Farzad Nazem

Farzad Nazem is a former Yahoo CTO and a Palo Alto-based solo angel writing $100k-$250k checks at pre-seed and seed in medical devices and digital health, with no AI flag. The Hand Foundation website affiliation suggests current involvement in healthcare philanthropy, and his Yahoo-era operating credentials give him strong infrastructure-and-platform pattern recognition. Founders building medical devices with software and platform components, digital health with significant infrastructure or platform requirements, or companies where his senior-engineer-and-platform-operator credibility adds meaningful technical value are the natural fit. He is the wrong audience for biotech, consumer wellness without a platform angle, AI-heavy plays where the AI is the entire thesis, or anything requiring deep clinical domain expertise. The check size is meaningful for a pre-seed and a credible participant in a seed round. Outreach via LinkedIn is the primary channel; warm introductions through the Yahoo alumni network, Stanford engineering and computer science networks, or the Hand Foundation philanthropic community materially outperform cold notes. Without a Twitter or published personal thesis, founders should rely on his Hand Foundation context and Yahoo operating profile as the primary signal of taste. Best treated as a senior-engineer-credibility angel for the right device-and-software or platform-oriented healthcare founder.