Notes from Andrea's presentation:
- General Catalyst is a 20+ year old firm born out of Boston.
- Portfolio companies include Hubspot, Stripe, Gitlab, Canva and AirBnB.
- GC looks for great founder-market fit.
- Andrea has a background at Amplitude and Lime.
- Their firm aims to be agents of change.
- Founder advice - Founders should figure out if their company is product or sales led. Looking at your end user can help you decide if you should go in a product led growth motion (like a self-serve freemium model), and sales led growth.
- Founder-led sales are extremely important, especially for B2B companies. You only get one shot being in front of your largest key customers.
- Founders can sometimes focus on growth before conviction about product direction.
- Founder advice: Don’t contract your growth too early. Double down on and add fuel to existing channels that are already working.
- Selling to SMBs is different than selling to enterprise. Allocate your time to the right customers.
- GC does refences with their portfolio company’s customers, looking at the strength of their pain point, and how willing they are to pay to solve it.
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