Nasrin Mostafazadeh, Co-Founder & CEO of Verneek | Silicon Valley Hates Retail

Nasrin Mostafazadeh, co-founder and CEO of Verneek, talks with Robert Valentine and Kayvan Nikjou at HumanX in Amsterdam. She grew up in Tehran, went to a school for exceptionally talented students from the age of 11 and started working in AI at 14. She has worked on common sense reasoning for twenty years. She met her co-founder and husband Omid at a robotics competition in Bremen, when they were both still in high school. Verneek builds AI for retailers and consumer brands, trained on their own data. Nasrin explains why she says Silicon Valley hates retail, how she and Omid built a New York company without making fundraising the news, and why Verneek chose Luxembourg for its first European office. She talks about hiring now that candidates use AI in interviews, and why she doubts she would have become an AI scientist had she grown up in the US. She ends with what drives her. Few female founders get funded, and she wants to show that it can be done. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Recorded at HumanX, Amsterdam. Chapters 0:00 Cold open 0:31 Have you been in Amsterdam before? 3:08 Why so many Iranians lead in tech 4:14 Doing more with less in Iran 6:29 Working in AI at 14 8:29 Maryam Mirzakhani and the Fields Medal 11:30 Education, AI and cheating in interviews 14:34 Her first and last company 16:14 What Verneek does 19:10 Why retail ends up with overstock 21:46 From AI scientist to retail 23:48 Silicon Valley hates retail 25:47 The hype cycle and causal reasoning 27:52 Deep domain expert AI 32:05 A New York company 36:39 Profitable and coming to Luxembourg 40:42 Fundraising is not an achievement 43:40 Meeting Omid at a robotics competition 45:40 Women founders and what drives her Corrections 39:52 Luxembourg's cross-border workers come from France, Belgium and Germany. The Netherlands does not border Luxembourg. The flags of Luxembourg and the Netherlands differ in the shade of blue, not the red. Verneek announced plans for its Luxembourg office in September 2026. The office had not opened yet at the time of recording. 46:11 PitchBook puts the share of US venture capital raised by all-female founding teams at 2.1% in 2024 and 1.1% in 2025. White Box Rodeo is for information and entertainment only and is not investment advice. The hosts may hold interests in companies they discuss. Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjmuhSbXifU White Box Rodeo: https://whiteboxrodeo.com Hosts: Robert Valentine and Kayvan Nikjou