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General Catalyst Managing Director Neil Sequeira Launching New Firm

6 October 2015

p(WSJ) General Catalyst Partners Managing Director Neil Sequeira, an early investor in Jessica Alba’s Honest Co. and LatAm startups, is launching his own venture firm to focus on early-stage companies.

Mr. Sequeira told The Wall Street Journal he is in the process of selecting a firm name and will begin raising roughly $100 million for the maiden fund during early 2016. Mr. Sequeira will remain close with General Catalyst and retain board seats on the Honest Co., Highwinds Network Group, DECA/Kin Community and other portfolio companies, but no longer make new investments on behalf of the bi-coastal firm, which is still deploying the $675 million Fund VII raised in 2013.

Mr. Sequeira is the latest in a line of partners from firms including Accel Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to leave and launch smaller independent funds targeting early-stage opportunities.

“My passion is in early stage and high ownership where I work with companies from beginning to end,” Mr. Sequeira told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s tough to do that in a very large fund.”

Mr. Sequeira said he’d been thinking about the move for some time, but he began examining it more closely last year after several groups approached him and asked him to invest on their behalf.