World Model · podcast knowledge graph

E399: How General Catalyst Finds Billion-Dollar Startups

2026-07-06 · 30 min · episode 399 · 7 entities

episode page audio

Asserted relationships

  • → hosted by David Weisburd person
    0.55
    evidence rules-v5
    Feed author/publisher: David Weisburd
  • → discusses Business company
    0.40
    evidence rules-v5
    Feed category: Business
  • → discusses Investing concept
    0.40
    evidence rules-v5
    Feed category: Investing

Entities found in this episode

concepts 3

persons 2

  • mentioned David Weisburd person
    0.70
    evidence rules-v5
    Feed author/publisher: David Weisburd
  • hosted by David Weisburd person
    0.55
    evidence rules-v5
    Feed author/publisher: David Weisburd

companys 2

  • mentioned Business company
    0.50
    evidence rules-v5
    Feed category: Business
  • discusses Business company
    0.40
    evidence rules-v5
    Feed category: Business
Episode description as stored
Most investors assume that once a venture firm reaches $43 billion in assets under management, the real opportunities shift toward writing larger checks. Yuri Sagilov believes the opposite. General Catalyst continues to push deeper into seed because that's where investment themes are born, founder relationships are formed, and category-defining companies are first recognized. Rather than optimizing for larger deployments, the firm optimizes for ownership, conviction, and seeing the future before everyone else. It's also why General Catalyst intentionally removed signaling risk from its seed strategy, giving founders confidence that early backing won't become a disadvantage later. Throughout our conversation, Yuri explains why AI-native founders think differently, why the best venture firms remain generalists, and why the next decade of venture may look very different from the last.