Apply Now For TechCrunch Include Office Hours With General Catalyst

The next round of TechCrunch Include Office Hours are here! On March 8th, Niko Bonatsos, Deepak Jeevan Kumar, Steve Herrod, and Prateek Alsi of General Catalyst will join TechCrunch editors to provide advice and feedback to startups.

Launched in 2014, Include is TechCrunch’s diversity program, aimed at facilitating opportunities for underrepresented groups in tech to take their startups to the next level.

Office hours are part of that effort. Once monthly, TechCrunch works with its VC partners to ensure that founders of all backgrounds have an opportunity to build connections with top investors. To be considered for a meeting in the General Catalyst session fill out the application, by Wednesday, March 2 at 6 p.m. PT.

Underrepresented groups eligible for office hours include but are not limited to black, Latino, Native American, LGBT and female founders. Office hours will be held at General Catalyst’s offices in Palo Alto.

Now, to introduce our co-hosts.

Niko Bonatsos- Venture Partner
Niko is passionate about finding companies that might be perceived as crazy, funny, and controversial and enjoys investing in consumer products and services that streamline cumbersome business processes. He works closely with ClassDojo, GoButler, Kiwi, Listia, Pushbullet, and Snapchat to name a few.

Deepak Jeevan Kumar- Principal
Having personally designed large-scale distributed systems for some of the world’s fastest supercomputers, Deepak knows how to be the best-in-class cheerleader and the leverage point for entrepreneurs who are looking to change the worlds of cybersecurity, big data, storage and data center. At General Catalyst, he works closely with Altiscale, ContainerX, DataGravity, Illumio, Menlo Security, Minio, OGSystems, RiskRecon, Runscope and ThreatStream.

Steve Herrod -Managing Director
Steve focuses on companies aspiring to deliver significant advances to developers and to computing infrastructure. The thornier the problems, the better! He is an active board member at Datto, Illumio, Runscope, Menlo Security, Runscope, and Threat Stream.

Prateek Alsi -Principal
Prateek enjoys working at the intersection of technology and business, and continually pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. At General Catalyst he works with companies such as Cozy, Flite, Gusto, and Stripe. Additionally, he co-directs the GC Stripe Platform Fund to help start new ventures built using the Stripe Connect platform.

We’re thrilled to have General Catalyst join us! If you’re a startup in the pre-seed/seed stage and want to meet GC (and you should), get your application in.