Hemant Taneja is Managing Partner at General Catalyst, a venture capital firm that partners with seed to endurance-stage founders to help build companies that can withstand the test of time. He is the founder of the firm’s Silicon Valley operations.
Hemant partners with mission-driven founders building platform companies that are fundamentally aligned with the long-term interests of society. He is an early investor in market-leading companies like Digit, Grammarly, Gusto, Livongo (NASDAQ: LVGO), Mindstrong, Samsara, Snap (NYSE: SNAP), and Stripe.
His primary investment thesis, known as “economies of unscale,” explores how 21st-century founders leverage AI-based mass personalization techniques to innovate and build platforms across all sectors of the economy. In his 2018 book Unscaled, Hemant built on that thesis articulating the need for accountability, transparency, and explainability in AI technologies as they permeate deeper into daily life. His more recent work in Harvard Business Review, ""The Era of Move Fast and Break Things is Over,"" advocates for entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to adopt frameworks for responsible innovation and investing.
Hemant is also the founder and executive chairman of Commure, a company that has partnered with major health systems to modernize the software infrastructure for the healthcare space since its inception in 2017. His recently published book UnHealthcare, co-authored with Dr. Stephen Klasko, CEO of Jefferson Health, lays out their thesis for how the healthcare system needs to transform into a health assurance system to bring consumerism, affordability, and rational economic behavior to this important sector.
In addition to his investment work, Hemant is the Co-Founder of Advanced Energy Economy, an organization focused on transforming energy policy in America; and is a Founding Board Member of the Khan Lab School, a nonprofit K-12 school dedicated to classroom innovation. He sits on the Board of Fellows for the Stanford School of Medicine and teaches a course at the college on A.I., Entrepreneurship and Society.