Denali Tietjen

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Denali (named after the mountain, not the car), is a journalist-turned-venture-capitalist obsessed with the future of online and offline media. On the investment side, she supports and manages a portfolio of 150+ seed-stage entrepreneurs through Rough Draft Ventures, General Catalyst's university-focused program backing founders at the student level. Her primary portfolio includes Carbon, a stable coin for disintermediated cross-border payments, MarketSnacks, a new media brand for Wall Street news (acquired by Robinhood), and Nesterly, a platform for intergenerational home-sharing, to name a few. Recognizing the directional impact investors can have on the industries in which they invest, improving diversity has been a driving principle in her work. Under her leadership, half of Rough Draft Ventures portfolio additions include at least one female founder. Before working in investing, she was a reporter covering beats ranging from investing to healthcare at Forbes, Boston.com at The Boston Globe, TechCrunch, The Christian Science Monitor, and WBUR. She grew up in New Mexico and California and graduated from Tufts with a dual degree in Economics and Film & Media Studies, where her thesis "How Journalism Will Survive In An Era Of 140-Characters Or Less" earned highest honors. She runs marathons, is addicted to podcasts, has a growing portfolio of rejected New Yorker Caption Contest captions, and thinks mayo is an under-appreciated condiment.