Who was Fahim Saleh, the tech CEO brutally dismembered in NYC?
The tech CEO who was decapitated and dismembered in his Lower East Side apartment was a rising entrepreneur — who loved his adopted home of New York City.
Born in Saudi Arabia to a Bangladeshi family, Fahim Saleh moved around before his family eventually settled on Rochester, New York, according to a 2016 blog post. He attended grade school in Poughkeepsie, then went on to study at Bentley University in Massachusetts.
But it was the Big Apple that captured his heart.
The tragic 33-year-old tweeted a nighttime shot of his luxury East Houston Street apartment building — where police discovered his chopped-up body scattered in garbage bags in his seventh-floor apartment on Tuesday.
“My home,” the venture capitalist wrote with a heart emoji in December after recently moving into the $2.25 million, two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo.
He filled his Twitter with inspirational business quotes and posts about his motorbike startup, Gokada, along with signs he felt optimistic about the future.
“Have a very good feeling about 2020,” Saleh tweeted June 2.
Describing himself on LinkedIn as “an investor that finds things,” Saleh graduated from Bentley with a bachelor’s degree in computer and information science in 2009.
He founded Gokada, the Nigeria-based motorcycle ridesharing company, in 2018 and took over as CEO last year. He recently helped transition Gorkada to delivery service.
He also launched venture capital firm Adventure Capital in 2018 and served as CEO at KickBack Apps, an entertainment app company.
Saleh co-founded ride-hailing company Pathao in his parents’ home country of Bangladesh in 2015, calling it the “most well-funded startup in Bangladesh, recently valued at over $100MM.”
He also said he was an investor in Picap, Colombia’s largest motorcycle ride-sharing company.
A longtime pal described Saleh as “the Elon Musk of the developing world.”
“He was like the Energizer Bunny,” the friend said. “He played ukelele … he was so full of ideas.”
In November, Saleh tweeted about his experience doing business in Nigeria following a run-in with Nigerian authorities, who took his passport.
“Nigerian immigration officers forcibly taking me to office,” he wrote. “Have all work permits, just not on me. Soft copies not enough.. What a wasted day. So much for foreign investment?”
The next day, he clarified, “The reason I’m taking to Twitter is because these past events are different from my overall experience of the country.
“It is when you experience something unexpected that it envokes [sic] outrage,” he said. “Nigerians are generous hard working people and the country is full of so much potential.”
In February, he posted a YouTube video defending his struggling company.
Saleh was last seen around 1:40 p.m. Monday at his apartment building. Surveillance video showed him getting into an elevator — which opens right into his apartment — and his suspected murderer also getting in with a bag in hand, sources said.
As soon as the doors open to Saleh’s apartment, the suspect can be seen attacking him.
One source said the slaying appeared “professional” — noting that there was almost no blood in the apartment, which hadn’t been looted.
Gokada released a statement over Saleh’s death on Twitter.
“We are deeply saddened to inform you about the sudden and tragic loss of our founder and CEO, Fahim Saleh. Fahim was a great leader, inspiration and positive light for all of us,” the company said. “Fahim’s vision and belief in us will be with us forever, and we will miss him dearly. Thank you for understanding as we get through this.”