Venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners has expanded its investment team by naming internet technology and media business executive Paul Sagan as an XIR and partner.
Sagan brings a broad range of experience as an entrepreneur, having served in senior positions during the creation of several internet ventures.
XIRs are founders, CEOs and visionaries with deep domain expertise who partner with General Catalyst to identify investments in profitable companies in which they can be a catalyst for value creation and hyper-growth via a chairman or CEO role.
Sagan will focus on opportunities that capitalise on trends in big data, cloud computing, hyper-connectivity and mobility.
Most recently, Sagan was CEO of Akamai Technologies from 2005 to 2013. He continues to serve as vice chairman of the Akamai board of directors. Previously, Sagan held several senior executive positions at Time Warner, including president and editor of new media at Time Inc. and senior vice president of cable programming at Time Warner Cable. He was a co-founder of Road Runner, the world's first consumer broadband service, Pathfinder, one of the first Web portals, and NY1 News, a regional cable news service.
Sagan is also a director of EMC Corp and iRobot and he is non-executive chairman of Datto, a General Catalyst portfolio company that provides cloud-based data back-up and disaster recovery and business continuity services. Sagan is a three-time Emmy Award winner for broadcast journalism and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“The breadth of Paul’s business experience and network, and the industry leadership he’s demonstrated are extraordinary and invaluable to the entrepreneurs and founders he mentors,” says David Fialkow, a managing director at General Catalyst Partners. “We are extremely pleased that Paul is joining our team to focus on our XIR programme, which we built to leverage the unique value that exceptional leadership can bring to partnerships with founders and entrepreneurs to build phenomenal businesses.”
“A core value of General Catalyst’s approach to investing is to support entrepreneurs and founders, and that philosophy was one of the most important factors that attracted me to join the firm and the XIR programme for the next phase of my career,” says Sagan. “Their track record with companies such as Kayak, Demandware, Datalogix, Hubspot, CLEAResult, and Datto speaks to the success of the firm’s overall investment focus and its XIR programme.”
