Katie Hughes

Partner, Executive Talent at General Catalyst

Partner, Executive Talent
2018 - Current
General Catalyst is a global venture capital firm with entrepreneurial DNA. We are fortunate to partner with the founders of over 600 exceptional companies including Airbnb, Canva, ClassPass, Color, Deliveroo, Gitlab, Grammarly, Guild, Gusto, Instacart, Livongo, Monzo, Oscar, Ro, Samsara, Snapchat, Stripe and Warby Parker. The Executive Talent team partners with ambitious entrepreneurs on their path to becoming world-class leaders, gives them a competitive advantage in building high-performing and diverse teams and works with top operators as they take on a portfolio approach to their careers by curating opportunities to join the best companies as operators, board and advisory board members and join cap tables as angel investors.

Founding Partner, Coalition Network
2020
The Coalition Network was built to diversify the cap tables of some of the world’s most promising start-ups by creating a community of prominent women and women of color who are eager to leverage their talents and expertise as founders, operators and angel investors.

Founding Advisor
2016
PeopleTech Partners is an advisory and investment group that leverages insights of People Operations leaders operating in high-growth companies. We accelerate the growth of early-stage people technology start-ups in our portfolio through providing targeted product feedback, launching pilots with leading companies, and helping to shape the product roadmap.

Talent Partner
2012 - 2018
Katie joined DFJ and DFJ Growth in 2012 and was promoted to partner in 2015. She worked alongside her partners to drive their internal organizational design and development and supported the firm's entrepreneurs with their human capital strategies including executive leadership, team building, recruiting, compensation, onboarding, management, culture, and internal communications. DFJ's investments include Box (BOX), Coinbase (COIN), Cylance, Nervana (Intel), Planet, Redfin (RDFN), SolarCity (SCTY), SpaceX, Tesla Motors (TSLA), Twilio (TWLO), Twitter (TWTR), Tumblr (Yahoo!), Unity, Yammer (Microsoft), and Zoox (Amazon).

Managing Director
2010 - 2012
Betts Recruiting supports venture-backed, high-growth technology companies scale their go-to-market functions in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and Austin. Katie was the first employee at Betts Recruiting after Carolyn Betts started the company. Today, Betts employs over 100 people, has offices across the US, serves hundreds of clients per year and is arguably the pre-eminent firm for startups scaling their go-to market teams.

Communications
2007 - 2009
Elected the first female Governor of North Carolina in one of the most competitive races in the country.