Paul Sagan is an internet technology entrepreneur and award-winning former journalist who now advises internet software, services and infrastructure CEOs and their teams on strategy and execution as a Catalyst Advisor. He works primarily as a board member of public and private companies, and previously was a Managing Director at General Catalyst.

Paul currently sits on the boards of five GC portfolio companies (airSlate, Bugcrowd, Casana, Section, and Zorus). Previously, as a Managing Director and advisor to the firm, he served as Non-Executive Chairman of Datto (acquired by Vista Equity Partners); Non-Executive Chairman of L2 (acquired by Gartner); and a director of Anaconda (acquired by Morningside). 

Paul is also a director of Moderna (NASDAQ: MRNA) and was the lead independent director of VMware until the company’s sale to Broadcom in 2023. Earlier in his career, he served as a director of iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT), and as a board member of Dow Jones & Company, Digitas, EMC and Maven Networks before they were acquired.

Paul worked at Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM), which he joined as Chief Operating Officer and employee #15 in 1998 when the company launched out of MIT. Later, he served as President, and then as CEO for nine years until 2013. He was a member of Akamai’s board of directors until 2019. His work at Akamai helped Paul become the 2009 EY Technology Entrepreneur of the Year.

Paul began his career in broadcast television news, joining WCBS-TV in 1981 as a news writer and eventually becoming news director. He won three Emmy Awards for TV news in New York City. Paul also held senior management roles at Time Warner, where he helped to found RoadRunner, the world’s first consumer broadband service; Pathfinder, one of the first web portals that pioneered internet advertising; and NY 1, the 24-hour cable news channel.

Today he also serves as Chairman of the Board of ProPublica, the not-for-profit investigative journalism organization, and as a trustee of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Boston. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and previously was a member of the MIT Visiting Committee in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In the area of public service, Paul was Chair of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from 2015 to 2019 under an appointment by Governor Baker, and a member of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) from 2010 until 2017 under an appointment by President Obama.

Paul is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he is a life trustee.