Mr. Nasir Ali

Founder & President, Upstate Venture Connect

Mr. Nasir Ali is the Upstate Venture Connect CEO and the Founder and Executive Director of the Seed Capital Fund of CNY, a private LLC whose members are actively engaged in funding and supporting early stage tech companies. He is a Managing Director of the StartFast Venture Accelerator, a key UVC initiative. Ali also serves on the boards of the Upstate Venture Association of New York, OutMatch (formerly Chequed) and Paper Battery Company.

 Prior to founding UVC, Mr. Ali was President of The Tech Garden, a not-for-profit organization with the mission of creating an entrepreneurial culture in the City of Syracuse and the Central New York region. In addition to managing the Syracuse Technology Garden incubator, Mr. Ali managed a statewide network of experienced mentors. In 2008, Mr. Ali co-taught a course in technology entrepreneurship at Syracuse University, which has since grown into a year-long community-campus collaborative effort known as the Syracuse Student Startup Accelerator. He was also responsible for launching the NYSERDA-funded Center for Clean Tech Entrepreneurship and SATOP, a NASA supported small business technology assistance program.

Mr. Ali has served as an associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, Washington, DC, charged with helping IRS Commissioners manage over $1 billion in technology modernization and workforce restructuring initiatives. Prior to this, he co-founded New Think (a mobile commerce services firm) and WritersPoint (an offshore technical writing company).

Mr. Ali received his MBA in Finance and Operations Management from Yale University’s School of Management. He graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Physics and a concentration in Economics.