Welcome, and thanks for stopping by! My name is Rishi Taparia. I’m the co-founder of Garuda, a B2B-focused, pre-seed and seed venture firm where I have the privilege of working with amazing founders and companies trying to bring the future into the present. I’m also Dad to two amazing kids, and the lesser half of Nisha Taparia.
Prior to Garuda, I was the SVP of Strategy and Business Operations at Legion, on a mission to turn hourly jobs into good jobs. Before joining Legion, I was the Vice President of Business Operations at Poynt (acquired by GoDaddy in 2021), a hardware and software company building a commerce and payments platform for businesses. I’m an alumnus of Matrix Partners and Scale Venture Partners, a still-recovering investment banker from my time at Merrill Lynch, and I bleed Northwestern purple.
As a Canadian citizen of Indian origin who grew up in Indonesia currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area by way of Jakarta, Chicago, and New York, “Where are you from?” is always a difficult question for me to answer!
Popular Posts:
PayPal isn't going to make anyone's list of Hottest Fintech Companies but this 'Original FinTech' has been on a tear over the last year. The company has added 72m users, partnered with merchants like Nike, and almost tripled its market cap. Now Schulman and team have their sights set on building the ever-elusive ‘super app'. That’s not a good idea.
There are many superlatives that could be ascribed to 2020 (“Craziest Year Ever” anyone?) “Taps’ Most Active Year of Book Reading” will not be one of them. I worked my way through 15 books last year. Mostly non-fiction, their themes centered on finding meaning, working through troubled times, and creative output. While I didn’t finish my reading challenge of 26 books (I am choosing not to count toddler classics I memorized this year like Ten Apples Up on Top, Dragons Love Tacos, One Button Benny, Ganesha’s Sweet Tooth, P is for Potty, and Goodnight Construction Site), all things considered, it was not a bad year for reading.
Ant Group was on track to be the largest IPO in history. Then, Jack Ma poked the Dragon, setting off a chain of events that derailed the runaway money train and halted the IPO. At first glance, the story fits a common narrative. But what if Jack Ma wanted to halt the IPO?
Don’t let Ant Group’s name fool you, it is anything but small. The centacorn formerly known as Ant Financial finally filed to go public, jointly listing in both Shanghai and Hong Kong, and sharing more details on the business. Founded in 2004 as an offshoot of Alibaba, the far-reaching behemoth has come to dominate the payment and financial services markets over the last 15 years. The scale and scope of the company make it far more than ‘just another wallet’.
The murder of George Floyd has reinforced that my understanding of America is woefully incomplete. An armchair quarterback's knowledge of the country's history and subjugation of African Americans - some key players, some relevant stats, some strengths, and weaknesses - is not sufficient to understand where we are going. James Baldwin once said, "History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history." Understanding the past requires teachers as guides. I start my history lesson with Baldwin.
COVID-19 will fundamentally reshape the global economy, particularly how and where we work. While some industries can comfortably accommodate working remotely, others don't have that luxury. A great example: construction. The current state is not sustainable, resulting in the need for alternative approaches to building that are safer and healthier. It’s time to reevaluate modular construction.
As we all adjust to the new 'After COVID' normal, those of us lucky enough to be able to work remotely are part of a grand experiment in WFH. However, these times are not truly representative of what distributed work looks like at scale. There is a big difference between working from home under normal circumstances and working from home during a global pandemic. The way we move forward needs to be considerate and deliberate. These are my suggestions for WFH during these uncertain times.
Tippets by Taps:
I publish a weekly newsletter called Tippets by Taps. It’s a curated set of notes and thoughts on the latest in commerce, retail, the future of work, as well as a few fun tidbits from around the web. Launched in 2017, if you’d like to join hundreds of similarly curious, intelligent people who've already subscribed, click below!
Taps’ Notes:
A personal goal of mine is to further develop my reading abilities. By writing ‘quick reviews’ of books I read, I create a forcing function to drive my personal engagement with the author and the content, and serve as a launching point for other readers to discover books, authors and topics to engage with. Feedback on reviews and reading recommendations are always appreciated! Select books include:
Quick review: Warfighting is insightful and packed full of wisdom, entirely devoid of fluff, and very much to the point (as one would expect from the military). It was striking how much of the book and its truths apply to warfare, but more broadly to business, investing, and life.
Quick review: There are books, without the requisite life experience, enough life lived, that will simply not resonate. I recently read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius on the recommendation of (more than) a few friends. Had I encountered this collection of personal essays earlier in life, I would have almost certainly failed to grapple with its weight.
Quick review: My introduction to James Baldwin was I Am Not Your Negro, a 2016 documentary and accompanying book. Both are based on 30 pages of James Baldwin's notes intended to be the foundation for a book exploring the history of racism in the United States, a book he never wrote. The documentary is a beautiful, eye-opening work that pulls from Baldwin's words, supplementing his pages with videos, images, and interviews from his life. It is a culmination of his life's work, thoughts formed over 50+ years, in their most distilled and simple form. While written almost 40 years ago, the questions he asks, the lessons he imparts, are especially relevant today.
I read Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell and reviewed it as part of my ongoing series.
Quick review: I’ll happily admit to enjoying Malcolm Gladwell’s work. For all the criticism about how his work isn’t peer-reviewed, how he misuses other people’s data and often misinterprets complex concepts, the man is definitely entertaining. Unlike his previous books, however, in Talking to Strangers Gladwell doesn’t really have a broad thesis he tries to prove with examples. Instead, he talks about one overarching theme: why aren’t we good at understanding people?
I read Becoming by Michelle Obama and reviewed it as part of my ongoing series.
Quick review: I read this book on the recommendation of a close friend. Autobiographies have a tendency to be hit or miss. Going into this one I was skeptical. Michelle Obama, for all the amazing things she has accomplished in her career and as First Lady, has largely remained private about her history and family, especially as compared to her husband. After this read it’s clear: Becoming is her coming out party.
I read The Untethered Soul: Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Singer and reviewed it as part of my ongoing series.
Quick review: If I had to summarize what The Untethered Soul offered me in a short phrase, it would be an alternative approach. In it, Michael Singer (who also wrote The Surrender Experiment) outlines the importance of coming to terms with the self, what understanding “You are not the thinking mind; you are aware of the thinking mind” unlocks for the individual, and his approach to looking inward.
A year in reading, 2021.