General Catalyst

General Catalyst has expanded further beyond traditional venture structure than most of its peers, adding customer value funds, a creation strategy, and in an unusual step, acquiring a health system to serve as a deployment environment for its healthcare portfolio.

It describes itself in terms of global resilience rather than as a conventional venture firm, and its structure reflects that.

The firm's health assurance thesis argues that healthcare must shift from treating illness to maintaining health, and it has invested heavily behind that view.

Alongside health it maintains substantial fintech, enterprise, and defence practices.

• Multiple strategies including seed, growth, and creation
• Customer value funds providing non-dilutive growth capital
• Ownership of a health system as a testing environment
• Long-duration holding structures
• Sector-specific teams with operating backgrounds

Stripe · Snap · HubSpot · Airbnb · Livongo · Samsara · Anduril · Ramp

Hemant Taneja leads the firm and authored its health assurance thesis. Ken Chenault, previously chief executive of American Express, serves as chairman.

For health companies in particular, the firm can offer something almost no other investor can — a real clinical deployment environment it controls.

Its breadth of vehicles means founders should be clear about which strategy is investing and what that implies for follow-on support.