VC Talks #5: Niko Bonatsos, General Catalyst
Welcome to the fifth episode of the VC Talks, a short interview series which shares the wisdom and experience of venture capitalists and investors with just a few short questions.
I’m very excited to have a very special guest, Niko Bonatsos on this episode of the VC Talks. Niko is the Managing Director of General Catalyst. He is involved with General Catalyst companies such as Audius, Brighter (acquired by Cigna), ClassDojo, Cover, Dubsmash, Hive, HubHaus, Livongo Health (NASDAQ: LVGO), Remote, Sleeper, Snap (NYSE: SNAP), and Wag!
He graduated from Stanford (MS in Management Science and Engineering as a Fulbright Scholar), the University of Cambridge (M.Phil. in Manufacturing Engineering and Management) and the National Technical University of Athens (Dipl.-Ing in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science). Also, before joining General Catalyst he worked in Tokyo at the R&D headquarters for Yokogawa Electric Corporation.
Let’s dive into the conversation with Niko.
Efe: If you could choose any person from history to be your imaginary friend, who would it be and why?
Niko: I would love to be friends with Alexander the Great. My god, what a time he lived in. He grew up in Greece and became king at a very young age when his father was assassinated. He conquered the bulk of the known world in a short period of time. He invented new military tactics and became the king of so many different cultures. I would love to hear what motivated him.
Efe: If you could choose any famous people to have dinner with, who would that be?
Niko: The creator of bitcoin. I would want to ask what motivated him? What were the trade offs of his design choices? Also I’d try to understand what was the initial vision and how the things played out for him?
Efe: What was the biggest challenge you faced or the biggest risk you took in your career? How did you overcome it? How did it pay off?
Niko: I studied my undergrad in my home country Greece in Electrical and Computer Engineering. So for 5 years I honestly didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do. Every year I moved to a new place in order to try something new. I spent a year in Boston working as a researcher on Biomedical Signal Processing. I spent a year in Japan, working as an R&D Engineer on image processing. I spent a year in the UK at Cambridge and studied manufacturing, management and technical consulting. Then I moved to the US to go to Stanford to explore Silicon Valley without having an end in mind. Perhaps another risky bet for me was to try something new every year and start new beginnings in life and do it again and again which is not very easy. At the end of the day my process has always been to do the best work I can do for the people who hired me. This has always been my process. Even during that five year journey around the world before settling down almost 11 years ago, I always followed one person at a time who gave me a chance.
Efe: What is your biggest problem/challenge nowadays?
Niko: At a personal level my family is in Greece and if anything happens I can’t really get to them which creates agony and anxiety. In terms of what’s happening in the world, it’s deeply unsettling. At the same time extremely encouraging that things may finally change. But in the meantime all these turbulence, bad behaviours, poor leadership that’s been going on across the board associated with violence is deeply unsettling. Inequality has become a norm over many decades and our generation and the ones to come have to work on it to reverse it.
Efe: What do you do when you feel like you are not making any progress or you feel overwhelmed by the challenges?
Niko: You should always try to measure what you are doing. For example in my case, we ask each other with my wife every day at dinner what we learnt that day. You have to define the right question to answer in order to measure your progress. You should do that every day or every few days. So that’s number one.
Number two, if I feel I’m stuck in general, I reach out for help. I have the privilege of working with unbelievable partners in General Catalyst who are successful venture capitalists, established world class business leaders who are running Fortune 500 companies. They can mentor folks like me.
Efe: What is one thing you expect from or you are most excited about the next decade? (Could be related to business, technology, entertainment, health etc.)
Niko: Whenever we are once again able to socialize with more people, that’s something I’m very excited about. Any product that helps us smile more, makes us happy and helps us feel closer within our existing relationships or build new ones, I’m definitely excited to hear more about.
Efe: What advice would you give to a new graduate or an experienced professional who wants to become a VC or find a job at a VC firm? How can they start adding value to startups and VCs?
Niko: It’s a process, it’s not like you go to a barber, get a haircut and you are done. It’s not like that in the VC world, like you see a job post you apply and you get the job. That’s very very rare. The advice I give is to meet a few VC partners who can hire for their firms. Provide value to them as you try to build a trusted relationship with them. What I mean with providing value is, give them feedback about their portfolio companies, send them ideas of areas that they should be looking at because interesting things are happening. Provide them with interesting introductions to the founders who are soon raising capital. If you do these types of actions over a period of time, those individuals will take notice, so whenever a job opens up in one of those firms they are going to invite you.
In parallel you need to start developing a reputation about yourself, so that founders will tell their friends how great you are on a specific area (help raising money, telling a story to the press, how to craft a product strategy, how to do growth hacking or paid marketing etc.) and how great you are as a trusted advisor for them. You need to have one thing that founders would recommend you for.
If you do these two things combined for a year or two, it’s just a matter of time before you join the VC world.
I’d like to give very special thanks to Niko for joining me and sharing some great insights for the VC Talks.
We’ll interview new VCs and investors every episode, so if you’d like to attend or know someone who would, please DM me via Twitter. Also happy to hear your feedback and if you enjoyed the VC Talks please follow, comment and share with your friends.
