Soma Capital

San Francisco seed/pre-seed venture firm. Founded 2015. Operator-network strategy; tight Cal/Berkeley + founder-network ties. Multi-unicorn early seed track record incl. Razorpay, Cruise, Deel, Lattice, Rappi, Replit.

Team (per somacap.com/team)

• Aneel Ranadive — Managing Partner / Founder (Stanford pedigree; ex-operator).
• Mir Faiyaz — Head of Growth Investments
• Fouad Farhat — Partner / Investor
• Nikhita Jaaswal — Investor
• Aryan Raigangar — Investor. Live POC for init.inc (aryan@somacap.com).
• Yuichiro Hikosaka — Partner, Head of Asia
• Douglas Carney — Partner / Investor
• Alan Garcia — Head of Engineering and Data
• Irene Koo, Christine Alftin (Head of Platform - GTM), Kristine Phan, Rob Raus — firm operations / platform

Style

Operator-network, brand-light VC. Often “first money in” on founder-warm intros. Hosts hackathons (e.g. “Voice AI Hackathon | Soma x EF” in Aug 2025). High-touch with portfolio.

Fundraise Relationship (init.inc)

• Status: First meeting 2026-05-28 12:30pm PT (Zoom). Soma’s portfolio (Cruise/Deel/Lattice) maps to big-budget operator-led B2B.
• Conversation log (newest first):
  • 2026-05-28 12:30pm — first meeting locked (Zoom; somacap.zoom.us).
  • 2026-05-27 — Sazzad replied to Aryan from sazzadi.cc9@gmail.com (personal): “I’m excited to meet with you… We are currently kicking off our raise.”
  • ~5/26 — Aryan cold-emailed via “Reaching out from Soma” thread.
• Intro source: Aryan cold inbound (no warm intermediary).
• Tactical note: Sazzad replied from PERSONAL Gmail — flag for the user to ensure subsequent comms route through init.inc account for consistency.

Best data channels

• somacap.com/team
• Crunchbase / PitchBook for portfolio
• Founder-network referrals (Cruise, Deel, Lattice, Replit alumni)

Related

aryan-raigangar