Rostam Zafari is the CEO and Founder of World Within, a $20M venture fund that wants to invest in humanitarian companies. The Iranian American social entrepreneur has a decorated history of contributing to good causes. This includes his part of the founding team behind Rapid Ebola Detection Strips (REDS).
World Within aims to invest in companies with breakthrough technologies that save lives. Through changing the narrative around tech funding, they hope to create a more equitable world.
Zafari has also founded the World Within Foundation, an independent nonprofit organization advancing global health and justice. It champions morally courageous people, ideas and institutions.
Rostam Zafari: young social entrepreneur
Zafari’s first major project came when he was studying Social Entrepreneurship and Creative Writing at Emory University. At just 18, Zafari worked with a team to create Rapid Ebola Detection Strips (REDS). He was awarded the 2015 Cyrus Prize for his work, a $100k genius grant for young Iranian innovators. First Lady Michelle Obama even invited him to the White House.
At 21, Zafari became one of the youngest Chief Investment Officers in the country, working at Sage Hill Capital Partners. There, he led nearly 100 investments across four continents. He’s been recognised as one of the top 25 college entrepreneurs in the US by the Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO).
Zafari then founded Mystro, for which he acts as President. Mystro is a tutoring app that seeks to connect high-performing college students with high-school students. His interest in improving education also sees him sitting on the board for the New School. It encourages community-engaged learning and social entrepreneurship.
Rostam Zafari: science and literature for the world
Zafari grew up in Atlanta, where science was a big part of his life from an early age. His father worked as a professor of Cardiology at Emory University, which Zafari would later attend. He remembers his summers being filled with learning and hands-on experience, interning at a genetics lab or the fire department.
Zafari draws great inspiration from literature, both Persian and American. For example, his favorite: the long epic poem Shahnameh, the national epic of Greater Iran. Introduced to him by his grandfather, it serves as a reminder that you are the hero of your own story. Meanwhile, on his American side he cites Whitman’s Learn’d Astronomer, Hemingway’s Old Man, and William Carlos William’s Red Wheelbarrow. Of these classics, he says: “the message is clear: Discover. Strive. Work hard.”
This is what he has done. Zafari strives to address the key problems in our world: hunger, energy, water, healthcare and others, using compassion, creativity and sustainability. He believes social entrepreneurship provides the solutions. “These problems are not inherent problems that have to exist. They are design problems. If we can design a better world, we can attain it,” he says.
Rostam Zafari: the World Within
To this end, Zafari founded the World Within with his college friend Mehul Bhagat. Their mission statement: to build a world we would be happy to be born into at random. Specifically, they want a world “where healthy food is affordable and water is clean and the planet is preserved and poverty has been eradicated, in all of its forms.”
The World Within partners with companies who share this vision. Such companies include Mesh++, which provides affordable broadband access, and Antara Health, which provides patient-centered healthcare in East Africa. It also includes Apollo, which maximizes profits for small-scale farmers. With a $20M fund, the World Within seeks to grow this roster of world-changing companies.
“Start-ups dare to do what others can’t even imagine because they have something to prove and technology empowers that something-to-prove through the level of unprecedented connection and exposure it provides,” he says.
Check out the World Within here.
