Nabeel is an early-stage investor and supporter of entrepreneurs building hardware, software and services startups that offer creative solutions to practical, everyday problems. He has led Spark’s investments in Coin, Hey, Picturelife (acq. by StreamNation), Postmates, and Thalmic Labs. He looks for products in which the underlying technology or systems can be extremely complex, but are presented as a simple, magical experience to the people who use them. Coin, for example, does something seemingly small—it holds your credit cards—but at scale it reinvents how people interact with money. Postmates has a seemingly humble offering—it brings you dinner—but by doing so seamlessly, it upends urban logistics. Nabeel was previously General Manager at Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA), which he joined before the IPO in 2010 after Zynga acquired Conduit, a hyper-growth social gaming startup where he was cofounder and CEO. Previously he helped start and then lead product development at Ambient Devices, an MIT Media Lab spin-out that worked with designers like Yves Behar and Frank Gehry to bring a blend of IT and modern design to consumers, helping pioneer what would later become known as “The Internet of Things.” Nabeel received a B.A. in Design from Maryland Institute, College of Art, studied Computer Science at Purdue University and now lives in Berkeley, California.

Startup, Entrepreneurship