A multi award winning serial entrepreneur and investor who founded his first of several successful companies at 16. Abbas has been chosen as a Forbes 30 Under 30 Standout, as a Maserati 100, as one of the Great British Entrepreneur Awards Entrepreneurs’ Champions of the Year, and as one of startups.co.uk’s Young Entrepreneurs of the Year and Business Growth Enablers of the Year, to name just a few amongst many other awards. Abbas has been appointed as a United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Fellow, focussing on youth entrepreneurship and empowerment, peacebuilding and encouraging intercultural dialogue in MENA. and as a World Economic Forum Global Shaper. He has been chosen as a World Economic Forum Global Shaper and was selected to become part of the prestigious Helena Group Class of 2018 alongside the likes of Snap Inc CEO Evan Spiegel.
Ex-BlackRock working across EMEA and the US, Abbas co-founded both the Oxford Accelerator and VC fund Collegiate Capital, as well as being an investment committee member of, advisor to and LP investor in several funds in Europe such as BlackWood Ventures on whose Investment Committee he sits. Recently he was recognised and selected by the UAE’s Deputy Prime Minister, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, as an Arab Youth Pioneer and is working on how to tackle youth unemployment and encourage entrepreneurship, innovative homegrown research projects and greater private sector engagement with nationals in the Gulf region. He is very passionate about web3, the metaverse and blockchain technology and has been in the space since 2014, investing in and building many exciting projects. He advises the UK Government as a co-founding Advisory Board Member of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for the Metaverse and Web 3.0. He is also a Helena Group Fellow and one of the youngest fellows at the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce – FRSA.
An academic scholar both at Westminster School and Oxford University and a VC Fellow at London Business School’s Newton Venture Program, Abbas is Chairman of the illustrious Oxford Guild, which he has built into the largest university society in the world and where he has hosted a wide range of high profile guests from multiple major CEOs and Nobel Prize winners, to the likes of Kanye West, Woody Harrelson and many more. He is also co-founder of the All In startup diversity pledge, the Global Fintech & Blockchain Conference, Europe2SiliconValley Trip and the Spirited Network Covid-19 relief non-profit platform.
Combining both East and West, raised in Dubai with an early stint in Saudi Arabia before his elite education in the UK, Abbas has seen the huge changes in the region first hand since the early 1990s and has been fortunate to have been able to travel to over 100 nations across the world so far. Abbas regularly judges leading start-up competitions such as MIT Innovators Under 35 and speaks at top universities and conferences globally such as the World Economic Forum Annual Summit at Davos, Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit and Milken Institute MENA Summit and many more.
