VC Definition du Jour: Generalist VC

generalist (n.): A venture capitalist who used to be a specialist, but had his specialty fall out of vogue. While such people are actually still specialists, they prefer to call themselves generalists as a marketing move.

There are admittedly true VC generalists — investors who can and do invest successfully in anything — but such people are vanishingly rare. As an important aside, generalists are usually associated with poor investments.

Sample usage: He used to an enterprise IT guy, but since that sector has fallen out of vogue he has become a generalist. We don’t see him much anymore.

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