Paul Zolfaghari

Paul Zolfaghari is a veteran enterprise-software executive turned investor and operator. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Gettysburg College (1986) and a Juris Doctor from the University of Pittsburgh (1991). He began his career as a lawyer in Washington, DC, including work with the law firm Howrey & Simon and as an attorney in the Intellectual Property Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, before moving into technology.

Zolfaghari spent the core of his operating career at MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), the global enterprise analytics company. He held a series of expanding senior roles from 1999 to 2010, including EVP of Global Sales and Operations, and then served as President of the company from 2012 to 2016, a period in which MicroStrategy reported more than $500 million in revenue with operations in some thirty countries. In between, from 2010 to 2012, he was COO of ParAccel, the enterprise data-warehouse platform that became the software foundation underlying Amazon Web Services' Redshift.

In 2017 Zolfaghari joined growth-oriented investment firm Carrick Capital Partners (San Francisco and Newport Beach), where he was a Managing Director through 2022, a member of the Investment Committee, and Chairman of the Operations Committee. At Carrick he co-led the firm's investment in Saviynt and sat on the Saviynt board from 2017 to 2022.

He subsequently moved into an operating seat at that portfolio company: he is currently President of Saviynt, the cloud identity and access governance company, responsible for corporate strategy and overseeing the company's departments and operations. He continues to assist Carrick when requested with sourcing and diligencing new investment opportunities, and invests personally as an angel.

• Invests in and helps scale technology-enabled B2B businesses — SaaS, enterprise software, analytics, identity/security, and transaction processing/BPO — the categories Carrick specializes in.
• Brings an operator's lens: decades running sales, operations, and P&L at scale (MicroStrategy President; ParAccel COO), so the value-add is go-to-market and operational scaling, not just capital.
• At Carrick, participated in growth-stage checks (~$10M–$50M, ~$25M sweet spot); personally invests at angel/seed scale.
• Carrick's stated approach ("ABV" — Approach to Building Value) centers on operationally scaling fast-growing companies rather than passive capital — Zolfaghari's board and operations-committee work reflect that hands-on model.