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 15 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
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: 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: 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: 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: Sequoia issued the only term sheet for HubSpot's 2011 Series D
“So for example, HubSpot back in the day, we led the series D in 2011. We would later find out that we were the only term sheet. Nobody else wanted to invest.”
Grady: Sequoia looked at and passed on Figma's Series B
“And I think about the series B in Figma, which is a round that we looked at and passed on.”
Grady: Sequoia holds pricing power at Seed and Series A stages
“And so most founders at the very early stages are willing to, you know, if you think of us as a premium product, you pay something different for a premium product than you pay for a normal product, and they pay for our premium product in the form of their equi…”
Sequoia historically made the mistake of being too greedy on ownership
“I think one of the mistakes we made historically was to be a little bit too greedy, quite frankly, on ownership.”
Sequoia replaced individual partner names with 'Team Sequoia' in its CRM
“In one fell swoop, we actually changed all of the names in the database from individuals to the singular name Team Sequoia, and the point is that every prospect we're talking with, every company with whom we're in business today, they don't belong to an indivi…”
Qualtrics was Sequoia's most expensive software deal at the time
“That was a scary investment for us because at the time it was the most expensive price we had ever paid for a software company.”
Grady: Sequoia keeps senior partners actively investing rather than managing
“One of the things that we try to do that we try to distinguish ourselves on is to not have the more experienced people check out and get into administrative management roles.”
Three-quarters of Sequoia's 2018-2019 investments were Seed or Series A
“Three quarters of the investments that we've made in the last 12 months were seeds or series A's”
Sequoia spent over two years courting Zoom founder Eric Yuan
“We spent more than two years getting to know Eric Yuan at Zoom before we finally had a chance to get into business with him.”