Rishi Taparia
Co-founder and General Partner·Garuda Ventures
Bio
Professional summary
Rishi Taparia is Co-founder and General Partner at Garuda Ventures. Garuda’s official team page describes him as a tech executive and investor with more than 15 years of experience in strategy, operations, and finance. Before Garuda, he was SVP of Strategy and Operations at Legion, an AI/ML-powered HR tech company, where he helped launch a new product line and raise $80M across multiple rounds. Prior to Legion, he was VP of Business Operations at Poynt, a commerce and payments platform acquired by GoDaddy for $365M in 2021; Garuda says he was Poynt’s first business hire and helped scale it to more than 130,000 merchants and raise $150M in follow-on capital. Earlier, he worked at Matrix Partners, where he sourced the firm’s seed investment in Canva, and at Scale Venture Partners. He graduated with honors from Northwestern and lives in Orinda, CA.
Investment focus
Stage, sector, and overall fit
Stage
Sector
Thesis
Notable companies
Selected portfolio companies the partner has backed
How to approach
Framing and angles for outreach
Pitch framing
Best fit for an early B2B company seeking a first-check investor with operating experience in strategy, go-to-market, fundraising, and scaling business operations.
Partneralization hooks
- 1Emphasize the earliest wedge: from deck/pre-product/pre-revenue to a category-defining company.
- 2Connect to business-user workflows, AI-enabled software, infrastructure, cybersecurity, fintech, or hardware if relevant.
- 3Reference scaling lessons from Poynt, Legion, or early belief in Canva where appropriate.
Recent signals
What the partner has said or done recently
Garuda homepage states it invests $500K to $1.5M as a first-check fund.
Garuda FAQ states it invests as early as pre-revenue and pre-product and sometimes in Seed rounds totaling $4M to $10M.
Garuda homepage lists 2026 new investment posts including Foundry Robotics, Mirai, Adora, and Arkero.
Background
Career, education, and skills
Career history
- Garuda VenturesCo-Founder & General PartnerPresent
- UC BerkeleyFacultyPresent
Education
- Northwestern University
Skills
Other partners at Garuda Ventures
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