Chris Hughes, the Facebook co-founder who left the social networking company two years ago to head up Barack Obama’s enormously successful Web outreach campaign, is coming back to the startup world as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at General Catalyst Partners. He will divide his time between Boston and New York. His role at the VC firm will be to work closely with young entrepreneurs and guide them through the steps of building a business.
While some investors are fleeing the Boston (cough, Paul Graham), Hughes thinks there is a lot of pent-up entrepreneurial energy on the East Coast. He tells me:
I’m going to General Catalyst to help facilitate the emergence of new entrepreneurs, particularly with a focus on the East Coast. I moved to New York in January and have been getting a sense of the lay of the land for a couple months. It’s pretty clear to me that there are a ton of smart people out there who have really good ideas — it’s just a question of really fostering an entrepreneurial culture with all the resources that people need.
I’m definitely hoping to mentor new entrepreneurs and at the same time also learn a lot more about the venture capital space as an EIR.
A young man himself at 25 Hughes is banking on his experience at both Facebook and in the Obama campaign. A recent profile in Fast Company describes how his creation, MyBarackObama, contributed to the campaign:
By the time the campaign was over, volunteers had created more than 2 million profiles on the site, planned 200,000 offline events, formed 35,000 groups, posted 400,000 blogs, and raised $30 million on 70,000 personal fund-raising pages.
Hughes joins another ex-Facebook executive into the world of venture investing. Last summer, former VP of Product Management Matt Cohler became a partner at Benchmark.
Good luck to him.
Huh? Because clearly luck is what he needs…
Gr8 to see him back. n Good luck from me too..
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Congrats on the new job. Will be interesting to see which projects he will be looking after at the VC firm.
What’s his significant background other than facebook co-founder? It is unbelievable to see someone being so successful so young. Are there common traits on these young entrepreneurs?
Phillips Academy boarding school.
Harvard University.
Common traits among the Facebook founders. All went to boarding school and Harvard.
Anyone know about General Catalyst? I like that Hughes will be focusing on young entrepreneurs but GC was completely pounded by thefunded community: http://thefunde...eneral+Catalyst
The interesting question is to ask about the skeletons at Facebook. Why do so many talented people leave before they cash in at Facebook?
Just wondering.
I’m sure his shares are still valid and increasing in value at Facebook…. no need to baby sit them
LOL, far from increasing in value…….
Congrats, Chris. If you want to see some entrepreneurial vigor in action on the East Coast, come hang with 2000+ folks at Twin Tech IV in DC on May 28th.
http://twintech....eventbrite.com
I’m wondering how well the VC industry will work with all of the new regulations, attacks on business, success and wealth creation that is accelerating due the Democrats/Liberals???
you are so full of it.
lots of facebook founders but none seem to have lasted very long and none have follow-up with anything noteworthy. this person still has much to prove before i listen to a word he says.
Wow. For someone who worked on the Obama campaign, he is not very smart to join the WORST VC FIRM on the east coast.
General Catalyst is by far the worst VC on the east coast. I have not seen a more entrepreneur UN-FRIENDLY VC in all of America. Any entrepreneur entering GC is bound to get screwed. I talk from first hand experience.
And now that they are in trouble with their limited partners, its only going to get worse. Deadpool.
Geez. Why do people not do their due diligence?
i am giddy that chris is heading to the east coast. aside from being a bunch of great peeps, general catalyst is one of the few east coast vcs who get web 2.0 and where the internet is headed. we need to add some savvy, iconic talent to this coast. reheating telecom icons from days gone by is part of our problem. the bay area has it all going on when it comes the internet and much of this is because the west coast venture world gets web 2.0. we need to pimp up our east coast image. the bay area is on “fiyah” as we say in boston. hopefully chris will turn up the heat back east. welcome chris!
It sounds like Chris is good at the community site type thing… building it, making it presentable and then seeing how things go… I am guessing he is no longer at facebook because he doesn’t have the business experience they want in execs and probably the same reason for Obama’s campaign, experience… I think at GC he will be a idea machine GC can hopefully profit off of but they could def screw him over too, so hopefully that won’t happen
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In trouble with general partners? Now what? If you piss off the entrepreneurs and the investors….then what???