VMware CTO Stephen Herrod joining General Catalyst

Stephen Herrod is leaving enterprise and virtualization giant VMware  to join venture capital and growth equity firm General Catalyst, it was announced Monday.

Herrod worked at VMware for 11 years, where he served as Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Research and Development. In his new role with General Catalyst, Herrod’s focus will be investing in, and supporting, entrepreneurs at early-stage companies developing the next generation of technology infrastructure.

“Joining General Catalyst allows me to combine my three greatest professional passions: developing meaningful new technologies, building companies with strong technical teams and sharing my engineering and leadership experience,” Herrod said in a statement. “I was particularly drawn to the firm’s focus of partnering closely with entrepreneurs and I look forward to living that credo each day.”

While in his role at VMware, Herrod was named “CTO of the Year” by InfoWorld. Prior to joining the company, he served as senior director of software engineering for Transmeta Corporation, where he engineered an early form of virtualization known as “Code Morphing.” He also held previous engineering positions with Silicon Graphics and MIPS Technologies.

“Steve is a pioneer in virtualization and cloud technologies and we are incredibly pleased to have him join the General Catalyst partnership,” said Hemant Taneja, Partner at General Catalyst. “Steve will help lead the firm’s investment focus in next generation infrastructure technologies which we expect will go through significant transformation over the next decade.”

Herrod will be joining Adam Valkin, formely of Accel Partner, who joined General Catalyst in December.

In General Catalyst’s most recent fund, its sixth, it raised $500 million in December 2011. General Catalyst recently launched Rough Draft Ventures, a student partnership that invests $5,000 to $25,000 into student tech entrepreneurs in Boston.

 Founded in 2000, General Catalyst Partner has offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Palo Alto, California. The firm has invested in company such as Airbnb, Big Fish Games, and HubSpot,

In September, the firm led a $37 million round for online eyeglass retailer Warby Parker, and one of its partners, Joel Cutler, became a member of Warby Parker’s board. It also participated in a $20 million round for BigCommerce, an e-commerce platform for SMBs. It has also invested in e-commerce site The Fancy, and fashion deals app Swirl. Most recently, it participated in a $30 million in a Series C round for hotel metasearch engine Room 77.

Palo Alto-based VMware is a leader in virtualization, which is software that creates virtual machines that allow for cloud computing, increasing the effectiveness of a single computer by making it act like it is, in fact, multiple machines.

In July 2012, VMWare VMware announced, in a blogpost written by Herrold, that it was buying startup company Nicira for $1.05 billion in cash, as well as $210 million in assumed unvested equity awards. 

Herrold will be maintaining a presence at VMware as a strategic advisor..

(Image source: http://www.wired.com)