Facebook Co-Founder Joins General Catalyst
Chris Hughes has more professional accomplishments at 26 year-old than most of us will have in a lifetime. He co-founded Facebook with college roomates Mark Zuckerburg and Dustin Moskovitz, before leaving in 2007 to help the fledgling Obama campaign launch an online media strategy. The result was My.BarackObama.com, which many credit with getting the Illinois Senator elected.
Now Hughes has a new fulltime gig: Entrepreneur-in-residence with venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners.
“Chris has a unique connection to what it takes to build and start entrepreneurial companies, especially those driven by the energy of young people,” says Neil Sequeira, a partner with General Catalyst. “What we really want him to do is to be out there in the community helping young entrepreneurs and encouraging them with infrastructure and guidance.”
Sequeria adds that Hughes will split his time between Cambridge (where GC is headquartered) and New York (where GC doesn’t have an office). It’s unclear if he’ll end up sitting on any GCC board seats, although he’ll certainly be active as an advisor to relevant portfolio companies.
This is all welcome news, given the disappointed blog darts Hughes took last week for accepting a part-time advisory job with political PR firm GMMB Communications (I think the technosphere wanted him back at Facebook).
Expect a formal announcement from GC tomorrow morning.
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kel kelly said on March 18, 2009
good for chris! general catalyst is a great group of peeps and one of the few east coast vcs who get web 2.0 and where it’s going. the east coast venture community needs more peeps with chris’ experience. it’s time to catch up to the bay area when it comes to hot internet start-ups and web 2.0. the earlier news of chris joining a pr firm only makes our industry (i own a pr firm) look like fools. these traditional pr agencies need to immerse themselves in web 2.0 vs. hiring someone to cover their asses. rock on chris!
deltamike67 said on March 18, 2009
Article in today’s WSJ told of an exodus of Facebook executives. Evidently the 26 year old wonder boy “doesn’t play well with others”. Maybe his adopted managerial style is “my way or the highway”. It may work for awhile as long as he’s right.
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