Sequoia Led Unity's Series A and Persuaded Them to Adopt Freemium
Roelof Botha · 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 · Oct 26, 2020 · at 30:30
Roelof Botha, Partner at Sequoia Capital, recounts how Sequoia invested in video game engine developer Unity and advised them to change their core revenue model.
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“One of the first decisions was to go change the business model of the company because the company had bootstrapped until that we were the Series A investor in the company in They never had outside capital, they didn't have a board, and so they always charged for their software. That meant that they had a relatively small developer footprint. And we had a thesis, again, back to the landscaping and prepared mind, we had this thesis about the rise of the developer and the importance of developers long term. There are about twenty-five million people on the planet that write software for a living, and yet they build these products that billions of us depend on every day. So anything that serves those developers and makes them more productive was important. And we thought that Unity would have a seat at the table with the giants, If they had a much larger footprint of developers. And so we encouraged them to adopt a freeman business model.”
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