Shahed Amanullah is co-founder and CTO of Affinis Labs, a Northern Virginia startup incubator that focuses on businesses with positive social impacts in global Muslim communities. Through Affinis Labs, he helps to organize global hackathons to create social impact businesses and initiatives. Shahed helps manage the development and launch of incubated initiatives and mentors portfolio companies to help them accelerate and grow. A Silicon Valley veteran, Shahed also co-founded LaunchPosse, a startup based at Affinis Labs that helps people leverage their social networks to shape and launch ideas for entrepreneurship. During the Obama administration, Shahed served as Senior Advisor for Technology at the US Department of State, where he worked closely with the White House and other government agencies on social entrepreneurship, social media policy, and fostering innovation.
Shahed also founded Altmuslim, an online magazine with 2.5 million annual readers, and served as its editor-in-chief for 10 years before its 2011 acquisition by Patheos. In 1998, he created Zabihah, the world’s largest Halal restaurant guide, with 10 million annual users and 500,000 mobile app downloads. Shahed was also co-founder and CEO of Relatia, a venture-backed mobile software company acquired in 2001. Shahed has written and/or been featured in pieces about technology, foreign policy, and media trends in major online, print, and television media.
He has been named three times (2009, 2010, and 2011) as one of the 500 most influential Muslims in the world, one of the 500 most prominent figures in the global Islamic economy (2015), and one of the top 10 most visionary young Muslims by Islamica Magazine (2007). Shahed has a BS from UC Berkeley (where he served as Student Body Vice-President) and an MBA from Georgetown.