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
Friedberg: Top VC firms like Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz are post-economic
“This bifurcation in the market that's underway, which is the folks that have made it, they've gotten to the top of Mount Everest. At this point, I would argue those funds are post-economic, and now they can operate more rationally over the long run, like Found…”
Doug Leone: VCs cannot help founders achieve product-market fit
“If you can't get product market fit, I doubt Sequoia Capital or any one of us can help. That is the black magic. That is really the art. Once you get product market fit, we can help you with everything else.”
Frankel: Check size relative to VC fund size reveals true priority
“Look at the check relative to the fund size will tell you pretty much everything you need to know. Are you going to be, if it's Sequoia investing less than today, a 50 or a hundred million or twenty million at early stage, it's probably not going to take you t…”
Leone: Sequoia portfolio companies have created $6.5 trillion in market value
“We have been responsible somewhere around six and a half trillion of partnering opportunity, meaning the companies with which we partner have generated six and a half trillion of market cap. About a quarter of the NASDAQ, God knows how much of the NYSE in Hong…”
Doug Leone: US venture partners will fail trying to invest in China directly
“In other words, we were absolutely sure that he and I would get it wrong. We didn't know we were going to recruit Neil Shen. We didn't know we were going to find someone who would get it. Absolutely. Absolutely right. But we like the chances of an unknown pers…”
Leone: High-performing organizations must operate as teams, not families
“In order to perform, we can't be a family. We all have family members we're stuck with. I know your family. I'm willing to bet you can point to a family members that is going to be a family member forever and is not a performer. I know we have a few in our fam…”
Leone: VCs cannot help founders achieve product-market fit
“If you can't get product market fit, I doubt Sequoia Capital or any one of us can help. That is the black magic. That is really the art. Once you get product market fit, we can help you with everything else.”
Leone: Sequoia partners wanted to fire him after 24 months
“I will tell you there were people who wanted me out at Sequoia Capital after 24 months, and it was only through the good graces and good judgment I now say from Don Valentine that I'm still here.”
Leone: Inflated VC valuations distort essential feedback loops for founders
“What founders need is a true feedback type of system. If you build a great product, customers will buy it, valuation will increase, people are going to be interested. But what do you do with founders that build a crappy product, nobody's buying it, and somebod…”
Leone: Missing Early Founder Relationships Turns VCs Into Price Takers
“Well, I'd say when you lose the early stage of building a relationship with the founder, You become private equity. So what I mean by that is they already have their boards, they already have relationship, and you become a price taker.”
Doug Leone: Partnering with global market winners requires focusing on large economies
“Because if you want to be a partner to the most valuable companies in the world, which is our mission, it could only happen in large economies. It's not going to happen in Thailand, a small economy.”
Roelof Botha Says 30% to 35% of His Sequoia Investments Lose Money
“Because even at Sequoia, 30, 35% of the investments that I've led for us have ended up losing us money.”
Botha Treats References Saying Founders 'Shake Things Up' as Positive Signals
“I mean, things around integrity are the things that are bright lines, obviously, but around people that want to shake things up, I love those kind of references. I treat those as a positive data point, not a negative data point.”
Gupta: Sequoia Capital requires unanimous partner approval for all investments
“This is reinforced by things like unanimous decision-making, which means we all need to be bought in when we decide to partner with a company.”
Bahat: Very few multi-stage VCs historically produce top seed-stage winners
“We did an analysis looking at the top company performers. And what you see is that since the era that seed funds have existed and who funded them at the seed. And what you see is that some of them were funded by seed funds, first round true others funded some …”
Shah: Sequoia or Lightspeed seed funding does not guarantee follow-on rounds
“It sort of like a false narrative that like, if you take a seed from a Sequoia or you take a seed from a Lightspeed, they're just going to continue to do your next rounds.”
Venture signaling risk is an overblown founder concern, says Pat Grady
“Signaling risk is this funny thing because most founders are worried about it, but we have never actually seen a situation in which it hurt. The context in which most people worry about it is they say, well, if I receive this round from Sequoia, but then for w…”
Sequoia investment decisions always end with full partner consensus
“And so at Sequoia, rarely do investment decisions begin with consensus. It's usually a couple of People who see something special, but they always end with consensus because by the time we invest, we want it to be a team Sequoia investment, not an individual's…”
Ego and economic demands tear apart most VC partnerships, says Pat Grady
“The natural way of things for venture capital firms is for one or two people to have a couple of nice investments and that makes them relatively more attractive to the next set of founders, and those benefits start to compound into the point where they allow t…”
Founder risk is the only unacceptable risk in venture capital
“And so anyway, I think almost every risk is an acceptable risk. Founder risk is not.”
Sequoia failed on any successful company where it lacks equity
“You can basically just go through the list of companies that have been successful in the last five or 10 years. And if you don't see Sequoia as a major shareholder, it means that we screwed up.”
Elad Gil: SoftBank Has Had the Greatest Impact of All VC Mega Funds
“I think that the sort of mega fund that's mattered the most in terms of impact is probably SoftBank, Simply because at a hundred billion dollars, SoftBank is the equivalent of a hundred general catalysts or 12 Sequoia funds. So just the sheer scale of capital …”
Flint: Sequoia pressured Trulia to make deep cost cuts in 2008
“You know, we're under a lot of pressure at the time to, from Sequoia, to cut deep, deep, deep to get profitable.”
Only Peter Fenton and Jim Goetz achieved multi-billion consumer and enterprise wins
“That's a funny statement, because I think in the modern era, if you go back, call it the last 10 or 15 years of venture capitalists, there are only two that I can think of who have had multi-billion dollar consumer outcomes and multi-billion dollar enterprise …”
Lynn: Optimal venture capital fund size is $300M to $400M
“No, I think it's a 300 to four hundred million dollar fund, and the reason is, A, you know, when I look at the people I really respect and admire, the Sequoias and the Benchmarks, I mean, that's what they've proven out, and I've added emergence to that mix in …”
Qualtrics rejected Series A term sheets $100M-$150M higher in valuation
“We never optimized funding for economics. We had term sheets at a hundred and a hundred and fifty million dollars more than what we went with.”
Helgason: Premier VCs like Sequoia endure extended underperformance without fundraising issues
“A firm like Sequoia, they will, you know, they have to do pretty badly for pretty long before they have a problem raising a new fund, for instance. So, so they're just, I think they're just less worried about the individual deal.”
Kim: Top VCs maximize ownership and squeeze LPs out of Series A
“If there is, at the earliest stages, a company that is High quality with high quality investors coming in. LPs are probably the last in line in terms of getting access to that. So imagine a seed funded company by one of our fund managers, a high quality firm l…”
Consensus VC decisions will decline as conviction investing and LP directs grow
“We're going to see three pretty basic models emerge for how decisions are made, all the way up from LPs down, down to small seed funds. And the three buckets are going to be consensus-based decision-making, and that's every fund that, you know, has pretty much…”
Top VC firms will be forced to adapt to new funding models
“Sequoia, Benchmark, Andreessen Horowitz, they're not going away anytime soon. This isn't like, we're out to beat them and kill them. Not in the same way Airbnb is not going to delete hotels overnight. It's going to change how hotels work. I think that's a bett…”
Soltero: Sequoia wrongly called Hyperic a product in search of a market
“Maybe that comment from Sequoia had really left a mark, this idea that, that they thought that Hyperic was a product in search for a market, which of course hundreds of millions of dollars of years later, or hundreds of millions of dollars later, I'm happy to …”
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.”
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…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Stebbings: Etched Raised $700M at a $21B Valuation
“Speaking of high IP businesses, literally, like, three weeks ago, Etched raised at ten billion. Today, they've announced they've raised seven hundred million at twenty-one billion from Jane Street, Kleiner, Sequoia, Andreessen.”
Stebbings: Richer VCs perform better by focusing purely on upside
“I think that richer investors make better investors, and you're like, Sequoia are focused on upside maximization. How big could this be? They are not fearful of LPs coming back for their next fund. They're not fearful of deployment speed compressing, so, you k…”
O'Driscoll: Sequoia evergreen thesis will prove right over 10-20 years
“Though I think over 10 and 20 years, their analysis will still be correct. If you build enduring companies, even in the public markets, the compounding will happen.”
Green: Sequoia, Benchmark, and Index succeed because they excel at recruiting
“I truly think that's why Sequoia and Benchmark are great and Index are great because they help founders and entrepreneurs recruit amazing talent and people want to work for those funds portfolio companies.”
Swisher: Pat Grady's ability to win Series B deals is unmatched
“And I think Pat Grady's ability to pick Series B's is like pretty unmatched. Pick and win Series Bs. He's very, very good, and I think Sequoia is very good at that.”
Lemkin: Absence of major VCs in TikTok deal signals hidden risks
“There's a reason they're not in that deal. It's free money. Otherwise, right. We're missing something.”
Altman: Mid-sized $700M VC funds face severe structural challenges
“I think it's really challenging to be like a seven hundred million dollar fund. Now I think you're either a really massive, powerful platform like an Andreessen or a GC Or you just have the legacy cachet, like a Sequoia or a Kleiner, or you have to be a boutiq…”
Cahn: Sequoia has invested in defense startups Kela and Stark
“So the other two national champions that I've invested in, one is a company called Kella, which we think is going to be a national champion. It's based in Israel. The thesis is that Israel has the best people in the world for this, and they can help defend the…”
Cahn: Harvey, Open Evidence, Clay, and Juicebox are reaching $100M ARR rapidly
“Companies that are on that trajectory or have crossed that trajectory are companies like Harvey and Open Evidence and I think, and Clay and Juicebox.”
Brian Halligan: Sequoia's strategy of holding post-IPO stock will succeed long-term
“And I think Skoy is really smart. I suspect HubSpot was one of the reasons why they said, Let's hold these companies after they go public. It's back in some cases, but I think it's going to work over the long haul.”
Kanji: VC Employees Optimize for Fast Markups Over Real Returns
“If you're the general employee, you optimize for getting to the next career ladder, and how do you show that you can get to the next career ladder? You do a deal, and then General Catalyst, or Index, or Kleiner, or Sequoia, or Andreessen, I mean, there are so …”