Join F-Prime for Founders Diaries, a forum for Boston entrepreneurs to hear the personal stories from founders of the most iconic companies in the region. For our Fall event, we are excited to feature Austin McChord.

Austin McChord is a venture partner at General Catalyst, a venture capital firm with offices in Boston, New York, Palo Alto, and San Francisco, and approximately $5.0 billion in total capital raised.

Austin invests in and partners with disruptive software-driven businesses.

Austin is the founder and former CEO of Datto, an innovative provider of comprehensive backup, recovery, and business continuity solutions used by thousands of managed service providers worldwide.

Austin founded Datto as a college student and led the company for 12 years until it was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2017. Under Austin’s leadership, Datto became a global company (and Connecticut’s first “unicorn”) with more than 14,000 MSP partners through organic innovation and strategic acquisitions. He added managed networking, cloud backup, business management tools, file sync and share, and file backup to Datto’s portfolio, creating an entire ecosystem for a devoted MSP community.

Outside the office, Austin has a robotics lab that brings inventors together. He established both a cybersecurity school and a maker space for engineers at RIT, where he serves on the board of trustees. To recharge his creative energies, he heads out into nature to hike, ski, or get out on the water.