George Damouny, Venture Partner at Plug and Play, has a diverse background of finding startups to operational roles, before applying his experience to investing in venture capital early 2014. Since then, George has led venture deals in over 200 startups, primarily in retail, financial services and sustainability.

Some of his deals include Honey (acq. by Paypal for $4B), Kustomer (acq. by Meta for $1B+), Rappi ($5B+ val.), BlockDaemon ($3.25B+ Val.), Flutterwave ($3.25B+ Val.), BigID ($1B+ Val.), Turing ($1B+ Val.), Esusu ($1B+ Val.), Manscaped, Power (acq. by Marqueta), Even Financial (acq. by MoneyLion), Airkit (acq. by Salesforce), Stellar, Onfido, PayActiv, Madison Reed, Albert, Naadam, Symend, Oxio, Railz, Zama, Gr4vy, Heirloom, and many more.

George holds a B.A. in Behavioral Science with a Minor in Communications in the information age from San Jose State University, where he graduated with both the President's and Dean's Honors Awards.

During this episode, we discuss:

• How George joined Plug and Play very early, when it had less than 20 employees, and now there are nearly 800
• His past experience founding a company in the B2C space before running a medical facility
• How venture capital fell into his lap
• Being a generalist before specializing
• His favorite deals he’s been a part of
• The importance of learning from mistakes and having the opportunity to invest
• Why it’s crucial to understand founder dynamics
• The combination of the right market, right team, and right product
• Popular sectors in tech right now
• His shoutout to Salil Deshpande of Uncorrelated Ventures

And more. Tune into this episode as we dive into all things VC and great deals!