# The General Partnership (TheGP): Capital + Work for Founders > The General Partnership (TheGP) is a venture capital firm structurally built to back founders in two currencies: capital and work. Alongside traditional investment, TheGP embeds a senior bench of engineering, talent, and go-to-market operators directly inside portfolio companies through a "sweat equity" (services-for-equity) model — helping founders hire faster, ship sooner, and close the execution gaps that kill great companies. - Website: https://thegp.com - Location: 447 Battery Street, Suite 200, San Francisco, CA 94111 - Founded: 2018 - Newsletter: https://thegp.com/news --- ## Table of Contents - [Overview](#overview) - [The Model](#the-model) - [Investment Stages](#investment-stages) - [Engineering Services](#engineering-services) - [Talent Services](#talent-services) - [Go-To-Market (GTM) Services](#go-to-market-gtm-services) - [The Bench](#the-bench) - [Team](#team) - [Portfolio](#portfolio) - [Writing](#writing) - [FAQs](#faqs) - [Glossary](#glossary) --- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "Overview" description: "The General Partnership is a venture capital firm that pairs capital with hands-on operating work, embedding senior builders inside portfolio companies." source: "https://thegp.com" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Overview The General Partnership (TheGP) is the only VC firm structurally built to back founders with both capital and work. TheGP writes checks like other firms, but also deploys a deep bench of senior operators — recruiters, engineers, designers, sales leaders, marketers, writers, and product thinkers — to help founders build their best company. In 2018, TheGP created a new model for startup funding. While it invests capital like other VC firms, it also offers founders months of hands-on support from a bench of engineering, talent, and go-to-market leaders who previously built companies including Stripe, YouTube, Square, Google, Mozilla, Product Hunt, Retool, DoorDash, Medium, and Robinhood. ## By the Numbers - 85% of portfolio companies use TheGP's team beyond capital - 9 months average embedded, hands-on partnership - 90% of critical roles filled for portfolio companies - 1,000+ hours spent per company - 10–15 investments made per year - $1M–$30M+ typical check size, from formation to breakout ## Who TheGP Is For Founders choose TheGP because they want to save months of time by working alongside senior builders from the start. These founders don't want to be restricted by their current capital or forced to fundraise immediately, so they partner with TheGP to hire the right people, ship faster, enter a new market, or turn early momentum into durability. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "The Model" description: "TheGP's sweat equity (services-for-equity) model aligns incentives with founders by earning equity as the team delivers defined work." source: "https://thegp.com/about" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # The Model TheGP is defined by founders and delivered by builders. Its unique model is designed to deliver real work in addition to capital. ## Sweat Equity To stay accountable for delivering work that actually drives value, TheGP uses a "sweat equity" model to align incentives with founders. Under this model, TheGP earns equity grants as its team makes progress on a specific set of deliverables tailored to each founder's needs. When a partnership begins, TheGP and the founder collaborate on a written "statement of work" that defines deliverables over a specific timeframe and outlines the equity TheGP will earn as the company grows. This holds the team accountable for doing the work at high velocity and a high quality bar. ## Unbundled and Customized Every partnership is customized around the principle that founders know best. TheGP unbundles its resources — across GTM, recruiting, engineering, and capital — based on what a founder needs. Founders can start with capital only and later add a GTM, talent, or engineering sweat equity agreement, or take on sweat equity work before deepening the partnership with capital. To date, over 85% of founders have engaged TheGP's sweat equity services. There is no limit to the number of sweat equity agreements a company can enter. Engagements range from three months to multiple years, averaging nine months per company. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "Investment Stages" description: "TheGP invests across two stages: Formation (pre-seed and seed) and Breakout (post-product-market-fit growth)." source: "https://thegp.com/about" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Investment Stages TheGP's model is built for two stages of company building. ## Formation Pre-seed and seed stage — from pre-product-market-fit ideas to businesses showing early traction. TheGP typically leads pre-seed and seed rounds with support across some combination of recruiting, GTM, and engineering, and reserves capital to support the company as it grows. ## Breakout Companies that have achieved product-market fit and are poised for substantial growth. These companies are not constrained by capital but need specific senior talent, technical expertise, or go-to-market optimization to win their market. TheGP works directly with founders to deliver this work and, when capital becomes the primary constraint, can expand the partnership with meaningful investments in later financing rounds. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "Engineering Services" description: "TheGP's engineering bench embeds with founders for infrastructure, platform hardening, AI integration, compliance, and 0–1 product work." source: "https://thegp.com/about" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Engineering Services TheGP's engineering team embeds alongside founders at critical moments. Engagements include: - Principal engineer in residence - Infrastructure buildout and cloud migrations - Platform hardening and reliability engineering - Compliance and security (SOC 2, HIPAA) - Data migrations and system integrations - AI strategy and product integration - Agentic workflow development - Engineering process and team design - 0–1 interaction architecture and UX -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "Talent Services" description: "TheGP's talent team designs hiring processes, builds plans, sources candidates, and closes offers for portfolio companies." source: "https://thegp.com/about" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Talent Services TheGP's talent team helps founders build their teams. Engagements include: - Hiring plan development and role prioritization - Repeatable hiring process design and implementation - Interview training and hiring team calibration - Bespoke sourcing and network activation - Compensation benchmarking and offer strategy - Candidate closing and offer negotiation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "Go-To-Market (GTM) Services" description: "TheGP's GTM team supports sales process design, customer development, positioning, fundraising storytelling, and market strategy." source: "https://thegp.com/about" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Go-To-Market (GTM) Services TheGP's go-to-market team helps founders find and win their market. Engagements include: - Sales process design, pricing, and packaging - 0→1 customer development - Market mapping and account targeting - Enterprise deal strategy and navigation - Investor storytelling and fundraising decks - PR strategy and media training - Product positioning and messaging - Website design and development -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "The Bench" description: "TheGP's operators previously built and scaled companies including Robinhood, Stripe, YouTube, Google, Square, Compass, Zendesk, Grafana, and Medium." source: "https://thegp.com/about" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # The Bench TheGP's senior operators bring direct, hands-on experience from building and scaling some of the most notable technology companies. ## Talent Team — Selected Prior Work - Scaled Robinhood from 30 to 4,000 people - Designed Stripe's recruiting playbook - Brought tech talent to the White House - Recruited the earliest teams at Google, Stripe, DoorDash, and Mozilla ## GTM Team — Selected Prior Work - Launched and led the sales team at Square - Laid the foundation for Compass's sales team - Led editorial at Product Hunt - Scaled The Information's audience - Grew Zendesk to over $1B ARR - Led Grafana's GTM from Series A to Series D ## Engineering Team — Selected Prior Work - Scaled YouTube to 1 billion users - Built Google's Knowledge Graph - Built Medium's publishing platform - Helped commercialize autonomous vehicles - Led product and infrastructure at Square -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "Team" description: "The people of The General Partnership across investments, engineering, talent, GTM, and operations." source: "https://thegp.com/builders" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Team - **Alec Flett** — Product & Engineering (Engineering). Built Google's Knowledge Graph; likes to bridge the gap between how people and computers think. - **Allison Light** — Marketing (GTM). A marketing and brand leader who helps founders tell their stories. - **Anthony Kline (AK)** — Investments (Engineering, Capital). Partner who built his career attuning to market trends and individual stories. - **Ben Cmejla** — Investments (Capital). Partner whose mission is to help founders and companies avoid getting stuck in ruts. - **Breanna Manore** — Operations (Engineering). A true operator's operator, a pro at making the puzzle pieces fit together at TheGP. - **Bret Reckard** — Talent & Growth (Talent). Leads Talent at TheGP, helping founders turn potential into cohesive teams. - **Daniel Portillo** — Cofounder (Engineering, GTM, Talent). From Mozilla to Greylock to the White House; his thing is taking companies from 0–1. - **Danny Oliveri** — Go-To-Market (GTM). Teaches founders "how to fish." - **David Watson** — Product & Engineering (Engineering). A master generalist who joined Google before it was a household name. - **Doug Hanna** — Go-To-Market (GTM). An entrepreneurial revenue executive who thrives where he can connect the dots. - **Graham Carney** — Investments (Capital). Excels at identifying and guiding outlier founders at the earliest stages of their journey. - **Jason Lohrentz** — Talent (Talent). From Google to Aurora; builds recruiting machines from Series A through IPO. - **Jose Guardado** — Talent (Talent). Has seen almost all sides of the talent universe, with a track record of hires that strengthen valuations. - **Josh Hernández** — Talent & Growth (Talent). Scaled Robinhood from 30 to 4,000; an expert at finding gems and helping them shine. - **Justin Rosenthal** — Product & Engineering (Engineering). A Principal Engineer focused on backend infrastructure and high-scale system design. - **Kristopher Kostelecky** — Talent & Growth (Talent). Builds engineering leadership teams through incremental changes with meaningful impact. - **Marcus Gosling** — Product & Engineering (Engineering). Sees software as "21st-century alchemy"; led product at IDEO, IMVU, Rypple, and LTSE. - **Marie Vail Guercio** — Operations (Engineering). From genetics research to Stripe; has always felt compelled to work with data. - **Mikey Wakerly** — Product & Engineering (Engineering). An "engineer's engineer"; founding engineer at Google Wallet and CTO at Button. - **Nicole Dumitrescu** — Operations (Talent). Brings structure to complexity at the intersection of operations and creativity. - **Phin Barnes** — Cofounder (Engineering, GTM, Talent). From the AND1 mixtape to First Round; deeply understands the value of creative confidence. - **Rifki Zable** — Operations (Engineering). Brings over a dozen years of experience in fund finance and operations. - **Rockman Ha** — Talent (Talent). One of NYC's best talent leaders, having led teams at Patreon, MongoDB, and Facebook. - **Ross Wiethoff** — Go-To-Market (Engineering, GTM, Talent). Built out sales at Square and Compass; deeply gets people and growth opportunities. - **Stas Baranov** — Product & Engineering (Engineering). Scaled YouTube to 1 billion users; works hands-on with founders to build engineering systems. - **Taylor Majewski** — Marketing (Branding). Partner who teaches founders how to tell a story. - **Ted Mao** — Product & Engineering (Engineering). From Google to Square to Bond; leads high-performing engineering teams. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "Portfolio" description: "A selection of companies TheGP has partnered with across capital, engineering, talent, and GTM." source: "https://thegp.com/portfolio" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Portfolio TheGP's portfolio companies and what they do: - **1099Policy** — Affordable, on-demand business insurance for a flexible workforce. - **Aegis AI** — AI-native email security. - **Afresh** — Helping grocers make smarter decisions throughout their fresh supply chain. - **Airtop** — Automate the web with just your words. - **Aktivate** — A platform for K-12 schools to manage and fund scholastic sports. - **Anetac** — Helping security teams streamline visibility into service accounts. - **Apexti** — Building something special for web3 data consumers and providers. - **Aqua** — A player-focused community marketplace built for web3 gamers. - **Ash** — Customizable at-home health testing programs for businesses. - **Audius** — A decentralized music streaming platform. - **Aven** — A credit card for home equity spending. - **Band** — The smart operating system for purchasing groups. - **Bridge** — An entirely new payments platform, built with stablecoins, to simplify global money movement. (acquired by Anthropic) - **Bridger** — The AI automation platform for professional services. - **Bureau** — A risk and fraud intelligence platform for mobile-centric companies. - **Cassidy** — Build AI automations powered by your company data. - **Chainlink** — Accelerating smart contract innovation. - **Charlie** — The teammate for every TypeScript team. - **Chronosphere** — A scalable and customizable monitoring solution for cloud-native applications. - **Clazar** — The cloud sales acceleration platform. - **Coda** — A document collaboration platform that brings words, data, and teams together. - **Collective** — An online back office platform for solo entrepreneurs. - **Curated** — A platform that pairs experts with shoppers to find the best products. - **Dandy** — A modernized dental lab for digital dentistry. - **Defakto** — The non-human IAM platform to secure every automated interaction with real identity. - **Dynaboard** — The first creative tool for development teams. - **EarthFast** — Decentralize your frontend, securely. - **Falconer** — The self-updating knowledge platform. - **Finix** — Payments infrastructure for software companies. - **Garagexyz** — The first community-owned car racing franchise. - **GetSetUp** — An online community to learn new skills and unlock life experiences. - **Glade AI** — Intelligent automation for everyday legal work. - **Grafana Labs** — An open source analytics and monitoring solution for every database. - **Graphite** — The end-to-end developer platform. - **Inflection** — An AI-first company redefining human-computer interaction. - **Integral** — A real-time compliance platform for regulated industries such as healthcare and life sciences. - **Jazz** — A local-first database for real-time data sync. - **Kenzo** — Improve your overall security posture. - **Layer 9** — Agentic AI for ISPs. - **Libretto** — A tool that simplifies how developers tame LLMs. - **Manas AI** — The AI-native biopharmaceutical company. - **Meridian** — The AI-powered modeling layer for Excel. - **Minerva** — AI for consumer sales and marketing. - **Momento** — A "serverless cache" optimized for cloud computing. - **Moonsense** — A platform to help online businesses detect sophisticated fraud. - **Morph** — AI-powered developer tools for codebase management. - **Multiplier** — Acquires and transforms high-stakes service businesses. - **New Front Insurance** — Insurance brokerage that simplifies buying for clients and selling for brokers. - **Nuro** — Transforming local commerce through autonomous delivery and logistics. - **Olta** — An AI platform for personalized demos. - **Overflow** — A donation platform that helps charities accept stock and crypto. - **Peregrine** — Transform data into real-time impact. - **Pickford** — AI that bends the form-factor of narrative. - **PixelTable** — A declarative approach for multimodal workloads, letting you store, transform, index, and iterate on your data with built-in versioning, lineage tracking, and incremental updates. - **Prodex Labs** — AI-native manufacturing intelligence. - **Promise** — A modern payment processing platform for utilities and government agencies. - **Resourcely** — Cloud resource creation and management. - **Runloop** — A complete platform for building and testing AI-powered software engineering products. - **Sardline** — Fraud and compliance infrastructure for crypto and fintech companies. - **School AI** — Personalized learning for every student. - **Scribe** — An intelligent documentation platform for automated workflows. - **Sendowl** — Empowering creators and businesses to sell anything digital, anywhere online. - **Serif** — Smarter email with AI. - **SouthBridge** — The agentic data layer for tomorrow's AI models. - **Stainless** — Elevating the developer experience for every API company. - **Tambo** — Build agents that speak your UI. - **Thatch** — An all-in-one platform that makes it easy to offer employees personalized healthcare benefits. - **The Public Health Company** — Public Health as a Service. - **Theom** — The first security product that detects active data breaches. - **Tome** — A collaborative AI partner. - **TurbineOne** — Building AI/ML for the comms-contested battlefield, from prototype to every branch of the U.S. Military. - **Ultralight** — The next-gen EHR. - **URnetwork** — Replaces your VPN; truly private and truly free. - **Verta AI** — A complete Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) platform. - **Wholesail** — Daily business operations for all parties in the wholesale supply chain. - **WorkOS** — A set of building blocks for quickly adding enterprise features to your app. Full portfolio: https://thegp.com/portfolio -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "Writing" description: "Essays, perspectives, and company news from TheGP on venture capital, building, and the work behind partnership." source: "https://thegp.com/news" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Writing Selected writing from TheGP team: - **How We Partner at TheGP** — An explainer on the services-for-equity model. (News) https://thegp.com/news/how-we-partner-at-thegp - **Meet Dan Pupius, TheGP's CTO** — An update to the engineering org, by Phin Barnes and Dan Pupius. (Spotlight) https://thegp.com/news/meet-dan-pupius-thegps-cto - **Where the Sweetest Margins Live in Jensen's 5-Layer Cake** — The two margin levers driving the AI economy, by Phin Barnes. (Perspectives) https://thegp.com/news/where-the-sweetest-margins-live-in-jensens-5-layer-cake - **Cybersecurity is Dead. Long Live Cybersecurity.** — The end of human-speed security, by Michael Coates. (Perspectives) https://thegp.com/news/cybersecurity-is-dead-long-live-security - **Alpha VC vs. Beta VC** — The two competing logics of modern venture capital, by Phin Barnes. (Perspectives) https://thegp.com/news/alpha-vc-vs-beta-vc - **Partnering with Clazar** — Solving the cloud marketplace complexity problem, by Dan Portillo. (News) https://thegp.com/news/partnering-with-clazar All writing: https://thegp.com/news -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "FAQs" description: "Common questions about TheGP's sweat equity model, partnership terms, time commitment, and investment stages." source: "https://thegp.com/about" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # FAQs **What is "sweat equity" and how does it work at TheGP?** TheGP earns equity grants when its team makes progress on a specific set of deliverables based on a founder's unique needs. This aligns TheGP's incentives directly with the founder's. **Do founders always need to work with TheGP's team?** No. Every partnership is customized. Founders can start with capital only and add GTM, talent, or engineering sweat equity agreements as they see fit. Over 85% of founders have engaged the sweat equity services. **Does TheGP ever deploy its team without taking capital?** Yes. A number of portfolio companies have used sweat equity to build the relationship before deepening the partnership with capital. **How do sweat equity agreements work?** TheGP and the founder create a written "statement of work" defining deliverables over a specific timeframe and the equity TheGP earns as the company grows. This holds TheGP accountable for high-velocity, high-quality work. **Is there a limit to sweat equity agreements?** No. **How much time does TheGP typically spend inside portfolio companies?** Engagements range from three months to multiple years, averaging nine months per company. **What stage companies does TheGP invest in?** TheGP's model works best with Formation (pre-seed/seed) and Breakout (post-product-market-fit) companies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- title: "Glossary" description: "Key terms used to describe TheGP's model and partnership approach." source: "https://thegp.com" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Glossary - **TheGP**: The General Partnership — a venture capital firm that pairs capital with hands-on operating work. - **Sweat Equity (Services-for-Equity)**: A model in which TheGP earns equity grants by delivering defined operating work against a statement of work, rather than only providing capital. - **Statement of Work**: A written agreement defining the deliverables, timeframe, and equity terms of a sweat equity partnership. - **The Bench**: TheGP's team of senior operators across engineering, talent, and go-to-market who embed inside portfolio companies. - **Formation**: TheGP's pre-seed and seed investment stage, from pre-product-market-fit to early traction. - **Breakout**: TheGP's post-product-market-fit stage, where companies need specific talent, technical, or GTM support to win their market. - **Embedded Partnership**: The hands-on period during which TheGP operators work directly inside a portfolio company (nine months on average). --- ## About TheGP The General Partnership helps founders hire faster, ship sooner, and avoid the execution gaps that kill great businesses — designed to feel like an unfair advantage. Location: 447 Battery Street, Suite 200, San Francisco, CA 94111 Website: https://thegp.com