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 14 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
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.”
Gupta: Sequoia allows founders to choose which partner joins their board
“When entrepreneurs ask somebody at Sequoia, hey, if I work with Sequoia, who will my board member be? And the answer is always the same, which is whoever you want. You get to choose.”
Gupta: A Sequoia partner shared their 360 feedback with the entire partnership
“At Sequoia, one of our partners late last year shared their three 60 feedback with all of us at a partner meeting and then asked, can you help me get better on these?”
Gupta: Sequoia evaluates founders on trajectory (slope) rather than baseline (intercept)
“I think that when we talk about the people we like to invest in at Sequoia, we talk about investing in slope rather than intercept.”
Gupta: Any team evaluation short of 'enthusiastic rehire' is a no
“I think the question you've got to ask if you're building or evaluating your team is, would you enthusiastically rehire this person if given the chance, knowing everything you know? And I think the word enthusiastically is so important here because it removes …”
Gupta: Stripe maintains its talent bar by enduring unfilled open roles
“I think that Stripe is absolutely inspirational on this topic. And I personally, I think they've done it the right way, which I think they are willing to deal with the pain of not filling a spot because they respect that spot so much that they're only going to…”
Gupta: Sequoia backed Stripe founders before they wrote any code
“At the time, Patrick and John at Stripe, when all they had was an idea and not a single line of code, because they were remarkable and they were daring.”
Gupta: Instacart lost $20 on every order during its early operations
“When we were losing 20 dollars on every order at Instacart, which we were at the beginning”
Gupta: Work provides more immediate feedback than parenting, distorting our priorities
“There's always a reason that you should stay late and work on something, because the impact that you'll make at work will be more visible for that next hour than the impact you'll make at home by the things you do with your kids, and it's more visible and tang…”
Gupta: VCs must remember companies exist for people's life's work
“Investors would be best served to remember that Companies do not exist for their pleasure. Companies exist for people to do their life's work. And when you do decide it's not for you, that it's not about proving that you're right.”
Gupta: Carl Eschenbach scaled VMware's revenue from $40 million to $6 billion
“Carl talk to you, who's scaled VMware from forty million in revenue to six billion.”
Gupta: Instacart's execution stalled when attempting six priorities in one quarter
“And so I remember this time at Instacart where we had six company priorities in a quarter and a month into the quarter or halfway into the quarter, we weren't moving nearly as fast as we wanted on any of them.”