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 36 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 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
Doug Leone: High-velocity VCs cannot provide genuine company-building support
“You cannot do what we do if you're investing in five deals a week. There's no way to do that.”
Leone: Fast-paced funds doing five deals a week cannot build companies
“Product market fit is yours. We do everything else. You cannot do what we do if you're investing in five deals a week. There's no way to do that.”
Leone: Broad index-style investing in late-stage growth leads to losses
“As you move down the funnel, Venture, growth, pre-IPO. The checks get larger. The valuations get a lot higher. And the further down you come, the better you have to get a picking them. And if you go broad there, you're gonna get stung.”
Leone: Price-insensitive VC strategies fail when bull markets end
“But if your attitude is invest, invest, invest, price don't matter, that is going to serve you well in a momentum driven economy, and may serve you well for one fund cycle, maybe two fund cycles, as long as the momentum increases. You've got a public market ad…”
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.”
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: 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: 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: Seed investing is simply backing smart people in interesting areas
“What is seed investing is a smart person in a generally interesting area. That's it. There's no need to overthink it because they're going to zig and zag in ways that you can't predict.”
Leone: Broad late-stage venture investing will cause severe investor losses
“As you move down the funnel, venture, growth, pre-IPO, the checks get larger. The valuations get a lot higher. And the further down you come, the better you have to get up picking them. And if you go broad there, you're going to get stung.”
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.”
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: 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…”
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: Seed investing is just backing smart people without overthinking
“At the end of the day, what is seed investing? Is a smart person in a generally interesting area. That's it. There's no need to overthink it, because they're gonna zig and zag in ways that you can't predict.”
Doug Leone: Sequoia stress-tests portfolios against hypothetical 30% market crashes
“One of the exercises I've asked, we run more than once at Sequoia. Let's take a fund two cycles ago where the companies are just coming up. How would we feel about those investments if the market just crashed by 30%? Let's figure out how many of those were mom…”
Leone: Candidates describing their siblings reveal the opposite of their own traits
“In a law of diversity, two siblings are less likely to be alike than two strangers. And so how they describe their sibling is usually the opposite on how they describe themselves.”
Leone: Sequoia offboards non-performers with forward vesting and severance
“And if you don't perform at Sequoia, we will give you some time. We will figure out a way to help you. But at the end, the very first person that knows they're not performing is the individual himself or herself. And then when we part ways with people, it's us…”
Leone: Sequoia partners frequently ask to reduce their own compensation
“I've been in more meetings in my 30 years at Sequoia in people asking for less compensation rather than more, so we can spread it around to other people.”
Leone: Zoom took Sequoia's investment specifically to get partner Carl Eschenbach
“So why were we invested in Zoom? I can tell you that Eric Wan didn't need money, but he needed a Carl Leschenbach.”
Leone: Sequoia had to aggressively intervene in every entity at least once
“In every line of business, whether it's China, India, Southeast Asia, our hedge fund, a multi-family office called Heritage, we've had to go in and effect change as Once. So it wasn't that we got it so perfect from the beginning. So we had to go in aggressivel…”
Doug Leone: Financial valuation models aren't worth their paper beyond two years
“Get away from all the models. The models aren't worth their paper. They're written in past a year or two, and yes, you may want to have a model just to do some thought checking, a thought experiment, but the only question that to me matters is, what can this c…”
Doug Leone supported Sequoia's Airbnb investment despite never staying in one
“Now I've never stayed on Airbnb, but I supported the investment, but people of your generation, the Gen Z generation, you know, they go Airbnb first.”
Leone: Refuses 30-minute interviews because candidates need 30 minutes to relax
“It takes about 30 minutes with someone to relax, which is why I refuse to interview someone for 30 minutes.”
Leone: Strict organizational control is a management trait, not leadership
“But I knew that those traits were not conducive To being a leader. Those are great traits for being a manager.”
Leone: Sequoia US calls associates 'partners' and avoids junior titles
“We don't use the word junior. We even call, in the U.S., associates. We even call them partners.”
Leone: Design compensation assuming everyone's salary is posted publicly
“Assume that everybody's comp is posted someplace in the office, and everybody has to feel good about it.”
Leone: Most Sequoia investors grew up in modest means
“Most of the investors at Sequoia grew up in very modest means.”
Leone: All 12 optical networking companies on his 2000 board failed
“And one day I woke up in 2000, I was on 12 boards, and there wasn't a winner there.”
Leone: Recovering from multiple bad investments is harder than a first failure
“I don't think the first bad investments is as dangerous and as fruitful a lesson as waking up one day, and you're on six boards, and you've got four bad investments, because that takes a whole bunch of time. I think the first bad investments, it's a lot easier…”
Leone: Sequoia once stripped portfolio company posters to force humility
“We have gone as far as taking all the posters from our companies away from conference room once upon a time and say, let's act like we've done nothing.”
Sequoia stress-tests portfolio funds against a hypothetical 30% market crash
“One of the exercises I've asked, we run more than once at Sequoia. Let's take a fund two cycles ago where the companies are just coming up. How would we feel about those investments? If the market just crashed by 30%, let's figure out how many of those were mo…”
Don Valentine Hired Doug Leone for Customer-In Business Perspective
“And I think what Don noticed that he had someone who was a missile, back then I'd say an unguided type of missile, but someone who had the courage to The humor, and from his point of view, who looked at business from the customer in, not from the technology ou…”
Doug Leone cites high-school-rooted insecurity as his biggest character weakness
“My weakness, I am not proud to say is insecurity, wanting to look smarter or better than I am. It goes back to the abuse I received. In my high school days, I still want to show those son of a guns what I've become, and so on.”