Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst: Great founders always strive for excellence

Stefan Pauls: Hello, my name is Stefan Pauls and I am the CEO and founder of Moonfair. Welcome to Dealtalk where we bring you face to face with the top minds in private equity. Moonfair is the largest digital platform for investing in private equity. We offer carefully curated funds with remarkable loan loans. Joining our community of world class investors is free and only takes a few minutes. @moonfair.com we do this to give more investors direct access to one of the most attractive global asset classes. With our Deal Talk webinars, we aim to democratize access to the knowledge surrounding it. Enjoy. Hello everybody. Welcome back to our Deal Talk series where I interview some of the most influential dealmakers and leaders in private markets. I'm back in San Francisco today. A few weeks ago I was with Edwent and today I have the pleasure to be with Hemant Taneja, CEO of General Catalyst, a tremendously successful venture capital firm. General Catalyst is also one of the largest firms of its kind in the world. It manages more than 40 billion in assets under management and has over 800 portfolio companies, including some of the world's most known tech heavyweights, such as Stripe, Airbnb, Canva or Snap. We have lots of interesting topics to cover. Today we'll talk about the playbook General Catalyst uses for investing through uncertain times, the opportunities Hayman sees in places like Europe and India, and also why he believes market bubbles can actually be a good thing. Hemand, thank you so much for joining us today.

Hemant Taneja: Thanks for having me.

Stefan Pauls: Hemant, you've recently said we are, uh, in a period of peak ambiguity and I completely agree. We live in, how I phrase it, a world that doesn't ask anymore for permission. So these times are, um, times of great uncertainty, but also transformation and opportunity. So how are you thinking about investing when there's so much noise around us, but at the same time so much great potential for capturing long term value?

Hemant Taneja: Yeah, look, let's first talk about what is that peak ambiguity? What are we really dealing with in the last, um, seven to ten years? If you think about all the things that happened, you had social media giving rise to populism. So there's this whole sort of nationalist culture in all the countries. You've had a pandemic, you've had wars, uh, you've had energy crises, and you've also had this dynamic between us and China where there's a re globalization of supply chains happening. So these are pretty massive shifts in large industries. These happen to be the industries that we focus on. You think about healthcare, energy, defense, Industrials, financial services. Every country is trying to figure out how to be resilient in those areas. So we know that that's going to fundamentally create new opportunity, new economic opportunity, new businesses being built that are aligned with uh, what these new interests are everywhere in the world. The other thing that's happening is in November 2022, ChatGPT happened. So all of a sudden for the first time there was a technology that every CEO in every industry, in every company country was thinking about what to do with it. So hit the zeitgeist. So it's going to diffuse through society all at the same time. So you have these ambiguous sort of shifts happening around supply chains and businesses and countries and then you've got technology coming in with this potent force of what to do about it. And we think a lot about how do we invest with a core set of principles. I actually wrote them in my book, the Transformation Principles that can help us navigate this ambiguity and think about this fundamental transformation that's happening economy wide over the next 10 to 20 years.

Stefan Pauls: It's all under, uh, the headline also of strategic autonomy I guess.

Hemant Taneja: Absolutely.

Stefan Pauls: Europe is taking its own course and we will talk about what kind of opportunities that offers. Look, let's talk about a little bit the environment in terms of fundraising. Venture capital has gone through quite, I would say, uh, challenging times when it comes to fundraising, uh, over the past years. In 25, to put things into perspective, fundraising was as low as back in 2017. Despite this, you managed at General Catalyst to raise over 8 billion US dollar, I think the largest amount of money ever you have raised. How did you manage to get this done? Uh, are you taking, or have you taken a different approach compared to what you used to do some five, 10 years ago?

Hemant Taneja: So every time we raise uh, a fund we actually do a bottom up analysis of what is the opportunity, the size of the opportunity and what is the potential of our team. So we can actually do it well. We can invest the capital responsibly and into the best companies. So the number actually always originates from the bottom, uh, up for us. And the way the 8 billion ended up being was, uh, you probably saw over the last couple years we've really leaned into doing early stage work globally. We acquired uh, La Familia in Europe and we acquired Venture highway in India with the idea that those leaders could come, be part of the senior leadership and run uh, Europe and India for us because we thought those were going to be very interesting markets. So we expanded to be much more strategic, uh, globally. The other Thing we talked a lot about was how do we lean into the industries that I mentioned earlier. Health, defense, energy, industrials, and what is the bottom up opportunity in a lot of these areas. And so the way we arrived at the number is to really think about what is uh, the right amount of capital at the pace that we're comfortable investing.

Stefan Pauls: It was very much driven by this gigantic opportunity set that you see in

Hemant Taneja: the very bottom up. Very bottom up look.

Stefan Pauls: You have called General Catalyst that I found this extremely interesting, not only in investment, but also an transformation company. In practical terms, what do you do differently from call it a traditional venture capital firm?

Hemant Taneja: Traditionally venture capital, which has been a very successful industry, our, uh, roots are in early stage. We describe ourselves as at an early stage venture capital firm. At our core, the roots are very much, you find the world's most ambitious people, you fund them and you help them create the world's most important companies. And the way the business venture capital industry monetizes is you take these companies, go public and you exit. But if you think about the strategic autonomy as you mentioned, and the transformation that we're going down, the path of the opportunity for these companies is far, far greater. They can be compounding for much, much longer and create a lot more value for our investors and frankly create a lot of societal good, uh, while doing so. So what we did was to say, rather than just invest serendipitously into companies and exit them when these companies go public, why not have a ecosystem, uh, approach of going and transforming industries? Why not actually strategically build a set of companies that can go transform the US healthcare system? Why not strategically build a set of companies that can create resilience in Europe around AI Sort of take these large secular opportunities and then put ecosystem of companies together that we fund and then we can help them work in tandem together towards compounding and driving that transformation. So we really evolved ourselves in terms of creating different ways to help these founders so they can not only create a successful company, but also transform their industry and win disproportionate market share in them.

Stefan Pauls: In a way. Does it mean that you are investing into industry clusters around certain themes, transformational themes?

Hemant Taneja: Yeah. So we always believe we have this flywheel of serendipity and intentionality. Smart founders take us into new industries. Uh, you know, 15 years ago I got into the healthcare industry and built a company called Livongo that we exited, uh, for six years after starting it for 18 billion. But it taught us a lot about healthcare. But then it said, well, why don't we go and now create a cluster of companies in healthcare and actually transform the system. And there's a version of that happening in all the areas that we focus on. And so we do want to think about, uh, serendipitously going into industries that are poised for change, but then being thematic about building ecosystems of companies in there so that we can capture disproportionate value.

Stefan Pauls: Interesting. Very, very interesting approach. Look, talking about founders and companies, your portfolio, I said it is truly impressive. I mentioned already a couple of names, but there's more. There's also Kayak, there's Grammarly, which I use often, M Discord, which is a great, um, social app, and HubSpot, uh, also incredible company. When you think about what all these companies and the founders behind have in common, is there any theme that you can identify?

Hemant Taneja: No, absolutely. Look, the founders that we, um, have had the good fortune of working with that have gone on to build category defined companies, they're all great leaders. They are absolutely obsessed with learning. Uh, and so you meet them, you back them, and three or four years from then you see them as just incredible global leaders in the way they think, the way they learn, the way they build their companies. They have this magnetic personality that attracts team capital customers to want to get behind them. So it becomes a movement and they strive for excellence. You just see founders that just fundamentally get what excellence means in the context of building their company. One of the most important questions I always ask founders is why did you start this company? Tells you a lot. There's always a key insight and a key mission that is driving them and you want to feel that kind of a soul in the company. And that's very common to everybody back that has gone on to do amazing things.

Stefan Pauls: Amazing. Look, you're very active and no surprise given your own personal background, uh, in India, and I heard you saying that you said India is a sleeping giant of entrepreneurship. Why is India in general so important right now? And why do you think it could emerge as a winner in this new world order?

Hemant Taneja: Yeah, look, um, first of all, India is very entrepreneurial. So everybody there just fundamentally thinks about living an entrepreneurial life. And now that a lot of the folks that have tasted what building good technology, big technology outcomes can look like, there's been a wave of IPOs, there's a cultural movement there where kids growing up, they want to go build startups. And I think that's going to unlock a lot of latent potential, much like what we have seen in Silicon Valley. There's a lot of Companies that get built in Silicon Valley are actually Indian transplants. And the reason I think India is interesting is India is not falling in the, we're in the US bucket or the China bucket. They're going to be the third largest economy in a few years and they want to be their own category. And so I think there is a really important strategic role for them to play. And the demographic growing up and the growth, a lot of it being sort of indigenous is, is it sort of represents this ability to create new models, new opportunities in all the major industries. Uh, healthcare is nascent. Education needs to be sort of thought rethought and scaled. There's a burgeoning technology industry. All of these are areas that we understand well and we think we can work with founders there and actually help them build category defining companies.

Stefan Pauls: Yeah, makes perfect sense to me. Look, I want to speak a little bit about one thing that is in everybody's mind, which is AI. You know this Bill Gates, um, called it out as a lifetime opportunity of an entire generation. I like this because I have four children thinking of course about them. Uh, Stephen Schwarzman said it's a megatrend of megatrends in investing. And today we still think in AI and non AI. Uh, and I believe this distinction over time will disappear. There will be only AI companies. Um, how do you see this? Do you see still AI and non AI businesses currently as two separated things or do you consider integrating AI as a non negotiable part of every business leader today?

Hemant Taneja: Businesses that matter in the future are going to be deeply embracing AI. And I think any new companies that start today, if they're not fully setting themselves up to be AI native, great investors, are not really going to be pursuing those opportunities. The big question is when you think about the incumbent economy, which of those companies will make the transition to being uh, uh, AI or will they remain non AI? And I think what's going to happen is that the companies that have the right leadership, the courage at the top that can drive this diffusion of AI in those businesses will capture disproportionate share in their categories. They'll actually get bigger. And the companies where the leadership is not quite deeply getting behind and just muscling it through, are I think going to lose market share. So you're going to see this fragmentation in each category of existing competitors where the leadership that embraces AI is going to get up there and then the leaderships that is slow to move will actually lose share. We actually recently launched a company called Percepta which is very much focused on bringing this AI transformation muscle to the uh, company, uh, so they can actually transform themselves. And we're just seeing that Percepto is very successful where the leadership is pushing the issues the right way. And so we have a lot of on the ground experience around this particular topic and how it's going to pan out.

Stefan Pauls: Look, that's very much resonating with me. I told my everybody at moonfair has to think as if she or he would be an AI native. Uh, everything else is in commons and will probably be difficult, um, to change. Look, talking about, um, AI, uh, the fundamental difference in my view between what we saw with the Internet is that AI is not driven by a few garage startups from the Bay Area or somewhere. It's a battle for survival between some of the largest tech companies in the world. And I would even dare to say it's a fight for economic survival for nations. Um, we are seeing this. The large tech companies are uh, spending hundreds of billions in particular in the field of AI infrastructure, uh, currently. Um, how is this game developing in your view? Um, are we going to see a few new appets and metas and Microsoft's or will there be, you know, basically the incumbents, the Magnificent Seven and others, uh, um, from the large tech companies? Will they eat most of the pie?

Hemant Taneja: Yeah. So I think first of all, let's think about what's going on. If you look at the level of investment, the capital expenditures going on into AI, I m mean the United States is virtually making a venture capital bet on AI, right? And that's happening in an uh, analogous way in China and to a small, smaller degree in other parts of the world. Um, the fundamental premise of how do you recover a return on that amount of investment is that that AI productivity is going to eat into labor spend. We're building companies today that are showing us that. Now if you think about the transformation of the labor spend into AI productivity and you think about a, uh, service job in Philippines, it is going to become an AI subscription for some US company or maybe a European company. So you're going to hollow out the service economy from different parts of the world and it's going to flow to the AI companies that become those global leaders. US is very well positioned in that. China is well positioned in that. I think the world's kind of bifurcating into these markets that orient around these two, uh, large countries. And if you play that out, we have a choice. The world can be that the Magnificent Seven become 10, 20 times bigger each of them. But we hollow out the service economy, we hollow out jobs and we make the rest of this society unstable. Or we can build a vibrant ecosystem on top of these AI companies and these cloud companies that create inclusive prosperity. And you're keeping the productivity gains in the geographies where the labor is melding into productivity. You need to do that if you're going to have vibrant, uh, societies everywhere in the world. So I think there's a really interesting set of questions around how economic value from AI should diffuse, uh, so it doesn't end up in the hands of very, very few, because that is not a sustainable, uh, way. On the investment side, we think a lot about, okay, which companies we know can uh, be built as startups and capture a lot of the value. We go towards regulated industries or we go towards services as a software transformation, um, but there's going to be this constant tension of how much of the value ends up getting, uh, put in the hands of the very, very big tech companies that are already significant and how much is going to go, uh, and create prosperity in the different countries where AI is taking hold, uh, into the labor span.

Stefan Pauls: But maybe allow me to jump on it. Does it mean that you see a world where we have national regulation emerging to protect, so to say, the country's wealth?

Hemant Taneja: I think you're seeing this whole concept of sovereign AI emerge. And uh, the nations that are taking AI seriously and have the resources to do something about it are essentially trying to create these compute clusters locally, uh, so that this value is captured on shore. And that's an opportunity to then invest in energy infrastructure, computer infrastructure, sort of new kinds of jobs, reskilling their people so that that whole ecosystem develops in uh, their regions. So good leadership at the country level right now is extremely important so that these countries can transition, uh, and maintain that strategic autonomy that you talked about earlier that can maintain economic value onshore.

Stefan Pauls: Look, despite as it sounds, your conviction around AI, I heard you saying that you believe we live in an AI bubble. And you share this obviously with Sam Altman, who said something very similar a few weeks ago. But interestingly, you said that these bubbles are in fact good for the economy. That needs an explanation, please.

Hemant Taneja: Sure. I think bubbles are good. Basically when there's a bubble, you, you're essentially mobilizing a lot of capital. You're mobilizing the world's smartest people go to see the opportunity all in the direction of trying to make a particular trend diffuse, uh, in society. Happened with the Internet. Many companies were created that didn't make it. But then you also got Google and uh, Meta and Amazon and whatnot. Uh, you know, happened with the cloud era and you got all the sort of clouds that curcreated and the whole rise of all the SaaS companies. And I think it's happening with AI. That doesn't mean every company getting funded is going to be successful. So lots of companies will uh, not make it and there'll be a lot of capital lost. But overall the companies that do make it in scale will be much, much larger. So as a time to invest, this is the most interesting time to be investing because you are going to see some extraordinary outcomes. Uh, because technology is again shifting this labor productivity equation and uh, what a great time to be investing. So I really do think bubbles are good. I think you get some amazing category defining companies on the other side that change society fundamentally. And uh, that's what, that's our laser focus is on being part of those companies. So bubbles create that opportunity.

Stefan Pauls: Look, the first wave as I call it, of investing in AI was the same as we saw it with the Internet, with cloud, mobile, et cetera, was in the infrastructure. Uh, that was the core of the investment. And now it's more the vertical layers. Are there any particular layers, ah, vertical layers that you focus on as a firm?

Hemant Taneja: Yeah. So um, all the energy infrastructure, the AI infrastructure getting created, uh, the best place for venture capital to play because that's a really big cap game. The best place for venture capital to play, where there are practical problems that founders can take from 0 to 1 and make interesting companies is actually at the applied AI layer. So we focus very heavily on the applied AI layer. Inside of applied AI we think about what is the transformation of services. So all the jobs that were offshored for labor arbitrage, how do you bring those back onshore with AI productivity? I think that's a trillion uh, dollar opportunity. And we're actually building a series of companies, uh, uh, focus on that theme. Then there is the, you um, need intelligence to be applied to different industries. The way AI should be used in healthcare is, is a whole different set of responsibility with regulatory requirements and people's safety concerns. Well I think that's a place where a startup can go and build something. We actually incubated a company called Hippocratic AI to take that on and it's doing very, very well in that regard. So we look for these sort of industry level problems and we look at sort of business transformation problems and all of those are quite interesting. And then you will also See the application of AI in consumer use cases, you'll see an emergence of new consumer companies. Ah, they use AI differently and transform our experiences, uh, in society as individuals as well. So I think all that whole, uh, applied Al layer is super interesting for the next 10 to 15 years.

Stefan Pauls: One of your portfolio companies which is very, very famous in Europe is Mistral.

Hemant Taneja: Mhm.

Stefan Pauls: Uh, it's a French large language model provider that many see as Europe's best chance to compete with the US in the AI game. Given you operate deeply across those markets from India to Europe, uh, the U.S. of course. Do you think Europe can really catch up with the US and also to some extent with China in the long run? You said it earlier, it's more of a game between China and the US who have built already an enormous ecosystem on a nation basis. But is there any chance anything left for you?

Hemant Taneja: Yeah. So I think first of all, the amount of talent in Europe and if you think about all the talent that created a lot of these AI innovations, a lot of it was European. So in the very long term, I think Europe, if it got its act together and became very entrepreneurial, it can compete with U.S. and China. Uh, being practical is going to be very hard. But what Europe has to do at a minimum is figure out how to make its businesses be globally competitive, which means it needs to accelerate the adoption of AI. And so Mistral is a very strategic company. We're big backers of this. Our European team is extremely dedicated to making sure this company becomes a category defining company because it's essential to Europe's European sovereignty in AI. It's the most important company getting built. It's actually doing very well. Uh, and you can see a lot of European companies getting behind it and working with it and adopting it in their own transformation. So that actually is a really, really strategic ingredient towards European, uh, leadership in AI. I do think if Europe is really going to um, be successful at it, it needs to also figure out how to have its own cloud computing infrastructure. So what happened in the previous uh, era is all the cloud, uh, workloads run on US clouds. So I think there's a lot of that, um, technology efficiency and productivity that's flowing out of um, the continent. And Europe needs to figure out how to invest in that as well. Because if you have a vibrant energy infrastructure, a vibrant cloud infrastructure, and you get behind really developing local AI, uh, sovereign models like what Mr. Is doing, then you have the ingredients, you can actually create the solutions that Europe's leading companies can be using to Be market leaders. And that's a flywheel of innovation and adoption that can be meaningful. It's a lot of work. We are believers that in the talent in Europe, uh, that this is doable. And we think we will be able to create a set of interesting companies out of that. And so we're making a very heavy investment uh, in Europe. And frankly we did this three years ago and it was very contrary. And now everybody's sort of thinking about Europe as interesting. But we leaned into this a couple of years ago and we have terrific leadership in Europe that's guiding that strategy.

Stefan Pauls: Look, it's very logical what you are saying if this strategic autonomy is the game of the time. Uh, and um, obviously Europe is putting enormous, unprecedented amounts of money behind building this infrastructure. You have flutestack, which is working closely with Mistral, which is the core weaves here in the US and other um, companies emerging. We have Sakana leading AI generative AI company in Japan, autonomous. Uh, when I'm in Israel they talk about their solution for obvious reasons. I can really follow that thinking, um, and why Mistral could be one of the cornerstones in Europe. Look, let's talk um, one minute more about the eu. EU was the first ones coming up with a huge package of regulation. And I uh, always said, look, they are regulating stuff before it can really develop and emerge, um, potentially making European AI companies less competitive also because of data restrictions and other laws in place. Do you also think that Europe regulates too much? And if so from your view as an investor, how does the level of over regulation influence where you invest?

Hemant Taneja: Yeah, look, I think um, so I do think Europe is heavier on regulation than it should be. Uh, to me there's this balance between self regulation where companies are building with the right intention, the right mindset and mechanisms and regulating innovation. And the more you regulate innovation, the less uh, vibrant a future you have as a geography now. Creating regulations around how innovation diffuses in society so people are taken care of in an inclusive way. That spirit I actually respect and it's very aligned with the way we think about it at General Catalyst, which is we want to create inclusive prosperity. And I think the spirit of the European regulation always uh, uh, I resonate with it, but it gets done too fast when trends aren't clear on how technology is going to manifest. And I think it's done without regard for having the emerging next generation companies be successful there. It's very focused on uh, sort of socialist dimension of it and the inclusive prosperity dimension of this, but without regard for well, boy, are we going to regulate it in a way that the next generation companies aren't going to be built here. And that's really what has caused uh, issues in the divergence in the EU GDP and the US GDP over the last 17 years since the financial crisis.

Stefan Pauls: Look, there's another company that is talking to in my home country in Germany, it's called Helsing and it's a German company that develops AI enabled defense systems. Um, another company which is also part of your portfolio, Anduril, um, is in the meantime valued at above 30 billion or so. Unbelievable numbers when you're looking in the defense space. What type of companies uh, attract your interest and do you approach them differently than an ordinary SaaS company or consumer play?

Hemant Taneja: Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. So first of all, when I think from a sovereign, um, AI transformation perspective, there are four parts to it. We think about what's going to create peace. How do you use AI for deterrence? We think about uh, resilience in healthcare, just given the pandemic issues we dealt with. We think about adoption of AI in businesses and then we think about reskilling of people. So this is four dimensions. If there's no peace, you can't do the other three. You just don't have a system where technology uh, can be effective if there's no peace because capitalism stops working. And so it was very important to us that we invest in companies that are mission driven on driving deterrence with AI all over the world. Anduril is the first investment that we made that I led. This was in 2017 of all times. And then as we saw these trends manifest, we invested in Helsing to create that kind of an infrastructure in Europe. Just like we think Mistral is a very strategic company, Helsing is a very strategic company. To prepare for deterrence in Europe, we also invested in a company in India doing the same thing called Rafi. So we took a global view of who are the founders that are really focused on driving uh, deterrence. And as you know, um, investing in defense, not so much now was traditionally was very controversial for uh, LPs and it was controversial in our own team. Should we be doing it or not? So we developed a whole responsible defense committee and a framework around this. We said we're going to invest in teams that are focused on deterrence, not offense. And we're going to invest in teams that are focused on developing solutions and selling them to the markets that we believe are aligned with our values. And so we've Looked at companies and spend a lot of time understanding their motivations, their leadership's motivations before we invest in them. And uh, we're proud of these companies, what they're accomplishing. I think these are founders that put their lives at risk building these companies in the quest for uh, peace for their regions. And uh, I also think there'll be tremendous uh, venture capital outcomes for our funds as well.

Stefan Pauls: Look, you said it m. Defence is a new topic and quite controversial. When I think back to uh, my time at kkr, I can't remember that we did a single deal in defence. Uh, today is an absolute part of the thinking not only with private equity buyout firms but also with venture capitalists. Is this driven by, call it, this short term increase um, in governmental spending, what we are seeing in Germany, in the EU and in other countries, uh, is it like a, is uh, it en vogue and short term or is this really a sustainable trend in your view?

Hemant Taneja: Uh, I believe it's a sustainable trend. I believe what's happening is you're transforming the defense budgets from old ways of doing warfare to new ways that are much more effective, both from a cost perspective and an impact perspective that are AI driven. So you've always had in the US we have multiple defense primes that are very, very valuable. Um, and we have an opportunity to build the next generation primes that are technology enabled. And by the way, I think we have an opportunity to build these next generation companies in a way that they have aligned business models. The cost plus business model which was really the way defense primes got built is misaligned because, because they want to create bigger and bigger programs because that's how the businesses create value. But that's a bigger and bigger drag on the taxpayer money to drive peace. And so can we actually build this next set of companies that are much more aligned is also important. So I think defense um, is one of the largest industries in any uh, geography and it's an opportunity to transform it, just like it is an opportunity to transform healthcare and other industries.

Stefan Pauls: Look, I want to change gears a bit and take the discussion to Moonfare's territory. When we think about some of the largest technology revolutions in the past 20 years, which was the Internet and then mobile and cloud, Many, many private investors were excluded from what was happening because they had no chance to be early in the game. You could play the Googles and metas later over public markets, but individuals were basically left out when it comes to the private markets game. We all know this. Private markets exploded since Then the holding period of assets is going up significantly. Uh, think about an, uh, OpenAI, which is, uh, already valued in the last employee tender at some 500 billion. So people might ask what will be left once this company might go public for private individuals, uh, investing over the public markets. So what is your take? Uh, we are at Moonfair, as you know, we are one of the firms sparing this democratization, opening up of private markets for private individuals, uh, firms. We try really to um, give more, uh, prosperity for more people. This also our very much mission driven target here. How would you like General Catalyst to be positioned in this fundamental transition of private markets?

Hemant Taneja: Look at General Catalyst. We have this framework around responsible innovation and it's very much focused on doing well and doing good at the same time. It's a flywheel of profit and purpose. And the core pillars of responsible innovation are to drive inclusive prosperity for everybody and sustainability for the planet. Those are the two things that matter the most. I think this idea that we need to give everybody an opportunity to participate in the value creation that's happening in, uh, technology and now in the AI world is an extremely important and urgent one. So I'm a big believer in this. I think we need to create opportunity for everybody to participate. Otherwise the risk we've talked about earlier, which is there'll be the haves and the have nots and the value is going to concentrate in the hands of very, very few. That is not a stable place to be, ah, as any country or as a society at large, uh, globally. So we have to do this, we have to make sure this wealth creation opportunity, which is arguably the greatest of all time in the history of humanity, is something that everybody participates in.

Stefan Pauls: I talked to a very famous venture capitalist. Uh, he was one of the founders of one of the best early stage firms. And he said to me, make sure that you and your family invest enough into AI now that's probably the best protection shield that you can play. Look, unfortunately, we are almost at the end of our conversation, but there are two more questions that I have to ask you because I believe that, uh, our audience will learn from them. And by the way, my four children love these two questions. So the first one is if there's any, who is your role model when it comes to business and investing and why that person?

Hemant Taneja: That's a great question. Um, and my chairman, Ken Chenault, he asked me that question once and I said, I actually look at many people for inspiration on what we should be doing. And I said, I actually look up to Ken a lot because he's taught me a lot about servant leadership and how do you build a culture and frankly an ecosystem of companies that truly embraces that. And I think I have a lot of respect for the way uh, Warren Buffett is invested. Uh, and the reason is because of the horizon, their whole period is forever. That's the way to think about companies. And that long term thinking is essential to, for our raison d', etre, which is to build the most important companies and drive transformations. And so I really look up to him and the last, uh, and this must one might be controversial, but if you look at this person and what they do and not what they say, Elon Musk, because he's taken on some of the most important problems in the world and done a good job of solving them. The execution behind that is quite, quite inspiring to me. You know the way we move the world towards electrification in automotive, that's, that's an important lever to really solve climate change. Uh, focus on space, to focus on giving connectivity to everybody at scale. Those are the kinds of problems we want our founders being inspired to go build. And then we want to learn from that and adopt that in the way we build GC as well.

Stefan Pauls: I said it earlier, uh, we are living in a world that no longer asks for permission. And if there's one person that has never asked for permission, it's Elon Musk. Yeah, he didn't ask the NASA when He was building SpaceX Automotive Industry in Germany when he was building um, Tesla. Look, my last question is if you would give one advice to your younger self, what would it be?

Hemant Taneja: I think uh, first of all directly to my own younger self myself is I should have gone to Silicon Valley earlier. So I moved in 2011 to uh, essentially move General Catalyst, uh, to Silicon Valley and transform it into a Silicon Valley sort um, of first investment, uh, firm. And so that was, you know, probably could have done that 10 years earlier than that. So I think that would have been interesting. But I think the biggest piece of advice I would say is really um, lean into alignment of profit and purpose from the beginning. I think when I started when I was young and I built a company, I did it because I was excited to build a company and it wasn't really driven by a true sense of purpose um, around solving a problem. And now I've seen over and over the ones that have become the greatest companies in compound for the longest time. So do good in the world. Just like if we can just, you know what part M of My, uh, goal of why I want General Catalyst to be very successful in that scale is if you can demonstrate that my younger self is a theoretical question. But every new young kid getting in the industry, starting a company, or investing will embrace it because they'll see that as the way to create the most success. That's sort of the raison d', etre, or what fuels me. And the way I think about our strategy and what we're doing

Stefan Pauls: look very, very impressive. Himan, thank you so much for these views and, um, all the insights that you have shared. Uh, I'm sure it was a, uh, conversation the audience will enjoy very much. Lots of food for thought. Uh, in many regards, um, it was very, very interesting to talk to you in a world that is driven by uncertainty, but also offers tremendous opportunities and responsibility. As for everyone else, thank you so much for joining us today. Uh, please also check, uh, moonfair if you want to listen into past deal talks or, um, take a look into our white papers on artificial intelligence or venture capital investing or other interesting topics. I hope to see you soon at our next deal talk webinar. Stay Healthy.

Hemant Taneja: Sa.