portfolio companies

“Even if you might be upset about, you know, maybe one of the companies you invested in, you know, had a bad quarter, a bad half, or a bad year and, you know, it doesn't make it any less concerning, but, you know, I've found myself just trying to get more in th…”

“And I think that investors are starting to recognize that. And that's why they might be also scaling back on the number of deals they're making, so they can make sure they're adding enough value to the companies that are in their portfolios.”

“There's no way you understand the business as well as the founders. You're very arrogant if you think you do. There are many people that think they do, but of course you don't because they work. 24, seven thinking about one thing only, and you're probably thin…”

“So I think, you know, you see that in one of three portfolio companies play this professionally and create the trust that's necessary, necessary to do that.”

“Do that same amount of diligence. And, you know, go talk to, Portfolio companies, probably the most successful and the least successful portfolio companies in some of the investors that you're thinking of taking money from, and really understand, you know, how…”

“We help companies with an outsourced CFO for their first year of life.”

“Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think first thing is understanding the limits of what you know, and so I think there are really kind of two core value adds that venture capitalists can have for When, as they give advice, you know, one is sort of, Hey, here's a dif…”

“Like if you're not available to the people you've already committed to work with, you know, you're not doing your job properly. You have to prioritize that over taking a company meeting for a new pitch.”

“Whenever that happens, usually the companies degrade pretty quickly.”

“We've told people, as much as you can, get 18 to 24 months of cash. As much as you can, just your business is slow. This is all about survival. Assume the worst and do your best to survive in twenty-twenty.”

“And I swore to myself and to his widow, Elaine, that I would talk about this whenever I had the chance. So whenever I get in front of LPs, whenever I get in front of my portfolio companies, whenever I have the chance to talk about this, I want to just bring it…”

“One of the exercises I've asked, we run more than once at Sequoia. Let's take a fund two cycles ago where the companies are just coming up. How would we feel about those investments? If the market just crashed by 30%, let's figure out how many of those were mo…”

“Most of those platform offerings are about scaling the firm themselves versus about Actually scaling companies and really helping companies get to the next level.”

“So far we invested in all series A and series BFR companies.”

“Currently in like in my little portfolio, the two hottest companies, and I put hot in quotes, That's what investors on the cap table with access to unlimited capital are based, like, wildly oversubscribed because they're trying to just put every single dollar …”

“This is such a small number, it's barely useful, other than anecdotally, but I have two portfolio companies That are kind of in that intersection where, where a tech company and a PE buyer might buy them. Right. And they both got mediocre M&A offers recently. …”

“Also, you know, I think we have a, there is a tendency where the, sometimes, you talk about, you know, asymmetry of information, but it goes both ways, where sometimes you're so close to a business, you really see how the sausage gets made, and you can end up …”

“We're going to find more, more portfolio companies did that.”

“Like you know, I'm ready to move on to the new world and I'm almost, and I'm frankly ready to write off a lot of portfolio companies and a lot of public companies. It's time to move on guys. If you're not going to get there in April of 20, 26, then so be it. S…”

“Any investment I've made that is not run by a founder is a zero. It's going to be a zero in this age. It's going to be a zero. I look across, now you, we have different portfolios, but the ones I have that are not run by founders, whether they're at twenty mil…”