General Catalyst’s Jeannette zu Fürstenberg on how to scale European moonshot ideas

**Amy Lewin** (0:02)
Hello, and welcome to Startup Europe, the monthly podcast from Sifted, where we interview the biggest and brightest names in Europe's startup ecosystem. Today's guest is Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, managing director at global VC firm, General Catalyst, and founder of La Famiglia VC, a Berlin-based early stage investor, which merged with General Catalyst last year in a move which caught everyone in the European venture scene's eye. Jeannette's investments include companies like HR Platform Deel, Logistics Startup Forto, HR Tech Unicorn Personio, Defense Unicorn Helsing, and AI Unicorn Mistral. She also sits on Helsing and Mistral's boards, giving her a front seat at two of Europe's most closely watched and exciting companies. So that gives us plenty to talk about today. Jeannette, thank you so much for joining me.

**Jeannette zu Fürstenberg** (0:50)
Thank you so much for having me. Good to see you.

**Amy Lewin** (0:52)
So it's been almost a year since La Famiglia merged with General Catalyst. Can you talk us through how did that union come about and why did that make sense for both parties to join forces?

**Jeannette zu Fürstenberg** (1:04)
Sure. So when I initially started on my journey with La Famiglia at the time, one of the first people I actually met in the Valley was Himant, who is the Global CEO of GC. I think he's always been an inspiring person to discuss all things, technology, innovation. But also, we've always aligned on our view that technology, innovation shouldn't stop at just funding companies that then get eventually sold to Meta or Facebook, for that matter, or Google, but rather think through how could technology really be a lever to industry transformation? Like what would need to happen in order to truly kickstart and transform industries? Himant has been initially on that journey in health and then expanded that into global resilience. And I've always been on that path since a child because I come from a traditional family business background and I've always cared deeply about European industry, which then ultimately led me on the path of La Famiglia and asked to truly always be very curious and very passionate about the sovereign interests of Europe as a whole and how to really activate European strength in a meaningful way. And so that's been the origins of, let's say, Himant and my friendship and us coming together. And then I think in the past seven years, we've done I think over six or seven co-investments in the companies like Stripe, like Ramp, like Maven, Mistral and housing. And I think that just led us to also understand that we work together very well. And I think the main reason for us really joining forces was the shared understanding and mission that Europe in its current shape and form needs more skilled capital to truly sort of achieve a closing of that productivity gap that we still have to the US which is ever-widening and which largely comes down to technological sovereignty and how we can truly create more ambitious and big outcomes in Europe. And I feel like Helsing and Mistral are great examples of that, where, you know, it's this one thing to kind of seed these businesses. But I was always a bit sad to then just kind of see them float away and not really have as much involvement and as much ability to support them in the ways that I would like to. And it's actually great to now be in a position where you can really put real capital and real platform muscle behind companies you believe in and really help them shape up to become global category leaders. So I think that's one of the key insights. And the second part is GC has historically had a very, very strong footprint in building companies. So they have hatched companies like Kayak, like Demandware, like Livongo, all of which were really big and meaningful exits. And I think this whole general strategy in the way that they embrace creation, which comes down to incubating businesses, comes down to venture buyouts, venture transformations, is something that I feel like is a very interesting tool and a very interesting skill to bring to Europe as a platform offering. It really might be very aligned with my sort of entrepreneurial mind and my entrepreneurial view on how I like to go about my day. I very much like to sort of spend time with founders, imagining the future and having more scaled capital solutions in different ways, shapes and forms. But also sort of the broader platform muscle to release and drive that was part of us coming together and great fun since.

**Amy Lewin** (4:29)
So how has your day to day changed? What is it like being part of that bigger organization? What benefits has it brought?