Garuda Ventures

Excited to share an update on what I've been working on the past few months.? Louis-P. Lamoureux, Ph. D., Richard Kemp, and I recently launched Fincura, a new fintech company serving private healthcare practices across the US and Canada, beginning with dental practices. We're inspired to build Fincura by family members close to us who are healthcare providers.? Stunningly, 75%+ of all dental insurance reimbursement payments still occur via physical check or fax!? Our embedded and AI-powered software enables practices to automatically setup EFT payments, reconcile insurance reimbursements, and post payments. Customers of Fincura are getting paid 3x faster while saving staff 10 hours a week in administrative work. With Fincura, providers and staff now spend more time with patients and less time on business operations. We're backed by FOVC, Garuda Ventures, Headwater Ventures, and Panache Ventures; incredible partners helping us build digitally native payments, insurance, and financial products sorely lacking for healthcare practices serving our local communities. Please reach out if you're interested in learning more about what we're building, partnering, or if our software can benefit your practice!

IT admins, are you struggling with SaaS renewals? Keeping track of renewal dates in spreadsheets is a nightmare—more grunt work, missed deadlines, and wasted SaaS spend! ?? Introducing Renewal Tracker—a free tool from Stitchflow that helps IT teams organize SaaS contracts, track upcoming renewal dates, and stay ahead with automated email and calendar alerts. ? Key features of Renewal Tracker: ?? AI-powered contract parsing -> Upload contracts & let AI auto-fill key details—saving time & reducing manual work. ?? Holistic view of all your apps -> Centralize your SaaS stack, track renewal dates & sync with your calendar for better visibility. ? Automated renewal reminders -> Get timely email alerts so you never miss a renewal or overpay for unused licenses. Start tracking your SaaS renewals effortlessly! ?? https://lnkd.in/g2Ce9UDe #IT #SaaS #Renewals #Automation #ITManagement #Stitchflow #Productivity ??

We’re excited to launch our new podcast - Security & GRC Decoded. Hosted by Raj Krishnamurthy. Join the herd! ?? ?? ?? ? It’s for security professionals, compliance teams, and business leaders responsible security GRC and ensuring their organizations’ are safe, secure and adhere to regulatory mandates. ???Security & GRC Decoded brings you: + Actionable strategies. + Expert insights. + Real-world stories to elevate your Security GRC programs. Each episode explores frameworks, risk management strategies, and innovations shaping the future of GRC – from practitioners in the trenches. Subscribe now to unlock the tools and knowledge you need to succeed. The first 3 episodes feature: 1. Mosi Platt, Senior Security Compliance Engineer at Netflix. Mosi shares how he gets buy-in for security compliance initiatives and his 2x2 Compliance Program Evaluation Matrix. 2. Abhay Kshirsagar, Director of Security Services and Tools at Salesforce. Abhay talks about the evolving landscape of security, compliance, and customer assurance. 3. Walter Haydock, CEO of StackAware. Walter discusses the risks, challenges, and opportunities of AI governance, security, and compliance (GRC). More exciting conversations will drop every other Thursday. We have some amazing guests lined up! Links in comments ?? #Compliance #securitygrc #securitycompliance #kubernetessecurity #cloudsecurity #cloudcompliance #kubernetescompliance #securityassurance #securitytrust #shiftleft #securitygovernance #aigovernance

Check out the latest news from us here Garuda Ventures and our portfolio companies, in our February Newsletter! (Link in first comment) New Investments: ?? Archive Intel,?building AI-driven archive compliance software for financial services firms.?The company was founded by?Larry Shumbres?and?Shea Werner. We led a $1.5M Seed round and are thrilled to be partnering with our friends at Social Leverage. Read our?post below! ??? A test and evaluation suite for computer vision models in high-stakes situations (stealth).?We co-led a pre-seed round into a super-talented technical team. More to come! ?? The unified memory operating system for GPU clusters (stealth).?We participated in a seed round to partner with an A+ technical team. More to come! ?? Brick by Brick: We published new episodes of our podcast?Brick by Brick, including Sid Sridhar, Head of Business at Wave,?Shreyans Bhansali, Employee #1 at Venmo, and?Rajneesh C., SVP Security Products at Cisco and early Netskope employee.?Take a listen and let us know who else’s stories we should be sharing! ?? 2024 Year In Review: AI in Action:?AI was a dominant theme in our investment activities throughout 2024, reflecting the broader technology phase shift taking place across industries. And while AI has generated significant hype, we focused on backing founders who demonstrated a "customer-out, not technology-in" approach to leveraging these transformative capabilities. 8 of our 10 new investments in 2024 were AI-native companies, building either at the application layer (like?Starboard's?AI-native software for freight forwarders) or at the infrastructure layer (like?Arcade's authentication and tool-calling platform for Agents). What united these investments was not just the underlying technology, but the founders' unique understanding of their customers' pain points and their thoughtful approach to applying AI to solve real business challenges. We go early!?77% of our investments out of our current fund to date have been pre-revenue and pre-product at the time we invested. It has been incredible to see the portfolio’s growth and execution from Day 0 to product, customers and revenue, and ultimately more follow-on capital. Community: We also invested heavily in strengthening the broader Garuda community and deepening our presence in the ecosystem. Between the two of us, we took 30 trips across the US and Canada, connecting with founders, LPs, and co-investors through a variety of engaging formats. Fall Fête: The year culminated in our second annual Fall Fête, where we were able to bring together over a hundred friends of the firm to celebrate our shared journey. Thank you to everyone - founders, co-investors, LPs, vendors, advisors - for being part of the continuing Garuda story! Portfolio news: Exciting updates from A Parent Media Co. Inc. (APMC) FlexPoint Mesta Metaview Starboard Click the link to the newsletter in the comments below to learn more!

?? Attention Solar Developers and Commercial Real Estate Owners! ?? If you placed clean energy assets like solar panels or battery storage into service this year, you’re probably eligible for clean energy tax credits that you can sell for an immediate gain. ?? Want to learn how? Join Evergrow this Thursday for a free webinar on the clean energy tax credit market. ?? Register now: https://buff.ly/3WZkmwT You’ll get: ? A crash course on the basics of clean energy tax credits ? Expert insights from Jen Lessick of Black Bear Energy Inc. on maximizing ROI for commercial real estate owners and solar developers ? A dynamic discussion hosted by Sean Swentek of Omnidian Don’t miss this opportunity to turn your clean energy investments into immediate value. ?? ?? Date: This Thursday ?? Where: Online Save your spot today—because leaving money on the table is never a good idea! #CleanEnergy #SolarDevelopers #CommercialRealEstate #TaxCredits #Webinar

Arpan and I are excited to announce Garuda Ventures' partnership with Sandeep Pyapali, Kiran Polavarapu, and Nitin Shrivastava and the Mesta team, building the global FIAT+Stablecoin payment network! Cross-border payments are a?$44 trillion market plagued by inefficiencies. Traditional systems are slow, with transactions settling in 2-3 business days. Moving money overseas is costly, with businesses averaging 5% in fees. Companies face further complications from the lack of interoperability between banking systems across countries, making it difficult to track payments and know exactly where money is at any given moment. The back-end infrastructure for global transactions is largely held together with duct tape and bubblegum. Sandeep knows these pains all too well, having spent almost 7 years at Uber leading the core payment platform and helping the company scale from $20B to $100B in volume across 70 countries. So when we met in July of 2023 and he explained his vision for a new platform that rewires global payments — faster, cheaper, and more efficient than ever before — we knew he and the team had what it would take to actually build it. We were thrilled to lead the company's pre-seed, and partner with our friends Anand and Canonical, Scott and Jenny at Everywhere Ventures, and Kevin at Inventum Ventures. Fast forward 12 months and a tremendous amount of product development and regulatory and compliance work, and Mesta allows customers to move money across 50+ currencies and 100+ countries. Thanks to Mesta's APIs, customers can process cross-border payments for bill pay, payroll, supply chain payments, and global remittance at the speed of thought. Companies have launched on Mesta in as little as a week. And since launching in beta a few months ago, Mesta has already processed $12 million in Total Payment Volume (TPV)! We're thrilled to be on this journey with Sandeep, Kiran, Nitin and team. Lets do this! ??

New ?? ?? alert! Our final Brick by Brick episode of the year features my friend Rajneesh C., SVP and Chief Product Officer of Cisco's Security BU. Raj and I met in 2014 when I was new to Silicon Valley and to tech. I was a BD Manager at Okta building our security partner ecosystem from the ground up and he was leading products at a then very nascent Netskope, now worth $7.5B and a juggernaut in cybersecurity. In this episode of Brick by Brick, we talk about: - Platform shifts like on-prem to cloud and now AI, and how transformative they are for startups - Taking a non-traditional route to product leadership from engineering (via M&A/Strategy at Juniper) - The tight relationship between product management and product marketing in enterprise software businesses - When joining a startup is a "no-brainer" (special leader like Sanjay Beri + clear market pull) - How the founding of Netskope was born out of direct conversations with Juniper and Cisco customers telling the founders the future - How he leads teams today - How Cisco is thinking about AI both internally and in its product strategy If you’re interested in how a special enterprise security product leader who has been a leader at all three phases of the tech world - early stage, scale-up, and large incumbent - thinks and leads, this one is for you! Thanks so much for joining Rajneesh C.! Link to the full pod in the comments. #brickbybrick

?? Today we're excited to announce our partnership with Sumeet Trehan and Starboard, building AI-native Logistics Solutions for Freight Forwarders. Global trade is a classic $25 trillion example of a massive market that has remained stuck in the analog age. The operational backbone of this vast system—the 80k freight forwarders around the world—remains heavily manual and inefficient. Starboard is building an AI-native platform to empower freight forwarders and redefine global logistics. Their tools streamline operations for freight businesses and encompass essential capabilities. In the hands of a small or medium-sized freight forwarder this feels like the best employee they’ve never had. Starboard has helped to cut operational costs by up to 50% across their early customers. Now, it's is going to take a special kind of founder to disrupt this industry, which is why we were thrilled to partner with Sumeet. He has lived and breathed supply chain and logistics for the last 15 years across Maersk, RIVIGO, BCG, and most recently Flexport, where he served as GM for Canada. His understanding of the nuances of the market, the pain points across each constituent in the industry, and his bold vision for where the industry is heading over the next 10 years is the exact type of powerful combination we look for when we back founders. Arpan Punyani and I feel incredibly fortunate to have met Sumeet earlier this year, helped catalyze the formation of the company, and have Garuda Ventures lead his pre-seed round as the company got off the ground, investing together with our friends Jenny, Scott, and Vir at Everywhere Ventures. Since then the team has made tremendous progress and we are now thrilled to welcome Kaitlyn Glancy and Eclipse?- who just led a $4.5M seed round - to team Starboard! Our full blog post here: https://lnkd.in/gtyXz73q Also, Starboard is hiring across a number of roles, so if you are interested in leveraging AI to reimagine logistics and global trade with a scrappy team that moves fast, check out the?jobs page here: https://lnkd.in/g7DCc7WS

At SIERRA Ventures, we invest in Seed & Series A. This quarter we hosted our Annual Emerging VC Summit with some incredible pre seed investors. Founders - here are some early-stage (often first check) firms that might not be on your radar and are definitely worth following: 10vc, San Francisco, CA 8-Bit Capital, San Francisco, CA Abstraction Capital, San Francisco, CA Array Ventures, San Francisco, CA Ascend Ventures, Seattle, WA Atria Ventures, San Francisco, CA Beat Ventures, San Francisco, CA Bowery Capital, San Francisco & New York Bridge Venture Fund, Chicago, IL Cofounders Capital, Cary, NC Dispersion Capital, San Francisco, CA E14 Fund, Cambridge, MA eGateway Capital, Columbus, OH Foster Ventures, San Francisco, CA GTM Fund, SF AZ Garuda Ventures, San Francisco, CA Hannah Grey VC, New York & Denver Inner Loop Capital, Baltimore, MD Leadout Capital, Portola Valley, CA Looking Glass Capital, New York, NY Matchstick Ventures, Minneapolis MN & Boulder CO Motivate Venture Capital, Chicago, IL Necessary Ventures, San Francisco, CA NewBuild Venture Capital VC, San Francisco, CA One Way Ventures, Boston, MA Pack Ventures, San Francisco, CA Position Ventures, San Francisco, CA Rackhouse Venture Capital, San Francisco, CA Range Ventures, Denver, CO Recall Capital, San Francisco, CA Redbud VC, Columbia, MO Refinery Ventures, Cincinnati, OH Schematic Ventures, San Francisco, CA Service Provider Capital, Denver, CO Sure Ventures, San Francisco, CA Surface Ventures, New York, NY Tau Ventures, Palo Alto, CA Tech Square Ventures, ATL Tokyo Black, San Francisco Twin Ventures, San Francisco, CA Vela Partners, San Francisco, CA Zelda Ventures, San Francisco, CA Added: HCVC, Redwood City, CA, Nomad Ventures, SF/LA mu ventures, NYC? Ripple Ventures, Toronto Enigma Venture Partners, Toronto Fairbridge, NYC Beyond Genius Ventures AZ-VC Ag Startup Engine, Chicago IL Drive Capital, Columbus, OH Bee Partners, SF ResilienceVC Champion Venture Partners, LA Reach Capital, SF Coyote Capital, SF Lombard Street Ventures, Menlo Park Convoi Ventures, SLC UT focal, SF CA Park Rangers Capital Meridian Ventures LOI Venture Tundra Ventures ATX Venture Partners Enigma Venture Partners Tenzing.vc Northside Ventures VC 414, Milwaukee, WI Antler, NYC & Austin Xcellerant Ventures, AZ Cerulean Ventures (climate fund) Companyon Ventures in Boston & NY Avalanche, Austin What did I miss or get wrong ???

It takes a village to raise a child. The same can be said for building a venture fund! Last week Arpan and I we were thrilled to host another unforgettable Garuda Ventures Fall Fête, bringing together some of the remarkable members of our community who inspire and propel us forward. We were so glad to able to celebrate some of the founders, LPs, co-investors, operators, friends, and family who make Garuda possible, and thank them for helping us do this job we love. We're incredibly grateful incredibly grateful for your continued support and enthusiasm as we build the firm, brick by brick. A huge thank you to our partners ArentFox Schiff, Citizens Private Bank, Cooley LLP, Sydecar and Burkland for helping make the night such a success! #garduaventures #brickbybrick