As a firm, we believe in investing in powerful, positive change that endures. This isn’t a value saved just for the companies we back; we also honor it by investing in the people who work diligently to find and engage with some of the most talented and ambitious founders from around the globe. Today, we celebrate three of those colleagues, Alex Tran, Katherine Boyle, and Peter Boyce II, and their promotions to partner at General Catalyst.
Our new partners may differ in the verticals and stages they invest in but ultimately, they share several common qualities that have enabled their success to date. They’ve each honed incredibly strong personal investment theses. They are life-long learners who take a creative approach to this work and have built authentic relationships with entrepreneurs. Above all, they’ve individually pushed and challenged GC as a firm to consider new points of view and to pursue opportunities that we may not have otherwise. We are no doubt a stronger firm because of them.
Alex Tran, Partner
Alex joined General Catalyst nearly two years ago and has opened our investing aperture to include opportunities in markets outside of the United States, where growth in internet penetration and engagement continue to create new opportunities for disruption across industries. More specifically, Alex has been helping to lead our efforts and thinking over the past year as we began exploring India as a market that could potentially create considerable enterprise value in the next decade.
Alex is also helping to shape the firm’s thinking around fintech and neobanks. It’s through some of his work that we made investments in companies like Monzo in the UK and CRED in India. Drawing from his broader investment experience, Alex has also been instrumental as we build out our late-stage practice and bring those initiatives to fruition.
Katherine Boyle, Partner
As a former journalist, Katherine always questions the status quo. Her investment thesis challenges every assumption about investing in highly regulated and legacy industries and her curiosity makes her well-suited to supporting the most audacious founders. (No belief is too fringe or frontier for Katherine to engage with.)
In her nearly four years with the firm, she’s developed an invaluable network of founders who are taking on some of the most difficult challenges of our time — from how new drug therapies are discovered and developed to how countries will secure and defend themselves. She has sourced or led investments in companies like Anduril, Nova Credit, Spring Discovery, and Vannevar Labs and over the last year, she co-led GC’s seed program, where she led a number of unannounced investments.
Peter Boyce, Partner
For the better part of the last decade, Peter has focused on making the promise of entrepreneurship and access to venture capital available to a broader base of first-time founders. In college, he helped spin up several initiatives that encouraged fellow students to found or work for early-stage startups. Shortly after graduating and joining us here at GC, he continued that work by co-founding and growing Rough Draft Ventures into one of the largest network of student entrepreneurs in the country.
Beyond Rough Draft, Peter has been instrumental in establishing our New York presence as a team that actively invests in this very vibrant ecosystem. Peter has developed a reputation for being genuinely supportive and empathetic to the challenges that early stage teams face, from recruiting talented leadership and building boards to creating brand resonance and navigating subsequent funding processes. This approach has underpinned his work with the founders behind companies like Mark43, Ro, Great Jones, and Cadre.
To the Future
Building a firm that endures is predicated in part on being able to recognize the talents and characteristics that make investment professionals the very best at what they do. It also requires assembling a team that shares similar values and can work towards a collective and positive vision. We feel very fortunate to have found three such individuals in Peter, Katherine, and Alex.
Congratulations, partners!
