General Catalyst Partners, a Palo Alto, Calif. and Cambridge, Mass.-based venture capital and growth equity firm, announced today Dr. Stephen Herrod, a pioneer in the field of virtualization, will join the Palo Alto office as a Partner. Steve joins General Catalyst from VMware, the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions, where he served as the company’s Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Research and Development and has, over the course of eleven years, helped grow the company from 90 employees to over 13,000 employees.

With General Catalyst, Steve’s primary focus will be investing in and supporting the entrepreneurs at early-stage companies developing the next generation of technology infrastructure. Steve will also maintain a presence at VMware as a strategic advisor while continuing in his role as an advisor to EMC.

Steve, who has been named “CTO of the Year” by InfoWorld, played a pivotal role in the creation and development of virtualization technology. While at VMware, he helped build a world-class engineering organization that has created numerous industry-changing virtualization solutions and was active in developing VMware’s partner ecosystem, patent portfolio, and open source strategy. Prior, Steve served as senior director of software engineering for Transmeta Corporation, where he engineered an early form of virtualization known as “Code Morphing.” He also held previous engineering positions with Silicon Graphics and MIPS Technologies.

“Steve is a pioneer in virtualization and cloud technologies and we are incredibly pleased to have him join the General Catalyst partnership,” said Hemant Taneja, Partner at General Catalyst. “Steve will help lead the firm’s investment focus in next generation infrastructure technologies which we expect will go through significant transformation over the next decade.”

“Joining General Catalyst allows me to combine my three greatest professional passions: developing meaningful new technologies, building companies with strong technical teams and sharing my engineering and leadership experience,” said Steve. “I was particularly drawn to the firm’s focus of partnering closely with entrepreneurs and I look forward to living that credo each day.”

Steve holds a Ph.D. and M.S. from Stanford University and a BA from the University of Texas at Austin. Steve is passionate about the use of technology to advance primary education and serves on the Board of Peninsula School, a PK-8 progressive, independent school in Menlo Park, Calif. Connect with Steve on Twitter.

About General Catalyst Partners

General Catalyst Partners is a venture capital and growth equity firm that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs who are building the technology-based companies that will lead innovation and transform industries. Founded in 2000, General Catalyst Partners leverages its principals' extensive operational, business development and technological expertise to provide portfolio companies with a catalyst for success through business-building and partnership development assistance. General Catalyst has offices in Cambridge, MA and Palo Alto, CA. For more information, visit: www.generalcatalyst.com or https://twitter.com/gcvp.