Astrocade and the Sadeghian Brothers

The reason I love early-stage investing is simple: you back people, not just pitch decks. The best part of this work is hearing the real human journeys behind what founders are building.

I recently caught up with Ali Sadeghian, CTO and co-founder of Astrocade.

His journey alongside his brother Amir Sadeghian, PhD is a masterclass in resilience. I want to share their story with others.

Long before building a company, they grew up living across four different continents.

Constant relocation forced them to adapt quickly to unfamiliar environments and lean on each other, forging an unbreakable baseline of sibling trust.

As Amir put it: "My brother and I moved around a lot as kids from country to country, and we always found each new place filled with excitement, new adventures, and new people. These experiences enriched and changed us for the better, and became the inspiration for Astrocade. We wanted to make it possible for people to build and share their dream interactive worlds."

Their technical depth matches that lived experience:

• Began as Math Olympians out of Sharif University in Iran
• Amir completed his PhD at Stanford's AI Lab, focusing on human trajectory forecasting and social etiquette for robots navigating crowds (teaching machines to understand human behavior)
• Ali conducted complex machine learning research at Google Research
• Co-founded Astrocade alongside AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li

When you spend your early years restarting from scratch across cultures, the chaos of building an early-stage startup feels familiar rather than paralyzing.

One of the common threads across my top founders is a nomadic background. It teaches you how to navigate extreme ambiguity, rebuild without a playbook, and stay grounded when conditions shift overnight.

Getting to back builders through Pamir Ventures with that level of grit and vision is why we do this. Ali and Amir are actively building out their core team at Astrocade right now.

Originally posted on LinkedIn.