Daneshgar became interested in poker while attending the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught a pass/not pass course on the Statistics and Probability of Gaming. In 2006, he was ranked the #5 player in the world by Card Player magazine.[1] That year, he won major titles at Borgata Winter Poker Open,[2] Bicycle Casino Winnin' o' the Green,[3] and Bellagio Five Diamond World Poker Classic.[4] In 2008, he captured his first World Series of Poker bracelet and the $625,443 cash prize.[5] As of 2011[update], his total live tournament winnings exceed $2,400,000.[6]
BloomNation
In 2010, while attending the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Daneshgar co-founded the online floral marketplace BloomNation with Farbod Shoraka and Gregg Weisstein. He won a two-day poker tournament in Los Angeles that gave the company enough seed funding to create a beta version of the marketplace and establish proof of concept.[7] BloomNation has since raised $1.65 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Spark Capital, Chicago Ventures and CrunchFund.[8]
