Agent View

# Original Capital

We back relentless founders building world-changing companies.

- Website: https://originalcapital.com
- Tagline: Go for Broke
- Markdown URL: https://originalcapital.com/original-capital.md
- Agent discovery URL: https://originalcapital.com/llms.txt
- Founder submission: use the Submit form on https://originalcapital.com

## Firm

We back relentless founders building world-changing companies.

## Who We Back

We invest in founders with unique insights, deep domain expertise, and relentless drive. Our focus is on early-stage companies with innovative solutions across technology sectors. We look for strong teams addressing large markets with defensible technology and clear paths to scale.

## Investment Approach

### Partner Early

We want to be your first believers. Many of our partnerships, like Aven and Fireworks, started before the founders had incorporated.

### Collaborative

Building a company is hard. We'll take lower ownership in return for helping you assemble the best cap table for your long-term success.

### Focus

We primarily invest in founders building in vertical software and fintech.

### Founder Aligned

We have been in the trenches with founders through good and bad. By not taking board seats we can be your first call at all times.

## Portfolio Companies

* Companies from our professional and personal portfolios

### Anthropic

AI safety company developing Claude, an advanced conversational AI assistant focused on reliability, interpretability and safety.

- Website: https://www.anthropic.com/
- Portfolio note: Professional or personal portfolio

### Aven

Financial technology platform offering integrated banking services and credit products for growing businesses.

- Website: https://www.aven.com/
- Portfolio note: Original Capital portfolio

### Carta

Equity management platform providing tools for cap table management, valuations, investor services, and liquidity solutions.

- Website: https://carta.com/
- Portfolio note: Professional or personal portfolio

### Equipment Share

Construction technology company offering equipment rental, tracking, and management solutions through a digital platform.

- Website: https://www.equipmentshare.com/
- Portfolio note: Professional or personal portfolio

### Fireworks

Enterprise AI platform building efficient open-source models for video, image and audio generation.

- Website: https://fireworks.ai/
- Portfolio note: Original Capital portfolio

### Front

Customer communication platform that combines emails, apps, and messaging in one collaborative inbox for efficient team workflows.

- Website: https://front.com/
- Portfolio note: Professional or personal portfolio

### LayerZero

Omnichain protocol connecting blockchains for seamless cross-chain applications and secure inter-network messaging.

- Website: https://layerzero.network/
- Portfolio note: Professional or personal portfolio

### Mysten Labs

Web3 infrastructure company building foundational blockchain technology and developer tools for decentralized applications at scale.

- Website: https://mystenlabs.com/
- Portfolio note: Professional or personal portfolio

### Parafin

Embedded finance platform enabling marketplaces to offer capital and financial products to their business customers.

- Website: https://www.parafin.com/
- Portfolio note: Original Capital portfolio

### Pave

Modern compensation platform helping companies design, communicate, and benchmark competitive pay packages.

- Website: https://www.pave.com/
- Portfolio note: Original Capital portfolio

### PayRange

Mobile payment solution for vending machines and self-service retail using smartphone transactions.

- Website: https://www.payrange.com/
- Portfolio note: Original Capital portfolio

### Privy

User authentication and wallet onboarding platform simplifying Web3 development with enterprise-grade tools.

- Website: https://www.privy.io/
- Portfolio note: Professional or personal portfolio

### Ramp

Corporate card and spend management platform offering streamlined financial operations and cost-saving insights for businesses of all sizes.

- Website: https://ramp.com/
- Portfolio note: Professional or personal portfolio

### Rogo

AI-powered research platform for financial professionals enabling efficient investment analysis through natural language.

- Website: https://www.rogodata.com/
- Portfolio note: Original Capital portfolio

### Solana

High-performance blockchain with fast transactions and low fees for decentralized apps and marketplaces.

- Website: https://solana.com/
- Portfolio note: Professional or personal portfolio

### Whatnot

Live shopping platform for collectors to buy, sell, and connect through livestreamed auctions and shows.

- Website: https://www.whatnot.com/
- Portfolio note: Professional or personal portfolio

## Team

### Sumeet Gajri

- Role: Partner
- Substack: https://sumeetgajri.substack.com/

I grew up in the Scottish countryside, raised by working-class parents from India and Kenya.

I first came to the U.S. to attend NYU, and started my career at Insight Partners, where I helped source Series A investments in Thycotic (18x return) and EquipmentShare (now valued at $3.75B).

Later, I joined Carta as Chief Strategy Officer and helped scale the company from under $5M to over $100M in ARR in under four years. Along the way, I made early investments in Ramp, Aven, Front, Qualia, and Instabase.

At any hour of the day, you'll probably find me helping founders think through their hardest problems.

I live in Miami with my wife and our four kids.

### Ramnik Arora

- Role: Partner
- Substack: https://ramnikarora.substack.com/

I grew up in Amritsar, India, and came to the U.S. after graduating from IIT Kanpur to pursue a PhD at NYU.

I dropped out and began my career at a high-frequency trading firm before moving to Palo Alto to join Meta, where I led teams across Core Ads and was one of the earliest recruits to Libra, Meta's first crypto initiative.

In 2020, I joined FTX as Head of Product. We were a small team working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. I helped scale the exchange from $15M to over $1B in revenue and led FTX Ventures, where I backed Anthropic's $500M Series B, Cursor's seed round, and a $50M investment into Solana tokens (would be worth $8B+ today) — a portfolio that ultimately played a major role in helping the bankruptcy estate make customers whole.

I'm a tinkerer by nature and spend most of my time building and testing software. I love helping founders think through product and assemble world-class technical teams.

I live in Berkeley with my wife and daughter.

### James McGillicuddy

- Role: Venture Partner

I'm from Worcester, MA, and first came to the Bay Area to attend Stanford, where I was a starting offensive lineman on the football team alongside Andrew Luck.

I began my career at Summit Partners before moving into senior operating roles at RelateIQ, Sourcegraph, and Carta. Today, I'm the CEO and Co-Founder of BRM Software, an Original Capital portfolio company.

I love working with founders on go-to-market and distribution strategy. I've also made personal investments in companies like Flock Safety, Ramp, and OpenGov.

I live in Menlo Park with my wife and son.

### Kais Khimji

- Role: Venture Partner

I grew up in Vancouver, B.C., raised by parents from East Africa.

I came to the U.S. to attend Harvard and started my career at Insight Partners, where I sourced early investments in Armis and Project44.

In 2019, I joined Sequoia Capital and worked on investments in Grafana Labs, Cresta, and Benchling. I later left to found Blockit — Original Capital was our first investor.

I love working with founders on product and strategy. My personal investments include Rogo and Assort Health.

I live in San Francisco with my fiancée.

### Ryan Snow

- Role: Venture Partner

I grew up in rural New Hampshire.

Before joining Original, I spent time at Index Ventures, Carta, and HarbourVest. Today, I oversee finance at the firm — making sure K-1s arrive on time and wires land where they're supposed to.

I live in Chicago with my wife and two children.

## Agent Notes

- This markdown is intended as the canonical agent-readable summary of Original Capital.
- Portfolio entries marked as professional or personal portfolios are not necessarily direct Original Capital investments.
- For the freshest human-facing presentation, visit https://originalcapital.com.