The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 392 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 9 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Cahn: Few concentrated defense tech winners will emerge per country
“And I guess my framework, and this is the thesis that I've been investing behind now for the last couple of years is my framework is there are going to be fewer companies that succeed in defense for this reason. Defense is consolidated for good reason. There's…”
Bouaziz claims Sequoia Capital invested in every competitor of Deel
“Sadly, they invested in every competitor you can think of.”
O'Driscoll: Sequoia was right on Klarna at $6B; SoftBank wrong at $45B
“The guys who priced it at six billion were right. And the guys, which is Sequoia and the guys who priced it at forty five billion were wrong, which is SoftBank.”
Jason Lemkin: Benchmark is no longer in top VC conversations on X
“If you look on social media, benchmark isn't listed the way Andreessen and Sequoia was like it was a generation ago. It's just not, does it matter? Harry, Harry's built a big brand. He's concerned. It matters. You could argue both sides, but when the industry …”
Accel and Sequoia Hold Portfolio Books at 20% to 30% Discounts
“Usually the multi-stage firms think your perennial, like Excels, Or Sequoia. They're taking very aggressive discounts on, on basically all of their securities. Even if it's a great company that is maybe achieving even a higher price on the secondary market, th…”
O'Driscoll: Sequoia missed Facebook because Zuckerberg feared Mike Moritz replacing him
“Part of the reason that Sequoia aren't in Facebook is residual frustration with Mike Moritz for prior, you know, prior situations where they had in fact made a CEO change”
O'Driscoll: Sequoia abandoned billions in value exiting China
“We saw very intelligent investors, Sequoia, people like that get out of billions of dollars Of value because they just wouldn't want to be there.”
Lemkin: Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia see every single deal in venture
“So if you're Andreessen, a beauty to Andreessen at this point, certainly been true of Sequoia since we started is they see every deal. Andreessen sees every deal.”
Markus Villig: Sequoia Capital declined to meet with Bolt during early fundraising
“At Sequoia we actually didn't get the meeting. That was the sad part. So we tried to approach them many times. And then back then I think we weren't an interesting enough company.”
Khan: Public Investors Manage Short-Term Stock Risk Better Than VCs
“So I think Sequoia is right that they have that information and they, if they want to take a 10 years view, I think that's totally fine. But in a one to two years basis, they probably, as you, you're right, they're probably not going to be better than a public…”
Cahn: AI's true bottlenecks are servers, steel, and power
“And so I'll propose my own three things that I think are the three things that matter. And I would summarize it as servers, steel, and power.”
Cahn: No Major AI Model Company Holds a Data or Compute Advantage
“I think it's really hard to argue today that any of the big model companies has a data advantage. Compute, it's just a commodity that you pay for. So it's hard to argue that any of them has a compute advantage.”
Sequoia hires investors, breaks them down, and rebuilds them
“There's this great line that people at Sequoia say, which is Sequoia hires investors, breaks them down, and then rebuilds them in the Sequoia mold.”
Cahn: Joining Sequoia Did Not Increase Personal Deal Flow
“I think my deal flow basically didn't change at all.”
Cahn: Competing in Frontier AI Requires a Massive Non-AI Cash Machine
“I think the evidence of the last couple of years is in order to play in the big model game, you need a cash machine and that cash machine cannot be the AI business, right?”
Cahn: Injecting AI for Marketing Adds Costs Without Pricing Power
“If you are simply injecting AI so that you can tell investors that you have AI and so that you can, you know, talk on your marketing page about how you have AI, then you're just injecting a new cost item with actually no benefit to the consumer. And if there's…”
Asparouhov: Sequoia and a16z are evolving into BlackRock-like mega-managers
“You are starting to see, obviously, people shift in fundamentally different directions, like Sequoia and C and Z becoming RIAs, maybe points towards a world where they're going to be scaling headcount, asset classes, et cetera, to the point where they start to…”
Hartz favors Sequoia's hands-on VC model over Founders Fund's hands-off approach
“Given those two extremes, I actually lean more towards, ah, the role of Sequoia's side, because I've just seen that kind of help and oversight and having that kind of star chamber of great talent cut so many corners of mistakes that would be made.”
Pierre Lamond made Kevin Hartz force-rank direct reports and fire the lowest
“In the very first meeting, I'll always remember, he said, Kevin, I want you to go up to the whiteboard, and I want you to write your direct reports down, but I want you to force rank them, you know, one to seven, or how many it was, and so I go and I write the…”
Grady: Startups see 4x higher valuations in rounds immediately following Sequoia
“But if you look at the, if you look at the data, it's actually not signaling risk, it's signaling advantage. And it's signaling advantage in the sense that the average valuation for the round that you raise after your Sequoia round. So if you raise a seed from…”
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…”
Grady: Sequoia should have split from India and China branches earlier
“In 2005, when we got into India and China, we did so with the thesis that the world is getting smaller. When we parted ways in 20, 23, it was because that thesis in some ways had been invalidated. And so I think maybe we could have done that a few years sooner…”
Grady: Passing on Segment and Revolut Series A rounds were terrible mistakes
“I met both of them at the Series A, and both of them told me the entire story in like five or 10 minutes. And it was super clear. And at the end of the five or 10 minutes, I couldn't think of any questions to ask because they had already answered any question …”
Grady: Prestigious firms attract status-seekers rather than true builders
“When you work at a name brand place like a Viking or like a Sequoia, You're attracting people who want to be part of something great, not people who want to build something great.”
Grady: Sequoia does not require a clear path to a $10B+ outcome
“We don't necessarily have to see, we don't have to see a clear line of sight to ten billion or a hundred billion or some grandiose figure. We do need to see a clear line of sight to good returns with an exceptional founder who could maybe find some upside from…”
Grady: Companies get better returns improving core products than expanding
“Most of the time when a company that we're involved with wants to go do a bunch of new things, it seems to me that the better use of resources is to make the thing you already do better. The thing that you already do Unless it is absolutely heads and shoulders…”
Grady: Sequoia won nearly 100% of targeted deals over the last year
“We do track this. I think it's a hundred percent in the last 12 months. Actually, I take it back. There's one situation where an existing portfolio company was raising a Series B and they chose somebody else, and To be fair, we didn't make an offer, but had we…”
Vasavada: Concentrating Board Ownership in One VC Suppresses Healthy Debate
“You want multiple voices in the boardroom, and I think the challenge is when you have One investor that owns 30% of the company and, you know, has piled in, you know, close to fifty million bucks, then you're going to have that investor's perspective as, you k…”
Vasavada: Top VC Backing Can Attract Employees Seeking Quick Exits
“So it's a double-edged sword. And the reason why it's a double-edged sword is because on one hand, you've got all this great credibility by association. You have all of this social capital and that social capital allows you to hire people. It allows you to get…”
Daniel Dines Rejected Sequoia Capital's Investment Offer for UiPath's Series B
“So I said basically no to Sequoia to our Series B, and we, Series B was led by Excel US, and Capital G, Kleiner Perkins, and some other people participated in, but I said no to Sequoia.”
Clark: The Sequoia Fund structure was right despite bad market timing
“And I think it's interesting that the criticism that Sakaya had for the Sakaya Fund It's absolutely the right idea. It just happened that they implemented it at a time in the market where you saw a significant correction once it was put in place.”
Sequoia's Data Team Stopped the Firm From Making Bad Investments
“Many of this, by the way, that, that we stopped Sequoia from investing where I think they would have otherwise invested. It was so close to investment.”
Ehrenberg: Top VC Firms Will Maintain Premium Fees Due to Outperformance
“It's going to be just like hedge funds. You know, look at Sequoia. The best firms charge premium fees and will be able to get it because on an after fee basis, they still outperform.”
Building a $25B company isn't enough to compete with Sequoia
“Like if I were to go in and try to compete with Andreessen and Sequoia with all those folks, I don't even, that's not, I don't think that's a good enough angle.”
Brian Halligan claims Sequoia partners work harder than any other venture capitalists
“They work much harder than any other VCs have come across, and they're absolutely paranoid that they're going to lose it.”
Rabois: Khosla, Founders Fund, and Sequoia historically led VC price discipline
“KB and Founders Fund may be the two most disciplined. I think Sequoia has also historically been very price disciplined to their credit. They've also relaxed that a bit but they're, I think, very top down and consciously, but I think historically, those three …”
Sequoia still uses the lobby-waiting strategy to win competitive deals
“The classic Sequoia playbook, which literally happened to one of my portfolio companies a couple months ago, where they sit in the lobby and just wait, you know, with the term sheet. Sequoia still does it.”
Lemkin: Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins historically demanded 20% valuation discounts
“When I started in the old, old days, there were only two brands in venture. I knew of there was Sequoia and Kleiner, right? And you had to take a discount for both of them, right? You'd go out and you'd get your term sheet from somebody else, and then Kleiner …”
Stebbings: Sequoia's scout program missed Series A and B rounds
“Actually there was a big problem, which is like their data monitoring wasn't what it could have been. And so they missed a lot of A's and B's and then did the C's of companies that they did scout deals in. And so ultimately, yes, they got great returns on the …”
Batchu: Lead VCs share pre-diligenced deal flow with operators, not rival funds
“So I get deal flow from other investors all the time, especially ones that are like, you know, if Sequoia or craft or whoever are like, you know, we're leading this round. We're really excited about it. Do you want to be a part of it? That's great. Like a lot …”
Sequoia research shows startup momentum is statistically difficult to lose once achieved
“Out of looking at 400 entrepreneurs, if you have achieved momentum, that momentum is statistically so incredibly difficult to lose.”
Emil Michael: VC funds must go multi-stage to survive fewer mid-tier exits
“And to win big, you've got to try to invest across multiple stages. And that's what Sequoia can do. That's what age can do. That's what rivet can do. That's what DST can do. And I think if you can't, You're just going to get, have to get lucky because there's …”
Stebbings: Raising a $2B fund is easier than raising $200M
“It gets to a stage with also fund sizes, Kyle, where it's almost easier to raise two billion than it is two hundred million, and the reason I say that is because there is a pool of LPs, as you know, the pension funds of the world, Who need to move a hundred mi…”
Gerstner: Sequoia's early Figma investment yielded 100x while late-stage yielded 2x
“If you look at the difference between the Sequoia round in Figma or the durable round in Figma, right? It's the difference between, you know, having a hundred plus X outcome and a two X outcome.”
Stebbings Missed $25M in Liquidity by Following Sequoia's Advice to Hold Winners
“My biggest regret and my biggest lesson is that I didn't, because I believed in Sequoia's, hold on to your winners, never sell your winners, and I didn't, and I probably could have taken off about twenty five million dollars for an eight million dollar fund.”
Lemkin: Multi-stage seed funds create negative signaling if they skip Series A
“Of course, if Sequoia or Excel or Andreessen or Lightspeed has two years of data and they don't preempt the A, of course it's a problem. Of course it's a bad signal. So that was a problem, and that exists today.”
Garg: Andreessen and Sequoia Will Likely Successfully Transition to Web3
“Now, some absolutely can, and I think some will. Like, I think Andreessen and Sequoia will likely make that transition, but it's going to be extremely challenging.”
Lixandru: Selecting the right early-stage founders matters more than valuation dynamics
“When we have discussions on early stage opportunities, so seed and series A, we leave price dynamics aside. We focus on the company, we focus on the founder, and we really think that at this stage, selecting the right opportunity and selecting the right Compan…”