Don Valentine
5 statements across 4 episodes · 1 bullish · 1 bearish · 4 people on the record · first statement Oct 26, 2020 by Roelof Botha · said 43 times in 16 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (13), Roelof Botha (9), Bing Gordon (4), Will Quist (2), Pat Grady (2), Mitchell Green (2), Julien Bek (2), Sumit Gajri (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2025 2 mentions in 1 episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
- Phin Barnes: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help | E1067 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Jason Lemkin & Rick Zullo: How "Mark to Market" Corrupted Venture Capital | E1052 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Marcelo Claure & Shu Nyatta: LATAM's New $500M Growth Fund; Investing Billions at SoftBank | E1042 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 2 mentions in 1 episode
2021 13 mentions in 2 episodes 7 per episode
- 20VC: Sequoia's Doug Leone on What Has Been Instrumental To Scaling Sequoia Over Generations, How Sequoia Think About International Expansion and What They Learned From China and India & Why When You Lose Pre-Seed You Become Private Equity
- 20VC: The Memo: Sequoia's Alfred Lin on Why Chasing GMV Leads To Bad Behaviours, How To Approach Competition and Capital Efficiency & The Core Importance of Understanding the Difference Between Input and Output Metrics
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 12 mentions in 3 episodes 4 per episode
- 20VC: Sequoia's Roelof Botha on His Biggest Lessons Working Alongside Don Valentine, Mike Moritz and Doug Leone, Leading Sequoia's US Business and What Sequoia Do To Retain Their Edge at the Top & The Crucible Moments That Define Startup Success
- 20VC: Steve Blank on Why The Startup Ecosystem is Partially A Ponzi Scheme, 3 Things That Determine Startup Survival in a COVID World & Facebook: Platform vs Publisher and Where Does Their Responsibility Lie?
- 20VC: Portfolio Construction, Optimising SPVs, Opportunity Investing "Between Rounds", Being Distribution-Centric Over Product-Centric and Capital Concentration Within Funds With Sumeet Gajri, Chief Strategy Officer @ Carta
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Sequoia's Pat Grady on What Sequoia Is Focused On Today, How Sequoia Think About Investment Decision-Making Processes & Why It Is Important To Trade A Few Points of Efficiency for Culture When It Comes To Attribution
- 20VC: How To Think Through Portfolio Construction and The Business Model of VC, Why You Cannot Grow Ownership In Your Best Companies Over Time & How To Make The Space for Serendipity To Strike in VC with Adam D'Augelli, Partner @ True Ventures
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
Everything said about Don Valentine, oldest first
Oct 26, 2020 positive
Don Valentine Named Sequoia After the Longest-Lived Tree to Build an Institution
“Don didn't. And it was a very deliberate decision. And it was no accident that he chose the name Sequoia. And for those listeners that aren't familiar with the tree, the Sequoia tree is native to California, and it's the longest lived tree, maybe in the world,…”
Sep 14, 2021
Don Valentine Hired Doug Leone for Customer-In Business Perspective
“And I think what Don noticed that he had someone who was a missile, back then I'd say an unguided type of missile, but someone who had the courage to The humor, and from his point of view, who looked at business from the customer in, not from the technology ou…”
Sep 14, 2021 neutral
Mar 30, 2026 negative
Aug 24, 2026 neutral
Bek: Arrogance in founders can be acceptable if tied to a spike
“If you look at founders you like versus founders who make money as a two by two matrix your job is to figure out in which part of the quadrant we make money. And he used to tell that to many of our partners. And it's not because you don't like the founder that…”