The San Diego 500, The Book of Influential Business Leaders, is the market’s most comprehensive product of people you should know in the business community. The 500 includes business leaders and executives who have founded or are running significant companies in terms of number of jobs, key products and services, experts who raise the level of the industry here and beyond and those who lead in the business community. The 500 is selected by the San Diego Business Journal newsroom.

Taner Halicioglu

Founder and Manager, Keshif Ventures

Taner Halicioglu is one of San Diego’s few “super angels” in local tech, meaning he’s an active investor in early-stage startups. He’s the founder of angel investment firm Keshif Ventures, and a member of SEED San Diego. His portfolio companies include Mogl, Portfolium, Doctible, CloudBeds, Soci, and PacketSled. Halicioglu joined Facebook in 2004, the year it was founded, and was instrumental in developing the hardware infrastructure that made it possible for Facebook to handle explosive growth. Halicioglu left Facebook in 2009 and served as a lead reliability engineer at Blizzard Entertainment in Irvine before returning to UC San Diego in 2013 as a lecturer in computer science. Halicioglu recently gifted UC San Diego, his alma mater, a $75 million donation to help create a new Data Science Institute. The gift is the largest the university has ever received from one of its graduates. The new center will feature his name: the Halicioglu Institute for Data Science.

HIS NAME: It’s pronounced Haw-li-dji-o-loo.

MULTILINGUAL: Halicioglu is interested in foreign languages and other cultures. He speaks fluent Turkish and some Spanish.

FUN FACT: Halicioglu has composed and played music using MIDI synthesizers since his junior year in high school.