# Shakil Khan

> Shakil Khan is a seed investor at charity: water (London) backing Software and E-Commerce. See 13 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [charity: water](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/charity-water)
- Location: London, United Kingdom
- Total investments: 13
- Last investment: Dec 2019
- Lead investor: 8%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/shakilkhan
- X (Twitter): http://twitter.com/shak
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/shakilkhan

Shakil Khan is a seed investor at charity: water in London focused on Software and E-Commerce. Shakil Khan is currently Head of Special Projects at Spotify, where he is also personal advisor to founder and CEO Daniel Ek. He has had a number of online businesses in the UK since 2000, was part of the founding team at buy.at, which was acquired by AOL, and he recently founded CoinDesk, a bitcoin news site.Shak has done extensive volunteerwork as an ambassador for charity: water, having helped raise millions of dollars for clean and safe drinking water. He is also a keen supporter and friend of Pencils of Promise, who build schools for those most in need.Having lived in China, Shak speaks Chinese (as well as English, Urdu, Punjabi, and Danish) and currently divides his time between London, San Francisco, New York and airport lounges.Shak is an investor in BitPay, Spotify, Top10, Duedil and YPlan. Shak was also an investor and mentor to Nick D'Aloisio who built and sold Summly, a news curation app that was sold to Yahoo in March 2013.

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $510k–$1.8M |
| Pre-Seed | $300k–$1.1M |
| Series A | $5M–$12M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Software | 6 | 46% |
| E-Commerce | 5 | 38% |
| Internet | 3 | 23% |
| Mobile | 2 | 15% |
| FinTech | 2 | 15% |

33 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 4 | 31% |
| Series A | 3 | 23% |
| Pre-Seed | 2 | 15% |
| Funding Round | 2 | 15% |
| Angel | 1 | 8% |

6 stages tracked in total.

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United Kingdom | 7 | 54% |
| United States | 4 | 31% |
| Hong Kong | 2 | 15% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Founders Pledge | Founders Pledge is a global community of founders and investors committed to making the maximum possible impact on the social causes they're passionate about. Through Founders Pledge, members commit to donate a meaningful percentage of their personal exit proceeds to the charities and social causes of their choice following liquidity. Sincelaunching in 2015, Founders Pledge members have committed more than $2 billion to charity and donation $440 million. | $2.6M | Grant | Dec 27, 2019 |  |
| Otta | Our mission is to become the world's career champion. This means putting candidates first — not companies. Today we're focused on building the better way to find a fulfilling job in tech. In the future, we'll help people find jobs at all of the best companies.Looking for a job is a frustrating experience. It's incredibly hardto find a good match. Job adverts lack useful information like salary and diversity data. Companies sometimes never respond. There’s a lack of friendly-support in those tough moments of rejection … the list goes on.When starting Otta, we saw that candidates are often treated as second-class citizens. So we set out to build a candidate-first job search: one that is laser-focused on providing the best experience for candidates.There’s a big market to go after in recruitment, with LinkedIn selling over $10bn/year of recruitment products. But it’s impossible to battle a giant like LinkedIn if you try and compete on all jobs from Day 1. So we chose tech companies as our first move. As we grow, we’ll expand into other industries to help more people find fulfillment.Since launching in Jan 2020, we’ve grown from 1,000 applications sent per month to multiple thousands sent every day, across the UK & US. Otta is becoming a must-have for companies, and this puts us in a strong position to demand a better experience for candidates. For example, what if we said to companies that jobs without a salary range will be shown last? | $1.1M | Pre-Seed | Dec 04, 2019 |  |
| Thingtesting | We're on a mission to build the corner of the internet where people can discover and talk honestly about new things. | $300K | Pre-Seed | Sep 24, 2019 |  |
| Motorway | Motorway started in 2017 with a vision to build a better car market for everyone, harnessing the power of technology to deliver an amazing experience.We help everyone to quickly and easily sell their car for the best price from the comfort of home, using only a phone.Transparent and straightforward in all that we do, our smart tech matches ourcustomers’ cars with a nationwide network of verified dealers. This enables those dealers to buy vehicles direct from private sellers using our fully-online sales platform, with hundreds of cars successfully sold every day.Reducing time and effort on all sides, we help everyone get the right deal quickly. It all, just, works.With over 1m car owners using our site and apps every month, we've grown by over 100% year-on-year and the journey's just begun. | $637K | Angel | May 01, 2017 |  |
| Monese | Monese is a digital banking alternative that provides a mobile-only, multi-currency account fully-featured and fully localized banking experience (both its apps and its customer service. | $1.8M | Seed | May 27, 2015 |  |
| Notey Labs | Notey Labs believe in designing technology that enables companies, businesses, and ideas to be truly global. Their mission is to bridge the digital divide between China and the Western internet and give businesses the tools to more fearlessly embrace a global web. Their company has been featured on Techcrunch, CNBC as well as Business Insider,highlighting Notey as one of the “15 Fastest Growing Startups in the World”. | $1.6M | Seed | Feb 17, 2015 |  |
| Hello | Hello is a technology that designs and produces consumer electronic hardware and accompanying software. Its first product, Sense, is a sleep tracking system launched via a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2014, successfully beating a goal of $100,000 by raising over $2.4 million. Hello announced the second version of Sense, Sense with Voice,on November 1, 2016. | $10.5M |  | Jan 28, 2014 |  |
| Asia Innovations Group | Asia Innovations Group (AIG) owns a diverse portfolio of live social apps, including Uplive, which allows video social hosts to broadcast to the world, Lamour, the top dating app in global emerging markets, and SupreFans, a fan-centric live social app. AIG leverages cutting-edge technology, advanced streaming capabilities, and a scalable globalinfrastructure to deliver an optimal, seamless, and authentic live social experience. Focused on major emerging markets, AIG has twelve global offices, including in Casablanca, Cairo, Delhi, Tokyo, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Dallas. |  | Series A | Jan 10, 2014 |  |
| Thread | Thread operates as an online personal styling platform designed to help men find clothes. The platform offers a combination of human stylist and machine learning algorithms, where they receive personalized information from human stylists and suggestions from an algorithm that understands the customer's preferences over time, helping men todress well without having to go shopping. |  | Seed | Dec 01, 2013 |  |
| YPlan | YPlan uncovers the best events every day so you can get out and Live Your City. Get the lowdown on cool dates, hidden culture and where to hang with friends. Discover, book, go – it's that simple. Flash your YPlan ticket and you're in. Founded in London in February, 2012, YPlan works directly with 3500+ event partners worldwide, has over1.5 million users, and 1000+ 5* reviews on App Store. | $12M | Series A | Jun 04, 2013 |  |

10 of 13 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Acequia Capital (AceCap)](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/acequia-capital) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [A-Grade Investments](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/a-grade-investments) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Amex Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/american-express-ventures) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [ACF Investors](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/angel-cofund) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [SmartCap](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/as-smartcap) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Base Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/base-vc) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## About charity: water

VC Fund · New York, United States

charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Founded in 2006, it has helped fund over 11,000 water projects in 22 countries. When completed, those projects will serve over three million people with clean drinking water. Overall, the organization has raised over $95 million from400,000 donors.www.charitywater.org

5 contacts available at charity: water.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| BROC KLEIN | Software Developer | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/broc-klein |
| CHRIS BARTON | General Counsel and Corporate Secretary | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/chris-barton |
| Christoph Gorder | President & Chief Global Water Officer | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/christoph-gorder |
| IAN T. COOK | IT SYSTEMS MANAGER | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ian-t-cook |
| JASDEEP GOSAL | SENIOR SOFTWARE DEVELOPER | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jasdeep-gosal |

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## FAQ

### What does Shakil Khan invest in?

Shakil Khan invests primarily in Software, E-Commerce and Internet startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 13 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United Kingdom. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Shakil Khan's check size?

Shakil Khan typically joins rounds of $510k–$1.8M at Seed, $300k–$1.1M at Pre-Seed and $5M–$12M at Series A. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Shakil Khan participates in.

### When did Shakil Khan last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Shakil Khan closed in Dec 2019. Shizune tracks 13 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

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