Sep 22, 2025 · 1h 38m · 20vc
General Catalyst CEO, Hemant Taneja: Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
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In this 20VC episode, General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja discusses scaling the firm to $40 billion in assets under management while maintaining elite, early-stage venture performance. He shares deep strategic insights on the macroeconomic disruptions of AI, geopolitical defense portfolios, and tactical lessons learned from legendary investments like Stripe and Anthropic.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Harry holds 19.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Harry as informed peer 5.5 Guest teaching 4.5 Guest disagreement 2.2 Harry pushing back 4.1
speaking balance: gold is Harry, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:01:44 Hemant rejects price sensitivity in outlier venture deals
Hemant aggressively rejects Harry's framing on capped-upside valuations, stating that investors using price to pass on deals are just taking solace in sounding pragmatic because they lack the conviction to understand true potential.
Hardest push from Harry ▶ 1:02:09 Harry holds firm on entry valuation math for capped returnsHarry refuses to accept Hemant's hand-waving on entry valuation, re-stating concrete deal math ($80M vs $140M pre) to prove that entry price dramatically alters fund-returning math on $2-4B outcomes.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:29:24 Hemant reframes losing deals as a necessity for top VCsWhen Harry boasts about only losing one deal in three years, Hemant immediately reframes his perspective, explaining that an ultra-low loss rate means Harry is competing in the wrong pond and avoiding the highest-tier founder fights.
Harry holds his own ▶ 37:11 Harry uses OpenAI return data to challenge multi-billion dollar AI roundsHarry cites specific data from The Information on OpenAI's return structure to demonstrate that hyper-capital-intensive AI rounds yield capped multiples (25x) compared to traditional early-stage outliers (100x+), demonstrating strong host research.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Harry as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Harry pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome Banter and the Duality of being a VC and CEO | 5 | 2 | 2 | 4 | Harry challenges Hemant on whether General Catalyst is truly still an early-stage venture firm given its massive $25B pool of total AUM. Hemant explains GC's institutional duality as both a business and a core seed VC firm. Harry pushes back on how $200M dedicated to seed can get real focus alongside multi-billion dollar pools. | |
| The Evolution of Venture Capital: Boutique vs. Scale | 6 | 4 | 3 | 6 | Harry quotes Doug Leone regarding the transition from boutique VC to commoditized scale, asking Hemant if larger funds inevitably yield lower returns. Hemant rejects the premise of degraded performance, framing GC's platform innovation around creating more power-law outliers. Harry directly presses Hemant on what he tells LPs during fundraising when accepting lower fund performance. | |
| Lessons from GC’s Biggest Wins: Livongo and Stripe | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Harry digs into specific financial metrics from GC's major wins like Livongo and Stripe. Hemant details the multi-billion dollar return from Livongo across two funds and reflects candidly on missing Coinbase's seed round due to over-analyzing the business model. | |
| The Impact of AI on Jobs, Enterprise Adoption, and Reskilling | 6 | 6 | 2 | 5 | Harry cites a discouraging MIT study claiming 95% of enterprise AI implementations yield minimal impact. Hemant breaks down the four core requirements for successful AI adoption in enterprise and explains GC's strategy around AI rollups in offshore service centers. | |
| Timeline of AI Disruption & The Hollowing of the Service Sector | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Harry asks whether AI job disruption is a 12-month or 5-year timeline, bringing up Bill Gates' heuristic. Hemant shares consulting anecdotes of client plans to replace 90,000 workforce roles with AI agents, prompting Harry to counter government assumptions using Adam Smith's invisible hand. | |
| Wealth Inequality and building AI with an Abundant Mindset | 5 | 4 | 2 | 5 | Harry questions if building AI with an 'abundant mindset' is realistic when wealth returns are concentrated in a tiny handful of foundation model companies. Hemant distinguishes between concentrated foundation model infrastructure and the diverse application ecosystem that policy must preserve. | |
| Defense Portfolios, AI Nationalism, and the US-China Bipolar Race | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Harry questions whether backing regional defense leaders like Anduril and Helsing eventually leads to inevitable portfolio conflict as they expand globally. Hemant discusses sovereign defense requirements and the second-mover technological advantage in the US-China AI race. | |
| The Second Mover Advantage and Avoiding Technical Debt | 6 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Harry probes the entry pricing and thesis behind GC's investment in Anthropic at $60B and $180B valuations. Hemant argues that Anthropic's round was risk-adjusted one of the cheapest pricing multiples relative to revenue in the AI market, prompting playful pushback from Harry on risk-adjusted logic in venture. | |
| OpenAI Dilution, Microsoft's Strategic Play, and the Shift to Anthropic | 7 | 5 | 3 | 6 | Harry cites specific reporting from The Information on OpenAI's return structure, arguing that heavy dilution and compute demands represent a massive wealth transfer from VCs to founders and compute providers. Hemant explains Microsoft's strategic risk-taking and contrasts OpenAI's unconstrained model with Anthropic's capital efficiency. | |
| Projecting Anthropic's Growth, Multiples, and Margins | 6 | 5 | 3 | 5 | Harry questions whether profit margins still matter in AI foundation models when hyper-growth inevitably decelerates. Hemant outlines Anthropic's path to half a trillion in valuation based on public software multiples and pricing power in developer coding. | |
| AI Speed Bumps vs. The Inevitability of Labor Transition | 5 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Harry asks if the broader economy will crash if the AI train hits a technological speed bump, and questions whether national sovereignty is a sufficient moat for European models like Mistral. Hemant points to historical defense primes as proof of sovereignty driving market champions. | |
| Growth Velocity and the Death of Triple Growth | 6 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Harry brings up Mercor reaching $500M ARR in 17 months, asking if traditional software growth metrics like triple-triple-double-double are dead. Hemant confirms T2D3 is dead and discusses go-to-market shifts and second-mover technological advantages. | |
| Funding Non-Hyperscale, Durable SaaS Companies | 5 | 5 | 1 | 3 | Harry asks how VCs should handle steady 20% growth SaaS companies that are no longer favored by venture, expressing deep uncertainty about market durability post-COVID. Hemant explains how GC's Customer Value Fund provides non-dilutive scaling capital for durable SaaS businesses. | |
| Price Sensitivity and Capped Upside Ventures | 7 | 6 | 5 | 6 | Harry pushes Hemant on valuation sensitivity using concrete entry math for capped-upside companies ($80M pre vs $140M pre). Hemant strongly rejects the framing of 'capped upside' and criticizes VCs who use price sensitivity as a cop-out for lack of conviction. | |
| Under-Allocation and Scaling Capital for Winners | 6 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Harry cites Peter Thiel's biggest mistake (not doing Facebook's follow-on round) and asks Hemant for his version, before asking if LP concerns over cross-fund investing are 'bullshit'. Hemant reveals a recent mistake missing a follow-on in a Decacorn and defends concentrated portfolio allocation. | |
| Distributing vs. Managing Public Stock Post-IPO | 6 | 5 | 2 | 5 | Harry challenges the practice of VCs managing post-IPO public stock positions, suggesting it implies VCs think they are better asset managers than their LPs. Hemant defends measured public stock distributions based on market impact and LP internal sleeve mechanics. | |
| Wealth Distribution and Democratizing Retail VC Access | 6 | 5 | 3 | 5 | Harry asks if the lengthening of private markets exacerbates wealth inequality by trapping high returns behind 2-and-20 fee structures, and confronts Hemant on partner compensation realities. Hemant explains GC's policy of reinvesting all management fees into the firm rather than distributing them. | |
| Competitive Dynamics and Playing Your Own Game | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Harry asks Hemant to name specific venture competitors he respects most, pointing to Point Nine in Europe. Hemant avoids naming single peer firms, citing Andy Golden's advice to 'run your own race', while Harry pushes back on whether VCs can learn from competitors. | |
| Changing LP Dynamics and Sovereign Wealth Partnerships | 6 | 5 | 2 | 4 | Harry examines GC's expanding LP base into sovereign wealth funds and pensions, raising concerns about opening retail access to venture capital when top-tier founder supply is strictly limited. Hemant emphasizes the need to carefully filter retail access to protect non-accredited investors from lower-quartile funds. | |
| Firm Strategy, Indexing Trends, and Lightspeed's Success | 5 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Harry asks about strategic mistakes over the past decade. Hemant candidly admits failing to adopt an indexation strategy across major macro waves like Fintech and AI, praising Lightspeed's broad AI deployment strategy, and expresses regret over missing OpenAI due to governance structure over-analysis. | |
| Fund Returns and the 10-Year Vision for General Catalyst | 6 | 5 | 3 | 5 | Harry asks about GC's top fund performance (Circle/Livongo fund returning 13-15x on $500M) and challenges the binary view of VC as either boutique or scale (Walmart vs. Chanel). Hemant counters that true alpha means maximizing fund value while minimizing total capital raised. | |
| Meeting Patrick Collison and Startup Rigor | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Harry shares his own deal loss history, mentioning he has only lost one deal in three years (to General Catalyst). Hemant responds by educating Harry that a low deal-loss rate signifies fighting in the wrong pond, arguing that elite VCs must lose competitive fights to prove they are pitching top founders. | |
| Famous Misses, Secondaries, and Stripe's Compounding Future | 5 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Harry recounts advice on buying secondary shares in lost deals and presses Hemant on GC's total dollar concentration in Stripe. Hemant outlines famous seed misses like Dropbox and Snap, confirming GC holds multiple billions in Stripe with a 25-year horizon. | |
| Quick-Fire Round: Advice, Leadership, and AI Positivity | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Harry leads a rapid-fire round covering mind changes, leadership evolution, LP advice, parenting, and college relevance. Hemant reflects on transitioning from master to teacher and closes with an optimistic outlook on AI's long-term societal impact. |
Statements from this episode (84)
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…”
General Catalyst acquired three seed funds to maintain early-stage focus
“And if you think about the last two years, you know, bringing on Jeanette and La Familia, Yuri and Wayfinder and Neeraj and Venture Highway, we've tried to really make sure at our core, we remain very Committed to doing the seed work with the same intensity an…”
Taneja: General Catalyst loses right to exist without early-stage excellence
“But if we don't do early stage investing well, we will lose the right to exist, and we're paranoid about that.”
Taneja: Venture capital cannot scale fund size and performance simultaneously
“I actually have a strong belief that venture capital can't scale and performance at the same time.”
Taneja: VC firms can manufacture power-law outliers via founder tools
“If we can create more tools to have more founders to scale, then we can actually manufacture more outliers than the ones that naturally exist on the power law.”
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…”
Taneja: General Catalyst's best returns come from seeding and creating companies
“I mean, look, our best returns have come from seeding companies like Stripe and Andurl or Creating companies like Kayak and Livongo and Camille and others, and so.”
Taneja: General Catalyst made billions on Livongo across two funds
“A few billion. It returned so Luongo sat in two funds. It turned one of the funds approximately three or four X, and it returned one of the other funds maybe close to one X. I have to go back and look at the numbers, but I think that's about generally right.”
Taneja: Stripe remains General Catalyst's best-performing investment of all time
“I think you would have to give that to Stripe still.”
Taneja: General Catalyst joined every funding round for Helsing and Anduril
“We invested in Helsing. You know, Jeanette has seeded that, if you remember before, and we've invested that in all the rounds that they've raised since then. If you look at Andrel, same thing. We seeded that, and we invested in every round that they've raised …”
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.”
General Catalyst claims unique portfolio of US, European, and Indian defense primes
“I think we're the only firm that's invested in a defense prime in US, Europe, and India. We did Andrel, we did, you know, invested in Helsing, and we invested in a company called Rafi in India.”
Taneja: Enterprise AI transformation requires four key operational elements
“When you think about transforming an enterprise with AI, you actually have to do four things correctly. Okay. First is you have to get your data infrastructure ready so that your technology, your company can adopt AI. Your data readiness is huge. Infrastructur…”
Taneja: Offshored labor will be brought onshore via AI productivity
“Our whole thesis around AI rollups was everywhere you offshored for labor benefit, you're going to onshore for AI productivity.”
Taneja: AI adoption will materially impact jobs within five years
“I would say this is a five year problem. And I say that because if you go back and think about the physics With which these companies are getting built, the companies we're building, you have to put these teams together and they have to go get some customers t…”
Taneja: Governments are unprepared for impending AI labor disruption
“I think not enough. I don't think, I think people are still grappling with What does AI really mean? What is, how fast is it going to diffuse? They're not even thinking enough about reskilling.”
Taneja: AI risks hollowing out the service sector over ten years
“Imagine if every nurse and every lawyer and every accountant that works in London becomes a AI agent of some company in the United States in the next 10 years. You're going to hollow out a lot of your labor productivity and give it to a U S company or a Chines…”
Taneja: Singapore and Greece lead in thoughtful national AI planning
“I find folks in Singapore to be very impressive. I recently went there and I spoke at their National Singapore Day, and I was just blown away by the depth of thought that the politicians there have done. I have to tell you, Prime Minister of Greece is very imp…”
Taneja: Tech productivity failing to reach broad society drove global nationalism
“A lot of the nationalism all around the world is because social media essentially struck a chord with the core issue that all the technology productivity didn't really get passed on properly to everybody in society.”
Taneja: Total venture capital value creation is noise compared to Big Tech
“When you look at the overall value created in venture compared to the Mag seven, it's noise.”
Taneja: Few AI model companies will scale, but will exceed cloud giants
“There's not going to be any, that many AI model companies that actually become at scale and potentially be even bigger than what these cloud companies became.”
Stebbings: UK Labour government triggered world's fastest millionaire exodus
“I've been very public on my concerns around the labor government in the UK and what it's done for the UK so far. It's the fastest access of millionaires out of any country.”
Taneja: US is expanding its competitive moat through AI and energy
“Look I, my belief is that US is very well positioned. We have energy, we have AI, we have the largest market, we have the largest entrepreneurial ecosystem. You know, in a lot of ways, we're very well positioned. And I think in the short term, in some ways, we…”
Taneja: Helsing will capture disproportionate share of European defense market
“Helsing with this mission, its execution its access to capital, talent should be the company that gets disproportionate share of defense in Europe.”
Taneja: US and China are comparable in AI, separated by months
“I think China and the US are very comparable in where they are in AI today. There's a few months lead here and there.”
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…”
Taneja: Technical debt in AI now accumulates in one year, not ten
“Even though technical debt used to be on the order of a decade of coding, not a year of coding, can you actually overcome that and make sure you remain well positioned on the new sort of technology stacks or not?”
Taneja: General Catalyst invested in Anthropic at a $60 billion valuation
“Look, we invested in a topic only you know, less than a year ago at the sixty billion dollar round,”
Taneja considers OpenAI primarily a consumer company, not enterprise
“OpenAI is To me is more of a consumer company with chat GPT.”
Taneja: Anthropic raised at ~20x ARR versus 50-100x for AI peers
“Anthropic this round probably was the cheapest round that got done this year on a multiple spaces. Which company was raising capital at, you know, at 20 times ARR? They're all raising capital at 50 to a hundred times ARR.”
Taneja: General Catalyst's top early investments yielded hundreds of X returns
“Our best companies that, you know, like Livongo and Circle and others, you know, Stripe and others, our first rounds were not 25 X. They were, you know, hundreds of X in terms of returns.”
Taneja: Microsoft and OpenAI's partnership is fracturing over colliding ambitions
“Is that an enduring investment? No, obviously now they've gone at odds with each other because there's an ambition that collides between the two companies and so they want to have more choice. They want to have anthropic at the table as well.”
Taneja: Microsoft generated the highest multiple return among OpenAI investors
“Taking that bet was hugely, hugely valuable for Microsoft. I think, and if you look at the return, by the way, if they put in twenty billion, they are the ones who have the highest multiple return as well. So it was a great investment on a financial basis and …”
Taneja: Anthropic's enterprise business will be bigger than OpenAI's
“I think their enterprise business I'd argue will be bigger than OpenAI if it already isn't already not having spent that much.”
Taneja: Anthropic investors will see better return multiples than OpenAI's
“And that's why the investors there will probably end up doing on a multiple basis better than again, you know, in a world of like what's durable, what's not like they're trending to be, maybe they'll do better. In their MOI than the early investors would in op…”
Taneja: Anthropic has consistently beaten its own revenue targets
“They've always done better than they've said, by the way, too”
Taneja: Anthropic could be worth $500B by next year
“So that's half a trillion dollar company, like by the end of next year. I'm not saying that's what it's going to be, but if they hit their numbers, I don't see why that won't happen. Just from, I'm just saying public market comps, like that's what those things…”
Taneja: AI coding agents hold strong pricing power by replacing expensive labor
“This coding agent is essentially a replacement of engineering, right? You start with low end sort of engine junior engineers to more senior engineers. Even a junior engineer makes 80 to a hundred grand a year. So your pricing power there is actually pretty sig…”
Taneja: AI foundation models will consolidate to a few global and sovereign players
“I think you'll have a couple of global ones and a couple of sovereign ones in every geo. I mean, that, that probably is what'll end up sort of happening in, in AI, in my view. And not everybody's gonna make it.”
Taneja: AI and robotics will eventually replace all human labor
“Over time is going to be most of it. And when robotics comes, it'll be all of it.”
Taneja: AI labor transition will not slow even if frontier AI stalls
“I think the frontier could slow, but I don't think this transition of labor or melting of labor into productivity is necessarily going to slow, because the economics are way too compelling for that to not happen in my view.”
Taneja: Mistral fell behind due to compute constraints, but has caught up
“And I think they were a compute constraint and capital constraints, so they fell behind, but I think they, I think they've caught up.”
Taneja: Meta isn't an enterprise company; Mistral leads Western open-source AI
“It's not meta. They're not an enterprise company. It really is in the West. It's really missed, missed trial today.”
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…”
Taneja: Some hyper-growth AI-era software startups will not survive
“I do think some of these companies that grow really fast in this will also not be around, you know.”
Taneja: AI is first technology wave where every global CEO is adopting
“For the first time, every CEO in every industry in every country is thinking about what do I do with this technology? Never happened before. Cloud wasn't like that. Certainly PCs weren't like that. Internet wasn't like that.”
General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund backs profitable, moderate-growth SaaS startups
“And that's where we actually, you know have also sort of made sure our customer value fund supports those types of founders as well. We obviously want to support the fastest growing companies in venture, but also the ones that are fundamentally good businesses…”
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.”
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.”
Taneja: VCs blame price when they actually lack investment conviction
“So if it's, if money's all made and what's better than we thought, like, you know, using price to pass, I tell you people, investors use price as a reason to pass because they couldn't gain conviction elsewhere. And it still makes them sound pragmatic.”
Taneja: Payments experts dismissed early Stripe as a niche business
“When I invested in Stripe, all the guys that I called the new payments were like, this is a niche thing, like why are you doing it? I kid you not.”
General Catalyst missed $1B in returns by not doubling down on a decacorn
“We have a company that's, you know, a Decacorn now and actually called the investor who led it at GC saying congratulations. You're gonna make over a billion dollars on this investment. And you're an idiot because you gave up not making the second billion. You…”
Taneja has invested in Stripe across 14 separate funding rounds
“I mentioned earlier in Stripe, I've invested 14 times.”
Taneja: Venture firms scale capital to double down on winning companies
“If you're in the best companies, You really should be buying into them constantly. In fact, that's the reason to scale capital. The reason to scale capital isn't, ah, to be a low margin business, it's because you want to have capital for the very best ones and…”
Taneja: General Catalyst has invested $1B across funds into Stripe
“Stripe. You know, it's about a billion dollars.”
General Catalyst limits single-company exposure to 10-15% per fund
“I try not to have more than 10 to 15% in a single company in a fund.”
Taneja: LPs programmatically sell distributed stock immediately post-IPO
“Because a lot of the LPs will have their public sleeve and their private sleeve. You give them stock, they'll sell it. And it's like programmatic for them.”
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,…”
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…”
Taneja: General Catalyst will participate in products expanding retail tech access
“So I fully expect That you will start seeing products that give retail access to the best companies in in technology, and we will definitely engage in that because it's the right thing to do.”
Taneja: VC fund incentives should focus on carry over management fees
“If you want to say high performance, then your incentive should be much more focused on generating carry And making it a prosperous place for your team than generating fees you know, which to me is I think that can be a distraction.”
General Catalyst reinvests all management fees instead of distributing them
“By the way, we, we're not, just to say, like, in our business, we don't distribute any fees. We invest everything back in the business, and that's a deep belief that we don't want to be in the game where the partners of the funds at General Catalyst Want bigge…”
Taneja: General Catalyst operates a rapidly growing wealth management business
“We do, yeah, yeah, and that's, you know, it's actually growing rapidly. It's a you know, a fairly large business at this point.”
Taneja: Scaling AI requires getting energy infrastructure right
“The race in AI, the thing that I'm very focused on learning about, and we're early in our thinking is, in order to get AI right, you have to get energy right.”
Taneja: Short-term US AI energy demand must rely on natural gas
“But in the short term, you don't have sustainable solutions, really have natural gas in the US, for example.”
Taneja: Retail investor capital pool totals $16 trillion
“And there's like, 16 trillion dollars of retail capital.”
Taneja: Retail should get top private tech access, not bottom VC funds
“Giving people access to SpaceX and Stripe, you're not gonna regret it. It'll, it'll do right by them. You'll feel proud of it. What you don't want to do is, Take retail and put it into you know, the bottom quartile of the venture capital funds that lose money …”
Taneja: Indexing major tech trends in peak ambiguity beats picking winners
“In certain parts of the stack indexes and indexing, if you can afford to, you have the capital base too. It's a better strategy than trying to pick in a world of peak ambiguity.”
Taneja: Lightspeed's broad AI indexing strategy will work out really well
“Our friends at Lightspeed did a great job in AI, for example. I think it's gonna work out really well for them.”
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.”
General Catalyst's top early fund expected to return 13x to 15x
“Yeah, that fund is one of our Two or three best funds, and just to tell you what was in it was Livongo was in that, Snap was in that, Circle was in that, Gusto I think I'm missing a few others. It's probably gonna end up being a, you know, 13 to 15 X fund.”
Taneja: General Catalyst will evolve into a strategic conglomerate for founders
“I think GC you know, is gonna look like the most diversified solutions for founders to build enduring companies. That's the lens which would justify everything that's on it, and if you looked at it, GC as a business is gonna feel like a strategic conglomerate,…”
Taneja: Maximize portfolio value while minimizing capital raised to drive alpha
“AUM can be one of two things. How much money did you raise? Or what is the value of the capital you raised? I want the value of the capital we raised to be the biggest, but the amount of money we raised to be smallest. That's when you've created the most alpha…”
Taneja: General Catalyst aims to be the top seed firm globally
“Our aspirations in venture capital is to be the best seed firm in the world or second best after you.”
Collison told Taneja in 2010 that Stripe's ideal customers weren't born yet
“Cause I asked him who are your ideal customers? And he said, they haven't been born yet. And he was talking about the developer movement. Remember this is 2010, right?”
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.”
Taneja: VC win rate above 30% signals proper deal competition
“If I'm not losing, I'm not winning. Because the very best founders go meet all the five to seven great firms and they pick one. So theoretically, your win rate, as long as it's over, over 30%, you're actually maybe in the right fight.”
Taneja: Passing on Dropbox's first round cost $2B in returns
“That was the first million dollars, would have been a two billion dollar return because I'm like, what is this thing?”
Taneja lost Series A deals in Stripe, Samsara, and Snap before Gusto
“I lost a Series A of Stripe. I lost a Series A of Samsara. I lost a Series A of Snap. And the first one I won was a Series A of Gusto.”
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 …”
Taneja: General Catalyst will hold Stripe for 25 years
“You know, we'll, we'll have a 25 year kind of hold probably on, on Stripe in some form or the other.”
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▶ Anthropic: “$60BN is Cheap” · 20VC with Harry Stebbings (@33:29)
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▶ Triple Triple, Double Double is D**d 💀 · 20VC with Harry St (@0:00)