Divya Narendra, of Facebook Fame, Attracts $1M in Funding

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Media reports see this relatively small investment as a return of a partnership that promises big things. Narendra appeared with the Winklevoss brothers on several major networks after the announcement, interviewed by CNN and Fox, among others.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook settled with the Winklevoss brothers for around $65 million last December. The controversy surrounding the founding of Facebook involving Zuckerberg, the Winklevoss brothers and Narendra was depicted in the 2010 movie “The Social Network.”

Narendra founded SumZero with another Harvard classmate, Aalap Mahadevia. SumZero is based in Manhattan’s Flatiron District.

The company’s mission is to change the way professional investors share information. It is considered the largest online community for hedge fund, mutual fund and private equity professionals with nearly every well-known fund represented in the user base, including Greenlight, Pershing Square and Weiss Asset Management, according to the company website. Before founding SumZero, Narendra was an investment analyst at Sowood Capital Management, a $3.5 billion multistrategy hedge fund in Boston. He also worked as an analyst in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Credit Suisse Securities in New York. A 2004 Harvard graduate with a degree in applied mathematics, Narendra and the Winklevoss twins had founded ConnectU, a social networking website, while at the university.

Before co-founding SumZero, Mahadevia was an associate at Leucadia National, a New York-based holding company. Prior to Leucadia, he was an analyst at Farallon Capital Management, a San Francisco-based company with offices in New York and several other cities.

SumZero is a reciprocity-based platform, meaning that members are required to share certain pieces of information in order to draw from the intellectual product of thousands of SumZero members. The platform further also enables members to build a track record, expand their networks and identify further professional opportunities within the industry.