Mo Shaikh

Last updated
Mo Shaikh
Mo Shaikh 2021.jpg
Born
Mohammad Shaikh
NationalityAmerican
Education Hunter College
University of Rochester
Alma materMBA
OccupationFounder & CEO
Years active2014–present
Notable workMeridio
Aptos Labs
Board member of Hunter College, New York

Mohammad "Mo" Shaikh is an American entrepreneur and an investor in the blockchain and Web3 industries. He is best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Aptos Labs, a Layer 1 blockchain company backed by over $400 million in venture capital.

Contents

He co-founded Meridio in 2017, a ConsenSys-backed platform for tokenizing real estate on the Ethereum blockchain. Shaikh has also worked in private equity and strategy consulting.

Early life & education

Shaikh was raised in Brooklyn, New York, to Pakistani immigrant parents. He studied Economics, Psychology, and Accounting earning a Bachelor of Science at Hunter College. He later received an MBA from the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester, [1] where he was a co-President of the Investment Club, co-President of the Simon Venture Fund, and a finalist in the Hult Prize, a global social entrepreneurship competition. [2] [3]

Career

Before entering the blockchain space, Shaikh held a number of roles in private equity at BlackRock and worked as a management consultant at Boston Consulting Group. [4] He also contributed to public-sector projects at the United Nations and U.S. Department of State. [4]

In 2017, Shaikh co-founded Meridio, a blockchain platform for the fractional ownership of real estate and launched a beta version of the application in the same year. [5] Developed within the Ethereum ecosystem and backed by ConsenSys, Meridio was one of the first platforms to tokenize real estate assets, allowing investors to purchase and trade digital shares of property. [6] Its first project involved a fractionalized Brooklyn property at 304 Troutman Street. Meridio was eventually acquired by ConsenSys and folded into its real estate product division. [7] [8]

After Meta (formerly Facebook) discontinued its Diem blockchain initiative, [9] Shaikh and former Meta engineer Avery Ching launched Aptos Labs in 2021. [10] Built on the technology behind Diem, Aptos aimed to deliver a highly scalable, developer-friendly Layer 1 blockchain. [11] Under Shaikh’s leadership as CEO, Aptos raised over $400 million from prominent investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Tiger Global, and Multicoin Capital. [12]

Shaikh spearheaded major partnerships with BlackRock, Franklin Tempelton, Apollo, Google, Microsoft, NBCUniversal, and MoonPay, expanding Aptos’s use cases across finance, media, and consumer applications. [13] He stepped down as CEO of Aptos Labs in December 2024, remaining a founding shareholder in the company. [14]

Advisory roles & board positions

Shaikh has served on the Board of Directors at Hunter College since 2021. He has been a frequent speaker at global technology and finance events, including the Milken Institute Global Conference, the World Economic Forum, and TechCrunch Disrupt. He has also advised governments and central banks on topics related to digital currency and blockchain adoption. [15]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Moorthy, Swathi. "Innovation happening faster in India, something 'big' will come out: Aptos CEO Mo Shaikh". The Economic Times.
  2. ↑ "Education First aims to Bridge Barriers with Exchange". Boston Globe. 2013.
  3. ↑ "Urban Poverty and Food Insecurity: Will There Be an App for That". Simon Business School. 2016.
  4. 1 2 Schmit, Jeff (June 21, 2016). "2016 MBAs To Watch: Mohammad Shaikh, Rochester". Poets & Quants.
  5. ↑ "What this blockchain experiment in Bushwick means". The Real Deal. May 26, 2018.
  6. ↑ Kennedy, John (July 18, 2018). "Bricks by clicks: Could blockchain be the future of real estate". Silicon Republic.
  7. ↑ Miller, Stuart (May 25, 2018). "A Blockchain Building in Bushwick". NY Times.
  8. ↑ Enomoto, Josh (August 20, 2020). "Meridio Utilizes Blockchain to Democratize Real Estate Private Investing". NASDAQ.
  9. ↑ Matney, Lucas (March 15, 2022). "Ex-Meta employees raise $200M from a16z, Tiger, Multicoin to realize Facebook's crypto dreams". TechCrunch.
  10. ↑ Miller, Hannah. "Ex-Meta Staffers Raise $150 million for New Venture". Bloomberg.
  11. ↑ Sraders, Anne. "Aptos Labs is aiming to give Meta's crypto project Diem a second life—if a crypto winter and a $1 billion lawsuit against the CEO don't get in the way". Fortune. Retrieved 2024-11-25.
  12. ↑ Miller, Hannah (July 25, 2022). "Ex-Meta Staffers Raise $150 million for New Crypto Venture". Bloomberg.
  13. ↑ Melker, Scott (October 1, 2024). "Aptos blockchain aims to disrupt payments with instant, low-cost transactions". TheStreet.
  14. ↑ Kessler, Sam. "Aptos Labs CEO Mo Shaikh Quits; Avery Ching to Take His Place". CoinDesk.
  15. ↑ "Board of Trustees". Hunter College.
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