Avichal Garg

Who they are

Avichal Garg is Co-founder and General Partner at Electric Capital — previously co-founded PrepMe, an adaptive learning platform acquired by Hobson's, and Spool, sold to Facebook in 2012.

Person

Avichal joined Electric Capital in 2018 when it was a newly co-founded crypto-focused VC at initial fundraise stage. Before that, he spent time at Google working on search quality, ads quality, and founding Google Transit, then moved to Facebook as Director of Product Management in the Local Product Group. He co-founded three companies along the way: PrepMe, an online adaptive learning platform he built as CTO starting in 2001, later acquired by Hobson's (a Daily Mail Group subsidiary); Spool, a startup he co-founded and sold to Facebook in 2012; and Electric Capital, the crypto investment firm he launched in 2018, now managing $3B in assets across six funds. He also did a stint as a Part-time Partner at Y Combinator. The through-line is builder-to-backer: two exits as a founder, deep product and engineering credibility at Google and Facebook, then channeling that operator lens into crypto investing. He writes at avichal.com and contributes to TechCrunch on crypto and venture topics, and appears regularly on podcasts — The Pomp Podcast, Full Ratchet, Castle Island Ventures, Capital Allocators — articulating a developer-centric crypto thesis. He was a speaker at HumanX in 2026.

Company

The most recent signal is Electric Capital co-leading the $40M Series B round of Etherealize in May 2026, alongside Paradigm — a bet on institutional Ethereum advocacy. The firm manages $3B in assets across six funds and has backed 97 companies as of September 2025. Its portfolio includes 8 unicorns, 3 IPOs, and 9 acquisitions, with names like Consensys, CoinList, and Kraken among them. Electric Capital is headquartered in Palo Alto and has built its identity around a programmer-centric investment approach in crypto infrastructure.

Market

Electric Capital operates in crypto and blockchain venture capital, where its closest co-investors include Coinbase Ventures, Polychain, and Naval Ravikant's vehicles. The firm competes for deals in crypto infrastructure and fintech with other specialist funds in the space. Geopolitical competition between the US and China in technology is increasingly shaping where capital flows in this sector.

Network

Avichal's core team at Electric Capital includes three other General Partners. Curtis Spencer is Co-founder and General Partner alongside him. Ken Deeter, Maria Shen, and Pranay Mohan are all General Partners at the firm.

Curtis Spencer· Co-founder & General Partner, Electric Capital
Ken Deeter· General Partner, Electric Capital
Maria Shen· General Partner, Electric Capital
Pranay Mohan· General Partner, Electric Capital

How they likely show up

Two founder exits (PrepMe and Spool) before moving into investing → likely evaluates founders with an operator's eye, not just pattern-matching on markets.
Deep product and engineering background at Google (Search quality, Ads quality, Google Transit) and Facebook (Director of PM, Local) → probably goes deep on technical architecture and product logic, not just top-down market sizing.
Hybrid role type at Electric Capital → not a pure allocator; likely stays close to portfolio companies operationally.
Consistent podcast and conference presence (Pomp, Full Ratchet, Castle Island, Capital Allocators, HumanX 2026) → comfortable being a public articulator of a thesis; probably thinks in frameworks he can explain out loud.
Possibly — writing at avichal.com described as occasional → may prefer conversations and podcasts over long-form essays as his primary communication channel.

Conversation tips

→ Reference his developer-centric crypto thesis specifically — he's articulated it across Capital Allocators and the Castle Island podcast, so naming it shows you've done the work.
→ Ask about the operator-to-investor transition: going from building PrepMe and Spool to backing founders is a deliberate arc worth exploring.
→ He started Google Transit inside a large company — a side project that shipped into a real product. That builder instinct is still live; engage him on what he looks for in infrastructure-layer teams.
→ He co-led Etherealize's Series B in May 2026 alongside Paradigm — if you have a view on institutional Ethereum, that's a live, specific topic he's clearly thinking about right now.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the Etherealize Series B in May 2026 — Electric Capital co-led that $40M round alongside Paradigm, a pointed bet on institutional Ethereum adoption that signals where his conviction sits right now.
Lead with Google Transit: he started it internally at Google, which is an unusual origin story for someone who became a crypto investor — it's a concrete signal of the builder instinct that runs through his whole arc.
Reference the Castle Island Ventures podcast (EP.122) on developer communities — he's articulated there why he bets on developer ecosystems first, and opening on that framing shows you understand his actual investment logic.

Discovery questions

You co-founded PrepMe as CTO in 2001, then Spool, then Electric Capital — how does having two exits shape the way you evaluate a founding team's technical decisions versus their market timing?
Electric Capital's portfolio includes 97 companies across six funds managing $3B — how has the thesis around crypto infrastructure evolved from when you launched in 2018 to where the market is now?
The Etherealize bet is specifically about institutional Ethereum advocacy — what does institutional adoption of Ethereum actually need to look like for that investment to pay off?

Avoid

Don't pitch broad 'crypto is the future' narratives without technical grounding — his entire framework is programmer-centric and he's spent years on stage explaining why developer communities are the leading indicator he actually bets on.

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