Opinion
Investing in AI Labs Resembles Backing Quora Before Facebook Emerged
“I think right now, if you're going to invest in the new Neolab, you're basically investing, you know, in the Quora, in the stumble upon when Facebook X came about.”
Opinion
Bek: Largest venture outcomes will emerge in mature markets over greenfield
“Ultimately what matters to you is how much ownership you have and how big the company can get. And that will be true only when that investment crystallizes in almost guarantee that will happen for the biggest outcomes in markets that are more mature as opposed…”
Opinion
Legal AI Is Overfunded but Harvey Is Positioned to Win
“Probably legal. I think there's, you know, there's just so many me too's in this category. Whereas I think that the winner is already in existence. I'm obviously biased, but I think Harvey is very well positioned because they have the widest distribution. And …”
Disclosure
Maguire Pushed Sequoia's SpaceX Investment After Partner Voted '1' in IC
“Credits to Sean when he brought in the SpaceX investment, We vote on companies. I think someone voted a one. Yeah. I've seen fours, of course. I've seen threes. Never seen a two. I didn't even know we could do one. I didn't even know it was on the scale. But w…”
Insight
Bek: Unanimously high IC ratings are dangerous because founders retrofit narratives
“First, if everyone's a seven or eight, Quite dangerous. Because look, founders know what we want to hear. The best founders are able to you know, retrofit the narrative that they think is going to land with investors, and that can be dangerous. So in, in those…”
Insight
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…”
Insight
Alfred Lin: Never mistake an outlier operator for an outlier founder
“Do not mistake an outlier operator for an outlier founder.”
Insight
Shaun Maguire: Judgment outweighs IQ and political quotient outweighs EQ
“His argument is that judgment is actually more important than IQ, and PQ is more important than EQ.”
Assertion Partly supported
Bek: AI agent web traffic has already reached parity with human traffic
“We're already at parity in terms of agent traffic to human traffic.”
Assertion Supported
Bek: Cloudflare projects agent traffic will exceed human traffic 1,000x in 5 years
“I think it was Cloudflare this morning said that in five years from now, we'll have 1000 times the amount of agent traffic to human traffic.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Aug 2031
Bek: Next trillion-dollar company will be software masquerading as services
“So the prediction was that the next trillion dollar company will be a software company that masquerades as a service business. It's very important the masquerading because they cannot be a service company.”
Disclosure
Bek: Sequoia will not back legacy services companies pivoting to AI
“I will not invest in one of those companies. For the following reason. I think you can make money in that business. The reality is I've only seen it in my career. The best companies are able to concentrate talent and you just not going to get frontier talent w…”
Opinion
Cursor Is the Best AI Agent Startup Outside Sequoia's Portfolio
“It's probably cursor. One, they're in one of the most important markets. But second, where there was a lot of chatter around AI wrappers, they were the first company to really understand that you could post train models and actually be, go deeper into the stac…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bek Claims He Has Never Lost a Deal While at Sequoia
“So I never lost a deal an investment in my time at Sequoia, but I've lost investments before.”
Disclosure
Bek: Sequoia underestimated Anthropic early due to linear thinking
“Yeah, we call that revisiting our priors. It's very important that you update your priors if the environment's changed, and I think it came from the realization that if AI is going to be so transformative, we are just on the foothill of this incredible exponen…”
Insight
Bek: Sequoia's Top Investments Always Stem From Peak Sponsor Conviction
“As we're always reminded, the best investments in all the funds are always the companies where the sponsor had the highest conviction. That's just the one thing that's been so that happened time and time again across funds.”
Insight
Bek: Turning Small VC Dollars Into Big Returns Requires Controversy
“I think the, where you turn small dollars into big dollars, they have to be controversial.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Bek: 'Triple, triple, double, double' growth model will return in 3-5 years
“I don't know if it'll be three years, maybe five, but This will come back.”
Disclosure
Sequoia Deal Sponsors Can Invest Despite Committee Voting Against Them
“After the discussion, everyone votes, and the sponsor is equipped to make the decision they want with that information. So you can still do it? You can still do it.”
Insight
Bek: Adjust Customer NPS Up for French and German Users, Down for Americans
“If they're French or German you add one or two points. If they're Americans, usually you want to retract Act one or two points on the other hand.”
Insight
Bek: Sub-human-parity AI apps should accept negative gross margins for frontier models
“For the ones where we're still not at human parity, you absolutely want to be operating on the frontier, and it might be worth you know, investing at even negative gross margins to earn the customer's trust and build a superior product to your competitor.”
Assertion Supported
Bek: AI customer support autopilots have reached $1B in ARR
“People may not realize, but customer support is already in this phase. I call it the autopilot category. You have already a billion dollar in AR in this category where outcomes are solved.”
Assertion Contradicted
Bek: Data shows industry is hiring more software engineers than ever
“In practice, the data shows that we've never hired more software engineers.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Bek: Sequoia has no unified house view on AI
“Oh you know what, the funny thing is people love to say Sequoia believes X and Y, but we actually have very different opinions. There's no house view on AI.”
