Niko Bonatsos, a managing director at General Catalyst, kicked off the 2025 Venture in the Capital virtual series in a conversation moderated by Drew Peterson (MSB’25). Bonatsos is known for early consumer investments in companies such as Discord and Snap.
Bonatsos described growing up between Greece and the United Kingdom, working as a computer vision engineer in Tokyo and arriving at Stanford as a Fulbright Scholar in 2009, where a failed social network taught him the value of cold emailing and a strong team. He explained why products that seem “crazy, funny, or even controversial” can spread by word of mouth, and said he watches how quickly founders learn from their users. He shared the early story of Discord, the case for backing young founders building with AI, and how a startup scene has grown in Greece. Venture in the Capital is Georgetown Entrepreneurship’s student-led conference on venture and innovation.