About Holly Maloney: “The best businesses offer customers something truly valuable, whether it’s mission-critical infrastructure, an amazing experience, or an application that simplifies processes. My philosophy as an investor is to bring entrepreneurs exceptional value through a trusted partnership — helping to scale their companies to the next level while further innovating, building unique cultures, and delivering an excellent customer experience.”

I discovered my passion for collaborating with successful management teams early in my profession while advising technology companies at AGC. I learned from the start that the best relationships between companies and investors are based on philosophical alignment around the opportunity at hand and how to maximize it. Working alongside founders and executives as a board member has been critical to developing an innate sense for finding that alignment, building on it, and achieving a shared vision for the business.

I began my career as an investor at Guidepost Growth Equity (FKA: North Bridge Growth Equity) several years ago. I worked hard to build a foundation for what I hoped to be a long-term career: sourcing and executing investments in software-based companies; and cultivating trusted relationships with entrepreneurs and industry executives. While there, I focused on human capital management, marketplaces, vertical software, and infrastructure services. I remain interested in these categories of companies, which operate with highly scalable revenue models that may include subscriptions, transactions, and high margin services.

At General Catalyst, I focus on later-stage companies that have already achieved some success and have demonstrated capital efficiency prior to our involvement, like talent optimization platform Predictive Index and mental health platform SonderMind.

Scaling a successful business into one that defines or disrupts a category often involves pattern recognition – knowing in advance how events are likely to unfold – and the team at General Catalyst has those insights in abundance. I am fortunate to be surrounded by the wealth of experience within this team.

While I find true passion in my work, I also enjoy being as active (and admittedly, competitive) as I can – running, hiking, biking, exploring. Surfing is a new discovery, so I’m eager to hear about your favorite breaks. I am a proud member of the Board of Trustees of Bowdoin College and a steering committee member of AllRaise.

** The above bio is taken from https://www.generalcatalyst.com/team/holly-maloney/

Below are the She-VC topics we discussed:

1. VC is a very hard industry to prepare for. There is no MBA or coursework that prepares you for early stage or late stage investing. Tell me about your past experiences that helped you to be in the growth fund manager role.

2. It is said that venture capital is all about identifying patterns in time. Yet some of the bigger ideas are unpredictable and sometimes those investment decisions can be non-consensus among Partners. To invest in such unpredictable big ideas one has to learn and see things differently, analyze markets that others are finding it non-sexy to invest.

3. Can you elaborate about the new market opportunities for emerging growth fund managers? And how has the market changed in the last 5 years?

4. Venture Capital is one industry that has not been disrupted.. As we are seeing more people bringing movement into this industry how do you see biases and prejudices that played in the past come in effect for people like you who are catalyst for change. Please discuss the opportunities you are creating through the AllRaise platform.

5. Venture Capital is one asset class which is also cyclical. The boom-bust cycle, appetite for high risk. Considering time diversification where above-average returns tend to offset below-average returns over long investment horizons. If returns are independent from one year to the next, the standard deviation of annualized returns diminishes with time. What do you think about the rise of the Full Stack fund?

6. I think venture capital is not a job but it is a lifestyle. So how do you prepare yourself for such a lifestyle? What learning habits do you have or acquired ? How do you analyze various thinking models? What are the LP resources that you read and follow?

#venturecapital #startups #unicorn