Abid Siddiqui

A Principal on AI Fund’s build team, Abid works with our Founders in Residence and Venture Advisors to validate potential business ideas and rapidly build new companies.

Before joining AI Fund, Abid had the privilege of supporting the United States federal government in its emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He served as a strategic advisor to BARDA, the biomedical innovation unit within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), driving external innovation models to support national security. Abid was responsible for launching the organization’s first startup studio, aimed at creating new companies at the intersection of healthcare and national security. He also designed and launched numerous accelerator and incubator programs, working with participating founders on all aspects of their company build.

Prior to BARDA, Abid was an entrepreneur himself, leading product and business/finance functions at two startups. At ZappRx, a venture-backed digital health startup, he led product development from 0 to 1—joining pre-revenue and building it through its acquisition by Veradigm, an AllScripts company (NASDAQ: MDRX). As a founding team member at ByteCubed, an enterprise SaaS company, Abid played a key role in driving the company’s growth to $35MM+ ARR, leading to its acquisition by Intellibridge.

“My journey at both startups instilled in me a strong belief that building successful startups requires balancing conviction in your idea with being open to pivoting based on user feedback,” Abid says. “Both startups I helped build went through several pivots before finding product-market fit.”