E399: How General Catalyst Finds Billion-Dollar Startups

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.