VC V2.0: General Catalyst’s playbook for taking startup brands to the next level with Arielle Gross Samuels

[00:00:00] You always have to be asking what's not there. You always have to sit on the edge of your seat and not rest on your laurels. And always try to stay as sharp and educated as possible because this is such a rapidly evolving situation. To thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move at an ever increasing pace. I'm Matt Britton, founder and CEO of Suzy. Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within their industry, why it matters now and how you can keep up.

[00:00:30] Welcome to the Speed of Culture. Up today on the Speed of Culture Podcast, we're here live in New York and we're thrilled to welcome Arielle Gross Samuels, the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer General Catalyst, a venture capital firm that partners with transformational companies shaping the future of industries like AI, healthcare and fintech. Arielle, so great to see you today. Arielle Gross Samuels Thanks so much for having me, Matt. Arielle Gross Samuels Absolutely. So what got you into the world of venture capital? Arielle Gross Samuels So I am a builder at my core. Arielle Gross Samuels Okay.

[00:01:00] Arielle Gross Samuels I'm an engineer by training. Arielle Gross Samuels I worked in technology. Arielle Gross Samuels For nearly a decade. Arielle Gross Samuels And then did a stint in private equity. Arielle Gross Samuels So when I got the call from General Catalyst, it felt like this amazing opportunity to blend finance, marketing, engineering, technology all in one and to support founders pursuing their visions, which I was so excited about. Arielle Gross Samuels So what were you doing at the time when you got the call for general? Arielle Gross Samuels I was running marketing at Blackstone. Arielle Gross Samuels Okay. Arielle Gross Samuels So obviously Blackstone, a very prestigious private equity firm, one of the largest in the world. Arielle Gross Samuels Yeah. Arielle Gross Samuels What gave you the conviction?

[00:01:29] Arielle Gross Samuels I'm sure you were like on the fast track there. Arielle Gross Samuels What gives you the conviction to make that jump and go somewhere else? Arielle Gross Samuels It was really getting back to my roots in tech and the opportunity to build in the white space, which is something that's been true in my entire career, is coming to a place like General Catalyst, which we now call ourselves a global investment and transformation company. Arielle Gross Samuels We've been around for 25 years, 32 billion of assets under management. Arielle Gross Samuels So by all sort of measures, we're this very established, successful firm.

[00:01:56] Arielle Gross Samuels And yet we're at this inflection point as a company where we're expanding the aperture of our business. Arielle Gross Samuels We're expanding the client base of who we partner with. Arielle Gross Samuels And I thought, what an interesting time to jump on this rocket ship and see what I can build across marketing and communication. Arielle Gross Samuels So everything from brand and creative, our events and experiential, MarTech and operations, and the whole communications remit. Arielle Gross Samuels So it's been a really, really important opportunity and something that I've been super-eneralized by.

[00:02:23] Arielle Gross Samuels So you're obviously leading the charge of the brand of General Catalyst. Arielle Gross Samuels Who is your target audience? Arielle Gross Samuels Who do you want to know about General Catalyst? Arielle Gross Samuels And what do you want them to know about the brand? Arielle Gross Samuels So a few key audiences for us. Arielle Gross Samuels First, our perspective entrepreneurs and founders, particularly in the US, Europe and India. Arielle Gross Samuels So this is anyone with a good idea, we want them to think of General Catalyst first, and then think about fundraising, really when it's still an idea.

[00:02:46] Arielle Gross Samuels So the minute they have an idea, even before they start fundraising, before they bring it to life and to market, we want them to think about GC as the person or the firm that they want to call. Arielle Gross Samuels Second, I would say, is sort of the business, financial, and political elite circles. Arielle Gross Samuels These are organizations and leaders that are going to influence our brand and reputation and market. Arielle Gross Samuels I want them to know who we are and what we stand for. Arielle Gross Samuels Which, to get to your second question, we care about a few things. Arielle Gross Samuels One is being the global authority on transformation, and particularly within that applied AI and global resilience.

[00:03:16] Arielle Gross Samuels So applied AI is really our focus on how do you bring the LLMs, the tools, the products, but integrate them into businesses at their core. Arielle Gross Samuels I can talk more about that. Arielle Gross Samuels For sure. Arielle Gross Samuels And then global resilience is really this idea that countries, particularly through the lens of geopolitical tectonic shifts, COVID, all of these supply chain disruptors are realizing that they need to modernize their critical industries across defense, healthcare, industrials. Arielle Gross Samuels And so we have over 800 portfolio companies that can help with both.

[00:03:44] Arielle Gross Samuels And so that's the real messaging that we want to convey is broader transformation around applied AI and global resilience. Arielle Gross Samuels Yeah, especially in the sea of the entrepreneur, they want to globalize, they want to take advantage of global opportunities. And obviously, every entrepreneur is thinking right now, what is my story? Arielle Gross Samuels How do I apply to my existing business, etc. Arielle Gross Samuels Let's unpack that. Arielle Gross Samuels Because obviously, I obviously spent a lot of time in AI as a venture funded software CEO myself and company that's really focused on AI.

[00:04:13] Arielle Gross Samuels I know that different companies are at different stages and what using AI is, the point of AI means different things in different companies. Arielle Gross Samuels How does General Catalyst look at the state of the AI today and how it's being adopted maybe across both your portfolio, but then more broadly as maybe the customer user? Arielle Gross Samuels It's such an exciting opportunity and it's pretty amazing the vantage point that we have just having 800 plus portfolio companies. Arielle Gross Samuels And also, we've invested billions of dollars over the last eight years in AI. Arielle Gross Samuels So I'd answer this in a few ways.

[00:04:42] Arielle Gross Samuels One is on the core sort of intelligence track. Arielle Gross Samuels I think that's pillar one. Arielle Gross Samuels What do we see as the future of intelligence when you think about LLMs focused on humanity and human made decisions, data privacy? Arielle Gross Samuels So we've invested in companies like Mistral and Anthropics, some of these leading out. Arielle Gross Samuels The LLS sets of the foundational level. Arielle Gross Samuels Exactly. Arielle Gross Samu So there's sort of that lens. Arielle Gross Samuels And you're seeing it also at the industry sector specificity where you bring an LLM, let's say into biology. Arielle Gross Samuels So we're into physics and chemistry with physics X. Arielle Gross Samuels So interesting cuts of that.

[00:05:12] Arielle Gross Samuels The second is the infrastructure layer. Arielle Gross Samuels What needs to be true both data centers and servers, but also this I call it sort of the business scaffolding. Arielle Gross Samuels How can businesses ingest AI? Arielle Gross Samuels And this gets really interesting. Arielle Gross Samuels We have a model called AI enabled roll offs. Arielle Gross Samuels And the thinking here is that we can expand margins on legacy businesses, not necessarily software, but industries like legal, HOA management, accounting. Arielle Gross Samuels So much for legacy businesses. Arielle Gross Samuels Workflow automation. Arielle Gross Samuels 100% we have companies like Glean.

[00:05:41] Arielle Gross Samuels So it's really interesting. Arielle Gross Samuels How do you integrate AI into the guts of those businesses and help them really rethink the way their work operates and then help them scale that solution through M&A, which is where this gets into the AI enabled roll up. Arielle Gross Samuels Sure. Arielle Gross Samuels And then the third is really workforce transformation. Arielle Gross Samuels Both the work itself is going to change. Arielle Gross Samuels The workforce around it is going to change. Arielle Gross Samuels What does it mean to have an agentic workforce? Arielle Gross Samuels What does it mean to have a company worth $10 billion with five humans? Arielle Gross Samuels How is that structured?

[00:06:09] Arielle Gross Samuels And what is that sort of belief around AI native companies going forward in the same way that people bet on SaaS and other key digital trends? Arielle Gross Samuels Left on pack there. Arielle Gross Samuels First and foremost, your firm's role as this AI enabler and obviously can take many different forms both for tech specific companies, tech native companies, if you will, or like you said, going into other companies where you can use the power of AI and make them more efficient.

[00:06:33] But in either situation, your firm needs to be able to employ people and work with experts that really know what they're doing in AI. Arielle Gross Samuels And one thing I've seen is those people are far and between. Arielle Gross Samuels There's a lot of people that will speak buzzwords and throw this jargon around, but there's very few people that are actually doing the work hands on keyboard, know how to build, know how to deploy it. Arielle Gross Samuels Large companies are so scared.

[00:06:56] Arielle Gross Samuels They're writing huge checks and a lot of times they're being told it takes six months and $60 million when the reality should take six days and $60,000, but they don't know the difference, right? Arielle Gross Samuels So I think there's a lack of knowledge everywhere. Arielle Gross Samuels But how do you use your firm attract the right people that can help deliver that promise? Arielle Gross Samuels Well, you know, it's such an important question and it's interesting because so you're thinking about this through the lines of talent.

[00:07:17] Arielle Gross Samuels How to assess talent both for gaps in terms of what functionally needs to be true to build out these solutions, but also even going earlier than that. Arielle Gross Samuels How do you train this in school? Arielle Gross Samuels What needs to be true in terms of prompt engineering classes? Arielle Gross Samuels What about AI accreditation? Arielle Gross Samuels I just did an event last week focused on AI in the boardroom. Arielle Gross Samuels What does it mean to have governance and board directors that are sort of AI enabled and how they think about leveraging all kinds of company data to make better business?

[00:07:44] Arielle Gross Samuels If you want to say, there will be a bot or an agent that already a member of the board. Arielle Gross Samuels So I would say, I mean, we have an incredible executive talent team that recruits from all around the world. Arielle Gross Samuels We're lucky in that we had this massive network of not just founders and entrepreneurs, but also business leaders, partners across our portfolio companies and policymakers. Arielle Gross Samuels So we can sort of draw from a broad pool of candidates. Arielle Gross Samuels But it is an important question, especially because the target keeps moving. Arielle Gross Samuels Yeah. Arielle Gross Samuels So even you might think you know where the puck is going, but then that shifts.

[00:08:14] Arielle Gross Samuels It's quicker than what we've seen before. Arielle Gross Samuels Exactly. Arielle Gross Samuels The velocity is just sort of paralleled. Arielle Gross Samuels And so it creates a really interesting dynamic. Arielle Gross Samuels I think what it teaches all of us, and particularly thinking about the marketers who are listening in today, you always have to be asking what's not there. Arielle Gross Samuels You always have to sit on the edge of your seat and not rest on your laurels. Arielle Gross Samuels And always try to stay as sharp and educated as possible because this is such a rapidly evolving situation. Arielle Gross Samuels Yeah.

[00:08:40] Arielle Gross Samuels But from an operational perspective, the challenge is in that is that you don't want to be reinventing your company or your strategy every single day. Arielle Gross Samuels Correct. Arielle Gross Samuels So you really need to rethink in terms of like what the goalpost is and where you think the world's going to going. Arielle Gross Samuels And you have to have some conviction because you're right. Arielle Gross Samuels It's like you could come up with a business model today and then tomorrow it could be rendered obsolete. Arielle Gross Samuels And the question there is, well, maybe your business model wasn't really forththinking enough.

[00:09:03] Arielle Gross Samuels Well, and I think you're also touching on agility, which is to be successful, particularly in 2025, you have to be able to rapidly pivot and ingest new data points to make better decisions. Arielle Gross Samu I think DeepSeek was such an interesting example of that. Arielle Gross Samuels Came out of nowhere. Arielle Gross Samuels All of a sudden people were rethinking everything from the valuation of LLMs to how can they leverage this data. Arielle Gross Samuels So much on our ambition, possibly over pivoting, but even just the idea that the cost curve on AI is going to asymptotically approach zero.

[00:09:29] Arielle Gross Samuels So in the same way that we think about internet, I mean, it's literally going to get cheaper and cheaper as a currency. Arielle Gross Samuels Exactly. Arielle Gross Samuels And so do all boats rise as a result of that? Arielle Gross Samuels Is there increased demand generation or does that really throw a wrench into people's, you know, valuations of these companies? Arielle Gross Samuels I think that's an interesting debate playing out. Arielle Gross Samuels But regardless, it's an exciting space to be in and I think what a good time to be alive and to be building. Arielle Gross Samuels Oh yeah. Arielle Gross Samuels I mean it calls into question where the values are going to be created because you have the infrastructure, the chips right at the bottom. Arielle Gross Samuels And then you have the foundational models, which we spoke of.

[00:09:58] Arielle Gross Samuels Then you have data, right? Arielle Gross Samuels And you've already seen companies leverage their data, not AI companies, companies like Reddit are selling their data, etc. Arielle Gross Samuels And then you have the application layer, which some people write off as just, oh, it's a wrapper on an existing model. Arielle Gross Samuels But the reality is, I would argue, your ability to package things, go to market, capture customer mind sharing, drive a business has always been a really hard thing to do. Arielle Gross Samuels And then tech, it's never necessarily been the best product wins in some ways who goes to market. Arielle Gross Samuels Yes. Arielle Gross Samuels What are your thoughts on where the value is being created in AI? Arielle Gross Samuels Well, you know, it's interesting.

[00:10:28] Arielle Gross Samuels I think ultimately we're still going to see this trend where it's hyper customization for consumers. Arielle Gross Samuels The idea that particularly marketers and brand builders can spray and pray and just hope that what they build and throw over the fence is going to land is we're past those days. Arielle Gross Samuels Right now because of the access to data and because of both algorithms and AI, particularly on the generative front, you can get super targeted and clear on who you're Arielle Gross Samuels And then you can get super targeted and clear on who you're actually going after what they care about demographically, psychographically, what needs to be true for them to resonate with your business, your product, etc.

[00:10:57] Arielle Gross Samuels And so I do think there's a really interesting inflection point for us in this industry to rethink even how we approach people so that they feel like they're getting value from every ad they see from every piece of content they see rather than something they want to skip past. Arielle Gross Samuels Absolutely. Arielle Gross Samuels So you mentioned earlier pivot and being able to kind of reinvent yourself. Arielle Gross Samuels Our company, Susie, has 300 employees. Arielle Gross Samuels It's a lot harder to pivot now than when it wasn't only 25 employees.

[00:11:21] Arielle Gross Samuels So what have you seen throughout the portfolio, companies you work with and the entrepreneurs that you partner with, that has been coming across companies that have been able to effectively, I guess, change to the macro, to take advantage and seize the moment?

[00:11:35] That's such a great question. I would go back to even my days at Facebook before it was called meta and even the way in which leaders would put a stake in the ground around trends that they believe with high conviction were true. This happened at Facebook at Blackstone at certainly a general catalyst and across our companies. I'd say a few things are true, right? One is pattern recognition. So you have to be able to ingest signal and data from different sources. And in our world, because we are inundated with stimuli, it's almost like how do you parse the signal from the eyes?

[00:12:05] But really making sense of what is the data that tells us one way or the other where trends are going, what themes are going to play out? Does this align in our case to investment theories that we actually do believe in and have high conviction? And that's where we have a team of world-class investors writing checks towards founders that they believe in. So there's that. Second, it still comes down to people. And so ultimately in our business, you're backing a founder, you're investing in a human. And certainly as marketers, we think the same way. It's about the person on the other side, even business-to-business marketing, which I've now been playing.

[00:12:35] And for a decade plus, it's still people on your side of that. Couldn't admit more. And so you still have to care about how you're- That's why grant matters, by the way, as well. A lot of people in SaaS, I think, made the mistake of just looking at the bottom of the funnel and performance, performance. But the person buys software the same way that mom buys detergent at Walmart. They buy from the brands they trust. And if you're building enough awareness and trust versus a company that they've never heard of before, they're going to want to choose a company they've heard of before.

[00:13:05] That's why it's grand matters. It doesn't pay off right away. But over time, it does become a defensible moat. A hundred percent of it is going to say the same word moat. And be the bait. And you want that, you need that cushion. But also, again, you can't rest on your laurel. So your trust can also be lost so quickly. And so making sure that you're staying evergreen, consistent with your values, getting in front of consumers in an enduring and sustainable way, I think is so important.

[00:13:27] And, of course, the leaders of the businesses matter. And so even as you think about the personalization of companies and how sort of these corporate ambassadors are representing, that matters. Yeah, it's not going to change, especially just in given the velocity of now social media and how even Gen Zers have higher bars, I think, for how they make decisions with their wallets. We'll be right back with The Speed of Culture after a few words from our sponsors. So let's talk about some of the companies that General Cows has them as to end and talk about maybe some of the lessons we can extract.

[00:13:54] So who would you think the three most prominent companies, if you're sitting in a dinner party and you're like, tell me the general catalyst. Obviously, you're giving them proof points. Who are some of those companies that come to mind? Well, I mean, you've got some of our incredible success companies. Okay, so Airbnb and Instacart and Strike, you know, some of these really successful companies. But then you've got, you know, I was sort of mentioning this AI-enabled roll-up strategy. I mean, you've got companies, I'll take Crescendo is a good one. This is a call center business where we're automating contact centers.

[00:14:22] And you think, okay, most of us, we've gotten on a call with an agent. It's painful. Yeah. Cable company, utility company. If you're pulling at your... You're hitting a zero a million times, you're trying to talk to somebody, right? Yeah. How do you make that a much smarter, faster, polite experience using AI and productizing that and focusing on the outcome of that scenario and not just the inputs? And so that's where this business Crescendo is really revitalizing the entire thinking around call centers,

[00:14:52] but also acquiring companies like Partner Hero almost recently to scale their solutions broadly. So even something that historically has created consumer pain and has, by the way, very little to do with a Striper and Instacart, etc. It's still, I think, a super interesting part of our business. I'd also mention our General Catalyst Institute. Again, when you think about going from a venture capital firm to a global investment and transformation company, what does that mean? It means that we're doing incredible bets beyond venture check writing. And so this institute is our policy arm.

[00:15:21] It's how do we bridge federal government with startups? How do we demystify on both sides? How do we help inform AI regulation, which we know is coming and is actively being... Do you think it's coming? We do. Especially with this administration, it seems so wild west. I think it's going to be light. Yeah. But I think a light framework would be helpful. And I think we saw what happened with the internet, with social. I mean, you ultimately need a little bit of guidance. It's not totally chaotic.

[00:15:44] I mean, the good news is, love and I hate them, but David Sachs was an entrepreneur and ran a company and understands AI. And most people that have been in the White House that have been in these positions in the past, just are completely disconnected from technology. And I think it's actually a good thing. Yeah. I think I'm bullish on what's to come on that front. I do think that merging on those fronts is going to be super important for us, particularly as we want to actually help entrepreneurs and founders build enduring businesses.

[00:16:10] That can only happen with a strong partnership between the public and the private sector. So the call center instance is obviously interesting for a lot of reasons. We've heard Karna say that they were able to essentially automate their call center. And now they're saying they're apparently they're recreating Salesforce and all these SaaS platforms as well, because they know how to build so quickly. And we'll see if that becomes the case. But in the case of the call center, it did cost a lot of jobs. And I'm sure that your company that's coming in is helping companies be more efficient,

[00:16:39] which ultimately does mean job loss. And it's going to happen everywhere, right? It's going to happen every corner. What do you think is going to happen with the job loss and resulting efficiency? What do those people do? What should they learn? How do they reskill? It's such an important question. And you think about this even on a country by country basis. A lot of blue collar jobs were offshored to, let's say, the Philippines. Yeah. Especially. Costa Rica. You're re-entering the productivity, but not the jobs.

[00:17:05] So what do you, I think governments have to take re-skilling and upskilling really seriously. I think there has to be training programs. Ideally, you're redistributing talent towards problems that can be solved. Assuming that you- Still worth it. It's a toss, it's a skill set. But it's a point that I don't think enough of us are talking about because it's such an important implication economically for countries and for, I mean, for all of us. When we think about just what is the nature of industry in 10 years with legal, with accounting, even with marketing and brand building, what does this all look like?

[00:17:35] I mean, it's, you can either say it's unfathomable or you can just try to imagine it and build accordingly. Yeah. After I get off stage where I speak around AI, all around the world, people come up to me and they say, what does this mean for my son or daughter? What should they learn? What should they be focused on? And it is just such a different world now. I mean, if you think about the education complex in America, it's largely based upon memorizing information and regurgitating it.

[00:18:03] So if you were a master at memorization and regurgitation, you would be able to, if you look back at your K through 12 or even higher ed, you'd be able to do pretty well. You'd ace every test. But now the notion of retaining knowledge is almost commoditized. I completely agree. And so I think I observed a few things. One is there seems to be a self-selected disparity between sort of Luddites and early adopters. Yes. And that does seem to be psychological.

[00:18:30] I still hear a lot of fear around AI adoption, but then I see other people who are running toward that. So I think that's a decision we all have to make when we get out of bed in the morning is are we going to be scared? I think it's a choice. I agree with you. So I think there's that. On the education front, I completely agree there's going to have to be reform. You know, I remember some of my engineering classes in college, I would say to our professor, these exams and these quizzes are so hard. I've never seen these questions before. Like, why do you make it so difficult? He said, that's real life. You never see the same problem twice.

[00:19:00] We're teaching you the theorems. We're teaching you the logic and the approach to problem solve. But then it's up to you to actually apply yourself. Exactly. But like, that's hard. But that's not hard. How do you teach that? How do you scale that? How do you enforce that? What do you do with adults if they don't have that? I mean, it's such an interesting... It's just, I mean, my take on it is when you think about problem solving, creativity, critical thinking, that's what's going to matter more. And I think success in your career is much more about understanding and identifying the

[00:19:30] problems that need to be solved versus how to solve the problem. Because if you think about how to solve the problem is a lot of what a knowledge comes in. And ultimately, that's where AI, I think, is going to do a lot of the work. But AI doesn't know what problem needs to be solved. And I think if you, that's leveling up. Yeah. It's that orchestration, sort of view yourself as the train conductor looking around the curve. I agree with that. But I also still think, especially in our industry, taste, understanding of, and for need, the creativity, a lot of this, quote unquote, soft skills are still going to be incredibly important.

[00:19:59] And to your point, how do you use the data, the analytics, the tooling to make better decisions and to inform business strategy versus relying on it to answer them? And those that say like it's the end of the creative is a bad thing, like Candle was already hugely popular before AI became a thing. And it's not like that's people being Picasso with their creative. They're using templates. So we were already looking for ways to be more efficient with creativity before AI got likely adopted. And now it's just going to accelerate even further.

[00:20:26] There's also, you know, I had this mentor who would always say, you don't have to be possessive when you're prolific. And I also think that's kind of an interesting mindset. She just says where you can, because of generative AI especially, you can just churn out ideas. You can really test and learn and iterate at the scale that hasn't been seen before. And so that allows you to think more broadly and almost bigger picture about the future. Yeah. A lot of large companies, even tech companies are really struggling with this transformation.

[00:20:53] One thing I found that Susie is that when AI first became widely accessible, I pushed it to my engineering keep and I wasn't getting a lot back. And what I realized over time is it's not just like another feature build or even shifting from web to mobile. It is about the problem that needs to be solved. It really is the CEO's job to fully understand it and figure out how it's going to drive true inside out transformation. And in order for the CEO to make the decision, what I've learned is I actually need to know everything about it.

[00:21:22] So I personally spent 80 to 90% of my time. I've counted so many of my ongoing meetings, not only just knowing about it, I wrote a book about it, but I also built it. So now I can build almost anything in AI. I'm not a coder, but I've learned how. And now when I go into meetings, I know what's possible. So when it comes to larger builds, it's like, oh, I know you can do this. And if you don't, you should figure it out. And it wasn't until I did that that I felt like things really started to move.

[00:21:49] I find that a lot of large companies, the CDO is either like on a golden package and just doesn't want to publicly trade at large companies, doesn't want to risk it, right? Or they don't even know where to start. And because of it, you're going to see history repeat itself for a lot of large companies are going to be like, why didn't we do this? Like you look at the circuit cities of the world of Toys R Us that didn't get on e-commerce and you see that now they're bankrupt. I think the same thing is going to happen with so many companies. And that's exactly why the term we use is applied AI. Yeah.

[00:22:16] And we need to apply these like operative word because it's exactly that. It's how you can apply it into your business to actually make it sing. It's not going to do itself. Yeah. So your job, obviously, if you do your job well, entrepreneurs are thinking about your firm when they want to raise capital and LPs are thinking about your firm when they want to deploy capital, right? And your newer and CDB knows a world-class brand. What works in terms of the tactics that you've been deploying to communicate your message to those constituents?

[00:22:44] So I'm a big believer in highly coordinated on me channel pushes. Okay. And what that means is when we know we have an announcement to make rather than something important to say, how can we sort of galvanize the troops across all channels, across all stakeholders on the same day? Yeah. Like be highly- Frequency. Breakthrough. And so on the press side, that means, okay, maybe we have an exclusive, but also we know

[00:23:13] that after that exclusive goes live, we're going to pitch extensively proactively. It means we have a full social amplification plan. It means we're publishing on our website. It means that we are engaging across email with LPs, with founders, with business partners. It means we're activating our internal employee base and that we're measuring for share of voice, for breakthrough, for also sentiment of how is this landed? So basically you're picking a day that you're going to own. You're picking your spot. Yeah. And it can bolt it onto an event. That's the gravy, right?

[00:23:41] If you can activate it, connect to a conference or another moment where you have sort of that convening power, that's fantastic too. But I find that what a lot of people get wrong is they sort of dribble things out. It's sporadic and you don't move the needle. And so you have to reverse engineer it. I've never thought about that, but it's so true. I mean, we have so much noise out there. And if you own a day, even if it's one day, you're getting the message across that day and people are going to see and hear and everywhere, and then they'll get the message. Well, and so I'll give you an example. Yes.

[00:24:08] We launched our new brand platform called Venture Beyond. And the idea, kind of in line with what I'm sharing, going from a venture capital firm to this global investment and transformation company, we needed the brand identity to reintroduce ourselves to the world after 25 years of what do we stand for? And so this brand identity across verbal and visual, this new website, social, the whole sort of reintroduction, we intentionally timed it along with the major fundraising announcement, which is that we were announcing Fund 12, all of this new capital was coming in.

[00:24:37] And we knew that that news would break through, but then people would come to our website and people would come to our social. So we wanted to be ready at that same point. And so I do think that this is where it's important to sort of look at the world as an editorial calendar and pick your spots here again. Yeah. Awesome. So let's shift gears a little bit as we wrap up. I mean, you obviously shaped me as somebody who was so well-rounded in terms of their knowledge and somebody who commands the discipline that they're in. And you're obviously very passionate about all this, which I know is incredibly important.

[00:25:06] What do you do for inspiration and to keep your finger on the pulse of where things are headed, especially topics like AI, where things are changing so quickly? And more broadly, how do you spend your time in a given week? What does the pie chart of your week look like? That's interesting. So I have this term playing in traffic. I do like to speak with really interesting people on a diverse slate of people, meaning founders, entrepreneurs, business leaders, anything from Fortune 500 to early stage companies, policymakers, marketers.

[00:25:34] I like to intentionally have a well-rounded sort of cabinet on any given week. I do think it's really important to go to other people's events and hear how they frame their thought leadership, their programming intentionally and sort of ingest that and take stock. Of course, reading the news, I have a number of favorites, which I'm happy to share. How I spend my time, I mean, it depends to some degree on where we are in our sort of cycles of marketing. But I would say 70 to 80 percent is focused on the core marketing and comms work.

[00:26:04] So how do we equip our portfolio companies if they're coming out of stealth, if we're announcing a big fundraise, if we're helping them through maybe an important either liquidity event, a merger and acquisition, some important milestone for them, telegraphing our own brand through our own launches and announcements. And we've been quite busy on that front. We just recently announced General Catalyst Wealth, which is two and a half billion of assets under management and new wealth management arm for our clients. For example, people hiring, training, continuing to broaden my organization, which I'm super excited about.

[00:26:33] And that's been giving me a lot of energy. And then I exercise. It's important at the end of the day, 100 percent. I exercise. I try to get out of nature when I can. But it's a really sort of fast paced, high energy environment. And that's what I love about it. When you look back on your career to date and you're clearly just getting started with everything you're doing, what were some decisions you think you made right along the way, whether it's what you focused on or the company you've worked at, the people you got to know that I put you in a position you are at? I think there's a few things.

[00:27:01] One is I optimized for breadth over depth. That was intentional. So I thought early on, let me get exposure to different functions, to different facets of the business. I mean, even Deloitte doing engineering, consulting, working across different sectors from a consulting perspective at Facebook, starting off in products, but working across consumer products on the operation side and then going into business marketing, like really trying to see how different businesses run and how leaders make decisions. So getting that breadth rather than just going deep on any one domain.

[00:27:29] I thought that would be important to help me connect those dots later on. I think the second is I did focus on building what wasn't there. And I think that's something that you have so many of us forget is that everything's made up around us. I know. And no one knows anything, right? We're all just sure. We're building. And so how can you go from zero to one? I was constantly writing proposals, even of pilots, whether it was a new project, a new business idea and just anything. And the worst that can happen is someone says no, at least to be in that mindset of seeing

[00:27:58] what's not there and then building accordingly and at least pitching accordingly, I think is a really important muscle. And of course, your reputation is everything. It stays with you. And so acing your day job first, nailing your scope first before you expand and take on other things, being incredibly responsive and trusted as an employee, regardless of a company, I think is incredibly important. And that's something that you can skip past. Yeah, for sure. I love that.

[00:28:24] So we often wrap up our podcast passing our guests if there's a saying or a mantra that has driven their professional journey. I have a feeling you have a couple, but what comes to mind for you? It's something that my mom used to always say to me, which is, if not now, when? And if not me, who? And that inspired urgency in me and it inspired me to raise my hand and lean in. That's just, that's great. I'm glad that you raised your hand to be on a podcast today as well. I often don't get a ton of ideas leaving a podcast, but I do today. So I want to thank you for that.

[00:28:51] You obviously have great energy and a ton of ideas and it really inspired me. So thanks for joining us. So much. Bye. Absolutely. On behalf of Suzy and every team, thanks again to Ariel Gross Samuels, the Chief Marketing Communication Officer at GEMO Catalyst for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review to Speed of Culture Podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, see you soon, everyone. Take care. The Speed of Culture is brought to you by Suzy as part of the Adweek Podcast Network and A-Guest Creator Network.

[00:29:19] You can listen, subscribe to all Adweek's podcasts by visiting adweek.com slash podcasts. To find out more about Suzy, head to suzy.com and make sure to search for the Speed of Culture in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else podcasts are found. Click follow so you don't miss out on any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at Suzy, thanks for listening.

[00:29:39] See you soon.