His track record includes 100+ early-stage investments delivering 4x+ MOIC, and investments in 20+ venture funds as an LP, generating 5x+ MOIC and 1.8x DPI. He has also helped build and scale eight venture capital firms managing over $1.5Bn in assets.
Asher currently serves as Managing Director at Song United (the family office of billionaire founder, Dug Song that aligns tech investments and real estate with philanthropy) and is the Founder of Asilica (an institutional platform for private markets allocation).
Asher serves as an LP, Investment Committee and board member to several global VC and PE funds including Race Capital (early-stage enterprise deep tech VC fund led by Alfred Chuang - founder & CEO of BEA Systems), Merus Capital (top quartile enterprise deep tech VC fund led by former Google and Microsoft executives), Sukna Ventures (regional MENA VC fund), Better Tomorrow Ventures and Red Shift Capital. His investment and advisory work spans enterprise deep tech, consumer technology and emerging venture ecosystems across the US, MENA, Europe and Asia, including serving previously as an Advisory Board Member for the Abu Dhabi Financial Group.
Asher was formerly part of the global leadership team (Partner & IC member) at 500 Startups (most active early-stage VC in the world with a portfolio of 2000+ startups and 10+ unicorns), dividing time between San Francisco and the Middle East.
Prior to 500 Startups, Asher was Group Vice President and Global Head of M&A and Venture Capital at Etisalat Group, where he closed 20+ deals valued at c.$15bn, investing c.$7bn across the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia. Earlier in his career, Asher was part of the initial founding team that led the development of CNBC Africa, a leading pan-African business news channel based in South Africa (2005/06) and previously advised and managed the development of a $26Mn venture investment vehicle for The Center for Applied Research & Training (CERT) in Abu Dhabi in collaboration with the MIT Entrepreneurship Centre (2004/05).
Asher has worked with the Stanford Center for Sustainable Development & Global Competitivenesson conducting research on innovation ecosystems and corporate innovation, a guest lecturer on the Stanford University Idea to Market (I2M) program, and an active mentor & coach to several startups in Silicon Valley, Europe and the Middle East.
He holds a B.A. (Honors) in Business Administration and an M.Sc. in Software Development.