General Catalyst, the powerhouse venture firm, is considering an IPO, Axios reported Friday morning, citing “multiple sources.”
News has reached out to the firm’s managing partner, Hemant Taneja, for comment. In the meantime, those following General Catalyst’s trajectory won’t be surprised by the prospect.
Founded 25 years ago as a small Cambridge, Mass.-based venture firm, General Catalyst (GC) started with $73 million in capital commitments. A decade later, armed with ballooning assets and pre-IPO stakes in software companies like Demandware and Brightcove, Taneja and then-partner Neil Sequeira set up shop in a charming yellow building with white trim on University Avenue in Palo Alto. There, GC quickly made its mark in the Bay Area, cutting software deals reminiscent of its East Coast successes while also forging deep ties with Y Combinator that paid off. In 2011, the firm secured a stake in Airbnb. In 2012, it committed to backing every Y Combinator startup sight unseen.
That same year, in July 2012, GC led the Series B round for Stripe — now Y Combinator’s most successful alum by valuation, even as the fintech giant maintains it has “no immediate plans” to go public.
Meanwhile, GC itself has grown exponentially. Though Sequeira left in 2015 to start his own shop, GC today has a sprawling team with 20 managing directors, over $30 billion in assets, and offices from San Francisco to Bengaluru. It has also expanded far beyond traditional venture investing. As we noted in October after talking with Taneja for a podcast, the firm is almost unrecognizable from its former self. Among other moves, it has launched financing products, rolled out a wealth management business, is in the process of acquiring a small healthcare system in Ohio, and purchased two smaller venture firms.
A question Axios asks — and it’s a good one — is whether GC will be the very first venture firm to go public. It’s not only a question of whether the firm decides to move forward, but whether the mere talk of an offering speeds up the plans of other heavyweight firms like Andreessen Horowitz, which seem to have their eyes on the same prize.
