Some people were born to work in venture capital: They dream in startups and have talked about investing since they were kids.
Others, like General Catalyst’s Peter Boyce II, discover their passion a little later in life.
Boyce, a math nerd who geeks out over gravitational waves, always thought he’d become a physics professor until he realized how much he loved helping students get their burgeoning businesses off the ground. While attending Harvard as an undergraduate, Boyce co-founded Harvard Ventures and HackHarvard: two student-led organizations that offer support for engineers and future founders.
Today, he’s a part of the GC fam and has invested in growing companies like Cadre, Giphy, Indico and Mark43. Boyce also helps run Rough Draft Ventures, a program in which GC invests in promising student entrepreneurs.
We caught up with Boyce to talk physics and tech, and learn more about the unusual path that led to him becoming a VC.
How did you get into venture capital?
I’ve been with the General Catalyst team for the past four years. I first got involved in venture capital through work I was doing while at Harvard. I helped create a few student organizations around venture capital and startups and entrepreneurship. I created a campus accelerator program for students to launch their own startups called HackHarvard. Through that program, I got to know VCs around Boston as mentors. That’s how I got into the team at GC super early on.
From that campus accelerator experience, I also spent some time working at startups. So I’ve also seen the VC side from an entrepreneur's perspective. But really most of my experience has been through Rough Draft Ventures, something I started working on my senior year. Basically, I created a version of venture capital that brought amazing student startups the support and mentorship they need. I got RDV off the ground after school and I’m continuously inviting more students to be a part of that.
Did you grow up in Boston?
No, I grew up in New York but I spent many summers in Boston. I did the Harvard summer program and went to school in Boston. I was deliberate about choosing Boston for university because of the amazing summers I had here.
Did you ever think the Boston tech scene would become what it is today?
One thing that got me so excited was the long history of entrepreneurship in Boston, especially in hardware and healthcare. I love the university ecosystem in Boston and I love the roles students and schools play in technology. The role young engineers are playing in shaping big companies in Boston is so exciting.
How do you handle failure?
You can avoid a lot of failure with super transparent communication. And always maintain a very long-term perspective. A lot of failure has to do with risk aversion. A way to develop an appetite for risk is to take a super long-term perspective and realize that failure you experience in a day is a part of years more of building and learning. That helps me take those “failure” moments and convert them into learning moments. It’s like the pages of a book — say, Harry Potter. Not every chapter is epic, but you get to the end of the book and say, ‘That was an epic book.’
What is your relationship like with your partners?
A big, big part of being a part of a small venture firm in terms of the number of people is the tight-knit, connected nature of the team. That was one of the things that drew me to GC. People can be super collaborative, which is really important when you put your life into your work. A lot of it has to do with having diversity in perspective and having different backgrounds. That’s a thing our team does really well. It’s not always the easiest way to build a partnership, but it leads to really healthy and awesome debates and conversations that push us in new directions. My partners are my mentors and some of the best friends I could ever hope to have.
What stands out to you about a founding team when they pitch you from a team dynamic level?
One thing I look for is whether I feel like they have the resourcefulness and juggernaut energy to build this company with or without my help. At first you feel nervous: they don’t need our capital so how do we make this work? But it signals the level of authenticity of a team and that’s what we’re looking for – feeling like they’re going to get this done one way or another. The second thing I look for is complementary skillsets among founders; to have one amazing financial leader and a co-founder who loves the beauty of UX and design. That’s cool to see. Finally, I look for a team who is able to teleport a few years into the future and play us a tape of what it will sound like when the future comes true.
What’s one thing people don’t know about you?
I think a lot of folks don’t know that I spent most of my life planning to pursue a PhD in physics to be a professor one day. I’ve got colleagues and friends who were born to do venture capital. They’ve been thinking about startups since they were 4 years old. But I’ve always loved the elegance of physics and math and computer science. That’s one thing most folks don’t know about me: I secretly geeked out over the recent discovery of gravitational waves.
That’s so cool. How does your love for math and physics impact you as an investor?
Maybe it all goes back to long-term horizon thinking. I spend a lot of time thinking on a totally different scale. That’s what’s so powerful about physics and science: you’re thinking about spans of years and numbers that are so extreme no one’s ever thought about them before. It gets distilled down to a certain elegance that helps me in developing frameworks for understanding companies and different industries and gives me some grounding. I don’t take each day as just a day; there’s something much larger playing out.
What’s your biggest “miss” and why did you opt not to invest?
We all have so many misses. All are kind of quietly aggregating portfolios full of so much good stuff. One of the biggest misses for me was Slack. I think a lot about productivity and collaboration tools, and that is a company I wished we’d been involved with. Another is Etsy, a marketplace of amazing creativity and e-commerce.
Can you give a few examples of things that would scare you off from making an investment?
I think of them as “red flags.” First and foremost, folks who seem disrespectful to people on their team are a no go. Life is too short to give business to people who don’t respect other people and aren’t collaborative and positive. The second red flag is if an entrepreneur doesn’t show signs that he or she is constantly learning and trying to gather insights from mentors around them. You’ve got to be like a sponge. You’ve got to look for mentors here and advisers there, and constantly be reading newspaper articles.
