Krishnan Varier

Krishnan Varier is Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Arcadian Capital, a venture capital firm founded in 2017 by Matthew Nordgren and based in the Los Angeles / Beverly Hills area. Varier joined the firm in 2018 to help lead its principal investing activities — deal sourcing, due diligence, and negotiations — bringing more than 15 years of financial services and Wall Street deal-making experience.

For much of his earlier career, Varier worked as a healthcare investment banker in relationship-coverage roles, including at Cowen (2014–2016), BofA-Merrill Lynch (2011–2013), and Morgan Keegan. Across those roles he has cited more than $6 billion in closed capital-raising and M&A transactions. In 2016 he began working independently with companies in the cannabis industry as a private investor, mentor, advisor, and consultant through Varier Venture Consulting, LLC — the entry point that led into his work building out Arcadian's cannabis and wellness portfolio.

Varier holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School, with a double concentration in Finance and Investment Management. He has also served on the board of Agrify Corporation (now RYTHM, Inc.), one of Arcadian's portfolio companies that went public.

Arcadian originally built its reputation as an early investor in the "wellness wave" — cannabis technology, ancillary services, and health/consumer wellness. More recently the firm has repositioned around frontier technology, listing exposure to companies such as SpaceX, xAI, Figure AI, and Tether alongside its consumer/wellness roots.

• Invests in "areas where new ideas can reshape industries and create new ones," writing first checks at the early to mid stage with long-term conviction (per the firm's site).
• Historically concentrated on the wellness industry — "entrepreneurs who are leveraging the evolving wellness industry to create innovative solutions" — with heavy cannabis-sector exposure across retail tech, compliance, payments, supply chain, and cultivation science.
• Sector spread also includes food & agriculture tech, enterprise applications, and healthtech; the newer thesis adds frontier tech, AI, media, and sports.
• Uses custom investment vehicles to (1) structure transactions outside traditional fundraising and (2) access highly sought-after, limited/late-stage rounds — a hint that Arcadian will do special-purpose and secondary/access deals, not just primary early-stage checks.
• Deal pattern skews to Series A as the primary entry point, with participation at Seed and Series B.