Hemant Taneja
36 statements across 4 episodes · 18 bullish · 5 bearish · 3 people on the record · first statement Jun 18, 2018 by Hemant Taneja · said 55 times in 20 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Hemant Taneja's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (23), David Fialkow (7), Quentin Clark (4), Phil Libin (4), Katherine Boyle (4), Marc Andreessen (3), Everett Randle (3), Jason Lemkin (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2025 12 mentions in 6 episodes 2 per episode
- The Impact of H1B Visas on Startups in the US & NVIDIA Invests $100BN Into OpenAI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Benchmark's GP, Everett Randle on Why Mega Funds Will Not Produce Good Returns · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Thinking Machines Co-Founder Joins Meta for $3.5BN, Industry Venture's $665M Acquisition · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Peter Thiel and Softbank Sell NVIDIA - Why? & Why VC Will Hit $1TRN and The Opening of Retail · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Are Burn Multiples BS in an AI World? & Sam Altman Needs $1TRN of Energy · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Why 90% of Founders Build Startups Wrong | Why AI Growth Rates are Sustainable & Remote Work is BS and the AI Talent War | Competing with Brett Taylor and Sierra: Who Wins the Customer Service War with Jesse Zhang, Decagon
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2022 12 mentions in 2 episodes 6 per episode
- 20VC: The Founding of General Catalyst, What it Takes to Build a Firm That Stands the Test of Time, Why VCs Need to Give Founders Greater Permission to Go For It & Why Venture Capital is Like Tennis with David Fialkow, Co-Founder @ General Catalyst
- 20VC: Why Crypto is Software Eating Money, Why Crypto Firms Will Outcompete Traditional Venture Firms, How To Price Tokens and When To Have Them, DAOs: How Are They Structured and What Makes One Successful with Avichal Garg, Co-Founder @ Electric Capital
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 4 mentions in 1 episode
2020 17 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: Lessons From Working with Bill Gates, How To Lead Without Authority and The Difference Between Leadership and Management & How Fundraising Changes In A COVID World with Quentin Clark, Managing Director @ General Catalyst
- 20VC: What Is Founder Narrative Fit and How to Detect and Invest In It, How To Avoid Consensus Thinking When Investing, Price Sensititivity; When To Pay Up vs Stay Disciplined & From New York Times To General Catalyst; Why Venture and Journalism are Not S
- 20VC: Matt Mochary, Coach To Silicon Valley's Leading VCs & Founders on How To Deal with Imposter Syndrome and Self-Doubt, How To Manage Fear and Anger & Why Board Seats Are The Death of Investors
- 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit
- 20VC: Gusto Co-Founder, Tomer London on Why Most Founders Approach Fundraising With The Wrong Mindset Today, How To Construct A Values/Motivation Alignment Test To Determine The Right Investors For You & Why Delight Is So Crucial To The Success of Any Con
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 2 mentions in 1 episode
2018 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: First Round's Phin Barnes on How The Best Founders Optimize for Learning Per Dollar Spent, What Makes A Truly Special Founder/VC Relationship and Why Pattern Recognition is Another Term For Intellectual Laziness
- 20VC: How The Best Founders Approach Bet The Company Decisions, How to Put Your Board to Work & How To Optimise Strategic Thinking on Boards with Maynard Webb, Founder @ Webb Investment Network & Everwise
- every mention in 2018, scene by scene →
Everything said about Hemant Taneja, oldest first
Jun 18, 2018 positive
Taneja: General Catalyst combines company incubation with traditional venture investing
“Our firm is the partnership encourages each other to get excited about starting companies from scratch with great founders as well, so we do so much incubation, and we do investing alongside that, that I felt like this was a great hybrid way to spend time.”
Jun 18, 2018
Taneja: General Catalyst should have aggressively backed 2011–2013 mega-cap companies
“You know, this notion that we are in this era where you can create 10, fifty, hundred billion dollar companies, and there were so many of them created in the 2011, 2012, 2013 time frame, or a couple years before that, that we would have been a lot more aggress…”
Jun 18, 2018
Taneja: VCs should only spend time where they can impact outcomes
“I only want to spend time where my time can have a true impact. Instead of spending time with companies because they're very successful and makes me feel good or trying to protect companies from failing, if my time can't make a difference in either of those, I…”
Jun 18, 2018 positive
Taneja: Board members must adapt to founder culture, not impose playbooks
“First and foremost is to be adaptive. I believe every great company has its own culture, its own way of doing things. The founders like to run their meetings a certain way. It's our duty to adapt to it as opposed to saying, here's my playbook and change the co…”
Jun 18, 2018 bullish
Taneja: General Catalyst advised Gusto not to copy Zenefits' scaling playbook
“In the very first board meeting, Josh said, we have this competitor called Zenefis, who I had met. I knew what the company was doing. They're going exceptionally fast. They've got a business model that's working really well, and they're outpacing us significan…”
Jun 18, 2018
Taneja: VC expansion requires relocating existing partners over hiring local networks
“Everybody would try to find a couple of emerging investors on the West Coast that were well-connected and give them a little bit of latitude to try to build a practice. And we decided that was not what we're going to do just given the failure of that approach.…”
Jun 18, 2018
Oct 1, 2020 positive
Sep 22, 2025 bullish
Taneja: Current tech shift is as consequential as electricity 100 years ago
“Cause I do think we are building the future. It's an amazing time. We will shape what this You know, society is going to look like for probably a hundred years. I mean, this shift is as big as what electricity was, you know, a hundred, 150 years ago.”
Sep 22, 2025 negative
Sep 22, 2025 negative
Sep 22, 2025 bullish
General Catalyst will cap venture fund sizes to preserve elite performance
“So what we have done is if you look at our overall you know, assets under management, we've basically said we're not gonna make our venture funds bigger. What we're going to do is actually keep the size of the venture fund where we think it can be to create el…”
Sep 22, 2025 bullish
Sep 22, 2025
Sep 22, 2025 bullish
Taneja: Stripe will become a $1 trillion company in 10 years
“I think Stripe's gonna be a trillion dollar company. He's gotta give it 10 years, you know, so I'm, we're, it's a compounding business that, you know, Patrick and John always say infrastructure is hard, but it also compounds, and they're sort of steadily just …”
Sep 22, 2025 positive
Sep 22, 2025 neutral
Taneja: Mid-growth tech companies are trapped between venture capital and IPOs
“And then there is the, as I said, this bloated, set of companies that are good companies, that'll compound at 20, 25%, maybe, maybe forever, that have no access to public market because they're too small. They're not a billion dollar company growing 30% a year…”
Sep 22, 2025
Sep 22, 2025 positive
Sep 22, 2025 negative
Taneja: Standard 'triple, triple, double, double' SaaS growth metrics are obsolete
“The normal has changed. We used to think about, hey, you go, like when we did Samsara and you know, Gusto and some of these companies are like, yeah, triple, triple, there you go, triple, triple, triple, double, double, right? And you look at these companies a…”
Sep 22, 2025 positive
Sep 22, 2025
Sep 22, 2025 negative
Taneja: General Catalyst regrets passing on OpenAI over corporate structure concerns
“I look, that structure, many people overthought it, and I overthought it as well, and there's a lot going on on that platform that's changing the world, and I don't have a front row seat. So, yeah, I do regret that a little bit.”
Sep 22, 2025 bullish
Sep 22, 2025 positive
Taneja: Private markets function like public markets for elite startups
“I think for the very best companies, private markets behave like public markets. There's a secondary market, you can liquidate, so your shareholders can take liquidity, employees can take liquidity, you have access to credit, you can do M&A, your stocks value,…”
Sep 22, 2025 bullish
Sep 22, 2025 bearish
Sep 22, 2025 positive
Sep 22, 2025 positive
Taneja: General Catalyst aspires to operate with the same rigor as Stripe
“GC should be running with the same rigor these companies run. And I think we still run pretty good. We're still a very messy company, but the aspiration is we want to run with the same rigor as, you know, companies like Stripe do.”
Sep 22, 2025
Sep 22, 2025
Taneja: Newer AI model capabilities outweigh a year of GTM head start
“So the go to market advantage you may have created in a year having started on GPT versus five might be anemic compared to the technology advantage that you have. If you start in the GPT five or the choices you make and how fast you can move because the models…”
Sep 22, 2025
Taneja passed on Coinbase's seed round introduced by Paul Graham
“So I'll never forget that one of my big messes when Paul Graham asked me to look at the seed round of Coinbase, and I said to myself, a Bitcoin ATM? What is that? I had no idea what this industry was about to become. Like, I mean, I, it still haunts me.”
Sep 22, 2025
Sep 22, 2025 positive
Taneja: Iconic VC firms require leaders to be both investors and CEOs
“I carry the title of CEO and managing director for a very intentional reason, which is General Catalyst is a business but it wouldn't be a business if it wasn't venture capital at its core. So, I am a managing director and a partner just like everybody else in…”
Sep 22, 2025
Taneja: Early revenue growth currently masks a lack of long-term durability
“I feel bad for investors that are learning in this era because the signals to determine if your decisions were right or wrong, you, in some ways have none. You have this, again, you have this great revenue growth to lean on, but no durability.”