Who is Ulvi?
Ulvi Rashid
Founder and Investment Director, Traction Fund
Ulvi Rashid is the Founder and Investment Director of Traction Fund, a venture firm that backs growth and late-stage layer leaders across the AI stack: energy, compute, data infrastructure, defense autonomy, and applications. Traction invests when customer conviction has formed but investor consensus has not. Over his career Ulvi has invested more than $ 200M across 30 private technology companies.
Before founding Traction, Ulvi was Investment Director at 1802 Ventures (formerly Mindrock Capital), where he ran dealflow and scaled the platform from scratch to $ 211M across 21 companies, including SpaceX, Kraken, Figure Technologies, Lemonade, Coursera, and Udemy. That portfolio produced 7 exits, with the outlier being SpaceX, where he invested in 2019 at a $ 35B valuation. Traction’s current positions include Crusoe, Anduril, Saronic, and Positron AI.
Ulvi is also Founding Partner of the Traction Club of Executives, a collective of 80+ Fortune 1000 and AI lab executives who invest alongside the firm. These are the customers, vendors, and operators of the companies Traction backs. They give Traction a ground-level read on which products enterprises actually buy, and give founders direct lines to buyers and partners.
For founders, Ulvi is a long-term partner beyond the check. He has served as a board member at Intento, the enterprise AI translation platform, and as a board observer at Q-CTRL, the quantum infrastructure software company. Since 2018 he has mentored startups on go-to-market and fundraising at Carnegie Mellon’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.
Earlier in his career, Ulvi was a banking executive in commercial real estate, where he financed $ 350M of hotel and retail developments and brought a $ 1B portfolio of non-performing loans out of default. Before that, as a valuation and fraud investigation consultant with Big Four firms, he built valuation models for M&A and IPOs and audited Fortune 500 energy companies, uncovering a tariff scheme that threatened a $ 3B public-private partnership.
Ulvi holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business and graduated as valedictorian on a Presidential Scholarship, having ranked 16th among 100,000 applicants nationally. He is a Forbes Finance Council member, a former Vice President of the Tepper alumni chapter of California, and the recipient of the 2025 Nexus Award, sponsored by Scale AI.
Before founding Traction, Ulvi was Investment Director at 1802 Ventures (formerly Mindrock Capital), where he ran dealflow and scaled the platform from scratch to $ 211M across 21 companies, including SpaceX, Kraken, Figure Technologies, Lemonade, Coursera, and Udemy. That portfolio produced 7 exits, with the outlier being SpaceX, where he invested in 2019 at a $ 35B valuation. Traction’s current positions include Crusoe, Anduril, Saronic, and Positron AI.
Ulvi is also Founding Partner of the Traction Club of Executives, a collective of 80+ Fortune 1000 and AI lab executives who invest alongside the firm. These are the customers, vendors, and operators of the companies Traction backs. They give Traction a ground-level read on which products enterprises actually buy, and give founders direct lines to buyers and partners.
For founders, Ulvi is a long-term partner beyond the check. He has served as a board member at Intento, the enterprise AI translation platform, and as a board observer at Q-CTRL, the quantum infrastructure software company. Since 2018 he has mentored startups on go-to-market and fundraising at Carnegie Mellon’s Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.
Earlier in his career, Ulvi was a banking executive in commercial real estate, where he financed $ 350M of hotel and retail developments and brought a $ 1B portfolio of non-performing loans out of default. Before that, as a valuation and fraud investigation consultant with Big Four firms, he built valuation models for M&A and IPOs and audited Fortune 500 energy companies, uncovering a tariff scheme that threatened a $ 3B public-private partnership.
Ulvi holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business and graduated as valedictorian on a Presidential Scholarship, having ranked 16th among 100,000 applicants nationally. He is a Forbes Finance Council member, a former Vice President of the Tepper alumni chapter of California, and the recipient of the 2025 Nexus Award, sponsored by Scale AI.
I’m originally from Azerbaijan, and I’ve been building clubs all my life.
The first was Magnat, a student club for intellectual games that became the largest in the country. Our team went on to win the world championship in the business simulation run by HP and Junior Achievement.
After graduation I started my career as a fraud investigator at PwC, auditing oil and gas companies. It turned out I have a talent for finding things people hide. On one site visit I found $ 10M of inventory that had grown legs and walked off. Another time it was a tariff scheme sitting under a $ 3B partnership.
Then I decided it’s safer to spend my energy on the future than on the past. I moved into banking, financed $ 350M of hotels and malls, and took a $ 1B portfolio of bad loans out of default. Along the way I figured out how to approve loans 6x faster, which is when I realized AI in the enterprise was inevitable. I was told that if I want to innovate, I should move to wherever it is appreciated. So I moved to the US.
After an MBA at Carnegie Mellon, I joined 1802 Ventures and helped scale it from scratch to $ 211M across 21 companies, including SpaceX in 2019 at a $ 35B valuation, Kraken, and Figure. Board member at Intento, board observer at Q-CTRL.
Club number two came along the way. As VP of the Carnegie Mellon alumni chapter in California, I started Tartan Circles, mentorship circles where alumni help each other out.
Today I run Traction Fund, and yes, there is a third club. The Traction Club is 80+ Fortune 1000 and AI lab executives who help us pick the layer leaders of the AI stack. We invest when customers are convinced but investors are not yet. Current positions: Crusoe, Anduril, Saronic, Positron AI.
I like connecting dots: ideas, people, organizations. I get curious, learn a new domain from first principles, and pass it on to my investors and peers.
You can find me meeting founders in San Francisco and Palo Alto, mentoring new ones from Carnegie Mellon, the Bay Area, and Central Asia, walking the Embarcadero, or, some Sundays, playing hand drums in Golden Gate Park.
The first was Magnat, a student club for intellectual games that became the largest in the country. Our team went on to win the world championship in the business simulation run by HP and Junior Achievement.
After graduation I started my career as a fraud investigator at PwC, auditing oil and gas companies. It turned out I have a talent for finding things people hide. On one site visit I found $ 10M of inventory that had grown legs and walked off. Another time it was a tariff scheme sitting under a $ 3B partnership.
Then I decided it’s safer to spend my energy on the future than on the past. I moved into banking, financed $ 350M of hotels and malls, and took a $ 1B portfolio of bad loans out of default. Along the way I figured out how to approve loans 6x faster, which is when I realized AI in the enterprise was inevitable. I was told that if I want to innovate, I should move to wherever it is appreciated. So I moved to the US.
After an MBA at Carnegie Mellon, I joined 1802 Ventures and helped scale it from scratch to $ 211M across 21 companies, including SpaceX in 2019 at a $ 35B valuation, Kraken, and Figure. Board member at Intento, board observer at Q-CTRL.
Club number two came along the way. As VP of the Carnegie Mellon alumni chapter in California, I started Tartan Circles, mentorship circles where alumni help each other out.
Today I run Traction Fund, and yes, there is a third club. The Traction Club is 80+ Fortune 1000 and AI lab executives who help us pick the layer leaders of the AI stack. We invest when customers are convinced but investors are not yet. Current positions: Crusoe, Anduril, Saronic, Positron AI.
I like connecting dots: ideas, people, organizations. I get curious, learn a new domain from first principles, and pass it on to my investors and peers.
You can find me meeting founders in San Francisco and Palo Alto, mentoring new ones from Carnegie Mellon, the Bay Area, and Central Asia, walking the Embarcadero, or, some Sundays, playing hand drums in Golden Gate Park.
manager@traction.fund
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