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Hemant Taneja

lines on the record: 116
first: 2025-09-22
most recent: 2025-09-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“My little brain got ahead of sort of thinking about the world. And so my point was you definitely want to add the seed not be industry focused to say we're going to back founders regardless of our view of the world. Then I think the reality is if you take a step back in the world and you think about the tectonic shifts that are happening, the theme that we call global resilience where every region is focusing on defense energy industrials health financial services, how do we be resilient from a sovereign perspective? That does have impact on industries. That does have impact on how business is going to get built. So we do look at it saying are we in the right companies in the context of how the world is reshifting in the context of industries? So as an example, I'll tell you, I think we're the only firm that's invested in a defense prime in US, Europe, and India. We did Android, we did invested in Helsing, and we invested in a company called Rafi in India. Well, each of these regions needs to create its own AI.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Business for me is about sort of getting serendipity and intentionality right. So you definitely won't know the industries that will become important in the future. I'll never forget that one of my big misses when Paul Graham asked me to look at the seed round of Coinbase and I said to myself a Bitcoin ATM, what is that? Had no idea what this industry was about to become. It still haunts me at the seed being very much focused on just backing the great founders and not overintentualizing what the returns are. And this is really culturally what”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is the reason to have the capital base? If we miss them at seed, we want to catch them as early as possible and then continue to help them with everything we got, our entire proposition as a platform to support these founders and help them all the way to endurance.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think you would have to give that to Stripe still. We've been investing in Stripes since 2010. That's a big position for us. My point more is for us, we obsess over either that the companies are getting incubated at GC or we're investing in the C-RON. If we don't, we want to be in the iconic companies. We will invest in them at growth stage as well. And that, to me, is about believing in the companies that you think will compound for a long time. So take Stripe as an example. We invested in 2010, and I invested in Stripe 14 times in the last 15 years, just to give you a sense. That's one of our core philosophies that when you think something's going to be compounding for a long time, be strong sort of supporters of the company along the way. We invested in Helsing. 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 Android, same thing. We seeded that and we invested in every round that they've raised since then. So I think being part of these iconic companies and supporting them along the way.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Luango sat in two funds. It turned one of the funds approximately $3 or $4x, and it returned one of the other funds maybe close to 1x.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Returns have come from seeding companies like Stripe and Androil or creating companies like Kayak, Livongo, and Kamir and others.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going back to saying that we want to remain early stage venture at our core, I actually reject being in a business that has lower performance. So what we have done is if you look at our overall assets under management, we've basically said we're not going to 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 elite performance, which to us is you got to at least deliver four to five X funds on the capital that you raise and sort of build bottom up. Can you do that in venture? And then we have creation and customer value fund, which are focused on other value propositions, other capital solutions for founders so they can do M&A more effectively. They can invest in sales and marketing more effectively, but don't scale the venture fund itself because that'll degrade performance. That is the way we have architected our capital that we provide to founders.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I actually have a strong belief that venture capital can't scale and performance at the same time. I deeply believe that. And the reason is because just because we have more money doesn't mean Patrick Ollison's or picture favorite founder, Sam Altman's that are going to go build iconic companies. So we're actually in some ways fighting the zero-sum game of founders that are naturally going and doing great things. So that's not necessarily going to scale because we have more money. But 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. Our mindset is how do we actually expand the proposition to founders so that they can be more companies on the power law? That is a very different way to think about it than do we have enough capital to get everything that's on the power law.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is what allows you to break from going from high margin boutique. So smaller funds better returns to low margin scale, which is bigger funds, low returns. That's only happening because we're thinking about invasion in a constrained way in this industry versus being first principled about how do we transform our proposition for founders.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you think about the innovation in venture as a role of technology has scaled, all the innovation for the most part ends up being on the three axes, stage sector and geography. Make the funds bigger, put them in different geos, put them in different sectors. Well, the reality is that role of the companies that we're building is becoming far, far more sophisticated in society. The innovation in industry was much more focused on how do we deploy more dollars and try to keep as much of the return as possible, where the reality should be how do we retool our proposition for founders so they can build the biggest companies possible. So when you think with that second”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really like it's a genuine comment. We internally talk about early stage venture capital as our core. And obviously we want to leverage our core to have greater impact in the world. But if we don't do early stage investing well, we will lose the right to exist. And we're paranoid about that.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Culturally, this gets hard for VC firms as they scale. At GC, the thing we talk about is focus on the ownership and the relationship with the company versus the sizes of check that you put in. And when you reorient yourself to think that way, we get that only at seed. If you think about the last two years, bringing on Jeanette and La Familia, Yuri and Wayfinder and Neerage 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 and rigor that you do at 20BC.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“GC is very much at the core of EC Firm. Not only that, I mean, our aspiration is that we want to be one of the best seed firms like you. That truly is our aspiration because the earliest relationship with founders and that trust is the key to actually doing the best work in building the companies that matter.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this was before I fell into a protein bucket. That's good. Harry, that's a great question. 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 was in venture capital at school. I am a managing director and a partner just like everybody else in our partnership, but I'm also CEO. And that's the duality that it's going to take to build an iconic institution in our industry.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It has been seven years. Last time I was younger and you were a little skinnier. You've gotten fit and you have no glasses and I have my glasses right here.”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our aspirations and venture capital is to be the best seed farm in the world. Venture capital can't scale and performance at the same time. I deeply believe that. Just because we have more money doesn't mean they're more on Patrick Ollison's Sam Altman's that are going to go build iconic companies. I lost a series A of Stripe. I lost a series A of Samsara. I lost a series A of Snap. Triple, triple, double, double is definitely dead. Going from one to three to nine to 27 is not interesting or one to five to nine to 27 is not whatever the math is not interesting you got to go like one to 15 to 20 to 100”
2025-09-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: General Catalyst CEO Hemant Taneja on The Future of Venture Capital: Chanel vs Walmart | Lessons Scaling GC to $40BN in AUM | Investing $5BN+ Into Stripe Over 14 Rounds | Investing Hundreds of Millions into Anthropic at $60BN Valuation · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source