Introducing TheGP's Investor in Residence Program

We hear from founders constantly that the most helpful investors have real domain knowledge. These investors take the time to understand the founder and their unique approach. They're experienced and focused enough to actually make a difference. We built an entire firm to deliver on this principle—embedding seasoned recruiters, engineers, designers and GTM leaders alongside founders at the most critical inflection points.

Now we're extending that same model of depth to specific industries through our Investor in Residence Program.

The Investor in Residence Program brings domain experts into our firm to lead investments in their space. When you're building in cybersecurity, you don't want a generalist VC who needs to call their CISO friend for every architecture question. You want someone who was actually a CISO. These domain experts are often already running smaller funds or active as angels with strong track records, but they're constrained by scale.

At TheGP, Investors in Residence can continue running their own funds or angel investing while working alongside us day in and day out. They’re a key part of our investment team and compete to build partnerships with the best founders. They also get to engage founders through our services model, helping folks move faster with dedicated senior operators across recruiting, product, engineering and GTM. They are compensated with carry in TheGP funds and budget to support their independent firms as they scale.

Welcome Michael Coates, TheGP's first Investor in Residence

Our first Investor in Residence is Michael Coates, former CISO at Twitter and founder of Seven Hill Ventures, an early-stage cybersecurity-focused firm.

Michael joins at a moment when security has never mattered more. AI is reshaping enterprise infrastructure, and with it, the entire security landscape, with new attack surfaces, new detection capabilities and new categories of vulnerability that didn't exist three years ago. Michael has spent his career building security for high-growth companies, most recently testifying before Congress on AI, cybersecurity, and quantum encryption.

We've been co-investing with Michael for years. Any time we see a cybersecurity company, we call him, because he works with CISOs and early-stage founders in this space every day. He knows what works at scale, understands the enterprise buying process from the inside, and can make introductions that matter because he's earned the credibility to do so.

What's next

Security is our first focus, but not our only one. We're exploring IIR partnerships in AI research, healthcare, energy, bio, crypto and robotics—anywhere deep domain expertise separates signal from noise and there's opportunity for generational companies to emerge.

Our mission is to be the firm the most talented people turn to when they want to discover the best opportunities. We think the IIR program represents an incredible opportunity for some of the most talented investors in the world and we’re excited to build this program at The General Partnership.