TechCrunch is excited to partner with General Catalyst in New York for Include Office Hours. Spencer Lazar, Partner at General Catalyst, will be meeting with founders to provide key advice and guidance. Submit your application here.
In 2014, TechCrunch launched the Include Program in an effort to facilitate opportunities for underserved and underrepresented founders. Noting the significant gaps in the tech community, the Include Program opens the TC network to these founders.
Include Office Hours is a part of this program. Each month, TechCrunch partners with a VC firm in either New York or San Francisco. Each VC meets with these underserved or underrepresented founder for approximately 20 minutes.
Underserved and underrepresented founders include (but are not limited to) Female Founders, Black, Latino/a, Veterans, and LGBTQ.
This month we are partnering with General Catalyst in New York on Friday May 12th from 2-3pm ET. You can apply here.
Meet Spencer Lazar, Partner at General Catalyst:
Spencer Lazar is a partner at General Catalyst, a venture capital firm with offices in Boston, New York and Silicon Valley and approximately $3.75 billion in total capital raised. He is based in New York. His investment focus is on new service delivery models for both consumers and businesses, such as those at ClassPass, FundBox, Giphy, Lemonade and WayUp. He’s particularly excited by entrepreneurs who use technology to democratize access to products and services that previously were available only to a few.
The companies that interest him most offer services that leverage network effects driven by a community, a marketplace, or data. When a product can get better with each incremental user, customers win, competition suffers, and outcomes can be massive.
Spencer started his venture career at Insight Venture Partners, where he sourced and managed growth stage investments in 3P Learning (ASX: 3PL), BeyondTrust (acquired by Veritas Capital), and GenArts. He also worked at Accel Partners in London where he gained broad international perspective, and sourced and worked with companies such as Birchbox, Bonobos, ForgeRock, Hailo, Lyst, Top10, and Qriously. After that, he built Spontaneously, an early iOS-based mobile calendar.
Spencer graduated from Harvard University with a degree in economics