Welcome back to another edition of Goldman Sachs Exchanges, great investors.

I'm Michael Brandmeyer Global Cohead and Co-Chief Investment Officer of the External Investing Group at Goldman Sachs

Asset Management and your host for today's episode. Today I'm delighted to be

joined by Hemant Tenesia, the CEO of General Catalyst, a venture capital firm focused on early stage and growth investments.

Hemant was an early investor in companies such as Stripe, Snap, Gramerley, Samsara, Andrill, Gusto, and Applied Intuition, and is known for his frameworks around investing

and enduring mission-driven businesses.

He's also an author and entrepreneur, having founded several companies such as Lovongo that are focused on transforming the

health care industry.

Hemont, welcome to the program.

Thank you.

I'm so excited to be here.

Let's start with your mission-based approach to investing, an approach that sets you and

general catalyst apart in the VC space.

Explain to our listeners what this means.

Our mission is to invest in positive, powerful change that endures. And every word there is very

carefully chosen. Our belief is that to create a high-performance firm you have to

invest in companies that can endure for a long time because if

companies are enduring and growing your investments compounding and in our

industry is the compounding outliers that drive all the returns. There's a power

law working backwards from what are the kinds of things that make these companies endure is where our mission comes from.

And honestly, the key observation we have made, especially in this era of technological transformation of society is that the most effective way to build enduring companies is focusing on companies that create a positive change in the world.

So this was an evolution at general catalyst. on companies that create a positive change in the world.

...