Ali Rowghani was born in Iran and raised in Dallas, Texas. He attended St. Mark's School of Texas, graduating in 1991, and earned a B.A. from Stanford University in 1996 and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2002. His career began in finance at Pixar Animation Studios, where he worked for nine years (pre-2002 to 2008), serving as Chief Financial Officer from 2002 to 2008 and contributing to the restructuring of Disney Animation. He then joined Twitter as Chief Financial Officer from 2008 to 2012, followed by Chief Operating Officer from 2012 until June 12, 2014. After leaving Twitter, he became a part-time partner at Y Combinator starting November 6, 2014, and served as Managing Director of Y Combinator Continuity from its launch in 2015 until approximately 2024. In 2024 or 2025, he founded and became Managing General Partner of First Harmonic, a go-to-market program and investment firm for seed-stage startups. He has been a director at RH (Restoration Hardware Holdings, Inc.) since January 22, 2015. Rowghani is an investor in companies including Stripe, DoorDash, Zapier, Deel, Webflow, Zip, and Kalshi, and maintains an active presence on X/Twitter at https://x.com/ROWGHANI.