Zebel Co-Founders

I wrote about how I changed strategy and focused on product development in the previous article but didn’t tell you who helped me do that. Meet Ramtin Kermani, my co-founder and Zebel’s CTO. Ramtin and I went to the same Engineering School in Shiraz, Iran. He majored in Computer Engineering and I did Civil Engineering. Shiraz brings lots of good memories, including many funny conversations with Ramtin about our majors.

We’d always make fun of each other’s majors, not knowing that 18 years later we’ll start a construction technology company together on the other side of the planet in Silicon Valley. Despite all the trash talking, Ramtin would always hang out with the cool guys of the Engineering School, the Civil Engineers, and here is the proof: He’s the only Computer Engineer in the picture and everyone else is Civil Engineering grads (Class of 2006)!

I moved to Los Angeles in 2007 to go to the Master of Construction Management program at USC. A few years later, Ramtin also moved to the US to get his Masters degree in Computer Science from ASU. After graduation, I moved to New York City and then San Francisco Bay Area where Ramtin also moved to for work coincidentally. We were still on very different career paths and I couldn’t possibly imagine we’d one day work together, let alone start a business together. Which one of your friends can you not imagine starting a business together one day? Feel free to leave a comment and tag them. Ramtin is an excellent engineer and more important than that, a great friend who I share great values with (more on our core values in the next article). I feel lucky to have him as my co-founder. He’s now officially our CTO, building best-in-class technology at Zebel.

BTW, we’re observing social distancing and actually sitting 6 countries + Atlantic Ocean apart but distances look smaller in high-spirited teams! Learn more about the rest of our awesome team HERE.