Grady: Data signals work far better for growth investing than early stage
Pat Grady · Pat Grady: Sequoia Partner on Investing Lessons from Doug Leone, Roelof Botha and Alfred Lin | E1174 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jul 8, 2024 · at 39:34
Pat Grady, Head of Growth Investing at Sequoia Capital, highlights the limits of data-driven sourcing at the seed and early stages.
0:00 / 0:05exact quote · 5.7s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“It's a lot better for growth than it is for early. It's a lot harder to get those signals out early, which is why we have the ARC program.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Pat Grady
Grady: Sequoia rejected a $5B buyout for a now-struggling portfolio company
“There's one in our portfolio now that I'm not going to name, but we had an offer from somebody to buy the company for almost five billion dollars. We own just north of 20%. That would have been a huge home run. Now the company looks like it is, ah, kind of not…”
Grady: 10 years of Sequoia data shows consensus doesn't drive startup outcomes
“So we have actual data on this going back to 20 14 where we started recording the votes numerically on every single investment. So we have about 10 years worth, which believe it or not is not conclusive because there are so few outliers that have emerged even …”
Grady: Value of tech operator experience decays faster than ever
“The rate of decay on the value of your experience as an operator has never been higher, and as a former operator, most people are emotionally anchored to that deeply personal experience that they had, which they should be, and that gives them a degree of empat…”
Grady: Sequoia is 9/10 on sourcing but 6/10 on picking
“I'd say on sourcing, we are eight or nine out of 10. On picking, I think we're maybe a six out of 10.”
Grady: Missing a wildly successful startup is usually Sequoia's mistake
“When a company is a wild success and you don't see us in the cap table, Chances are at some point we screwed it up.”
Grady: My venture success came from Sequoia's platform and 2007 timing
“Let's say you'd picked any random person off the street in March of. And plop them down into Sequoia where they have one, the greatest business card you could possibly hope for to the beginning of the cloud mobile transition. And three, you're about to head in…”