Venture capital firm General Catalyst is fast becoming a force to be reckoned with in the enterprise space.

A few months after poaching Adam Valkin from Accel Partners, General Catalyst has brought in VMware CTO Steve Herrod as an investment partner. He will join the Palo Alto office (the firm is headquartered in Boston) to invest in early-stage enterprise companies. Herrod will maintain a presence at virtualization giant VMware as a strategic adviser and will continue in his role as an adviser to EMC.

Prior to joining VMware over a decade ago, Herrod served as senior director of software engineering for Transmeta Corporation, where he introduced an early form of virtualization technology known as “Code Morphing.”

“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, a partner General Catalyst in a statement. Taneja said Herrod would lead the investment focus in “next generation infrastructure technologies.”

Today, Herrod spilled the beans with a tweet:

After 11 awesome years at @vmware, off to a new adventure at General Catalyst (@gcvp). Exciting and emotional! cto.vmware.com/transition-in-…

— Stephen Herrod (@herrod) January 16, 2013

General Cataylst competes with storied venture capital firms like Accel and Andreessen Horowitz, which have bolstered their enterprise practice in recent years.

Top image via Flickr // Interop Events