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 18 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
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.”
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.”
PayPal Burned Over $10M Monthly With Seven Months Runway in 2000
“We raised this hundred million dollar round that I referenced in March, and then by June, we had seven months of runway left. We were burning over ten million a month, and Mike Maritz actually was the one who really rang the alarm bells for us and got us to fo…”
Botha: A 'Failure of Imagination' on Missed Deals Haunts VCs Most
“The thing I find most often, by the way, Harry, is failure of imagination on my part that has been the biggest source of my failures. And it's less the investments I led that didn't work out, but the ones that I said no to that did. Those are the ones that wil…”
Botha: Startups Face Only One to Three Truly Critical Decisions Yearly
“There are many decisions every day that a company gets to make that are somewhat tactical in nature, and often they're reversible decisions, so they don't matter as much in the sense that it's better to try something, and if it doesn't work a couple weeks late…”
Botha: Investors Taking Public Credit for Startup Success Is Misplaced
“I find it misplaced when investors crow about the success of a company as though they were the ones who were in the trenches every day. I think investors can have a big influence sometimes for the better in the outcome of a company. But there's a reason we hav…”
PayPal Raised $100M at $500M Valuation Days Before the 2000 Crash
“The company had raised a hundred million at 500 pre at the height of the bubble. We literally closed the financing right at the beginning of April, 2000, I think, 1516 days before the Nasdaq started to slide.”
Sequoia Compressed Deal Decision Time by Over a Week in 2020
“And over the last 12 months, We've compressed our average time by more than a week from initial meeting to final investment decision, and I think it's partly a reaction to the environment where investments are happening very quickly, and people need to respond…”
Botha Warns Shallow Venture Diligence Will Inevitably Produce Startup Casualties
“We've seen a couple of instances where references are shallow or diligence is shallow, and so I do think there will inevitably be some casualties along the way.”
Sequoia Recruits Team Members to Inherit the Partnership, Not Serve Seniors
“And then similarly today, when I recruit team members to join us, they're not coming to work for me. They're coming to work with me, and they have an opportunity in turn to inherit the partnership, and we all have this accountability to leave the partnership i…”
Sequoia Pioneered the VC Scout Program Over a Decade Ago
“And so more than a decade ago, we came up with this idea of scouts as a way of getting raw startups to Connected with contemporary founders who could help them get off the ground in a way that no venture capitalist could.”
Botha: Board Members Should Act as Shock Absorbers, Not Amplifiers
“Board members are also meant to be shock absorbers, not amplifiers. So when the team is in the doldrums and a little bit depressed, or they've missed the product deadline, or they've had a setback, be there to rally them. And when things are going well, challe…”
Sequoia Led Unity's Series A and Persuaded Them to Adopt Freemium
“One of the first decisions was to go change the business model of the company because the company had bootstrapped until that we were the Series A investor in the company in They never had outside capital, they didn't have a board, and so they always charged f…”
Mike Moritz Recruited Botha to Sequoia Despite Lacking a CS Degree
“Meg Whitman gave me an offer to remain a CFO of the company, and Mike Moritz gave me a call and asked whether I'd interviewed Sequoia, which is kind of strange because they were looking for a computer science major who'd done product management at an enterpris…”
Don Valentine Named Sequoia After the Longest-Lived Tree to Build an Institution
“Don didn't. And it was a very deliberate decision. And it was no accident that he chose the name Sequoia. And for those listeners that aren't familiar with the tree, the Sequoia tree is native to California, and it's the longest lived tree, maybe in the world,…”
Sequoia Trains New Partners by Having Them Shadow Senior Board Members
“A lot of what we do at Sequoia when you join is you get to shadow and several different partners on some of their boards, which gives you exposure to their unique styles, but also gives exposure to a variety of industries.”
Mike Vernal Brought Facebook's 'Check-Ins' Practice to Sequoia Capital
“Our get-togethers as an investor team, we start off with something called check-ins, which is something that Mike Vernal brought to us. It was something that the team had done at Facebook”
Sequoia Deliberately Selects Non-Profits and Endowments as Its LPs
“And we apply it at Sequoia too, because we pick our LPs as being non-profits, endowments, and foundations, and it gives real meaning to our work to know that the profits we help generate go to these great causes that help with medical research, education, pove…”