Roelof Botha
Partner, Sequoia Capital. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
Roelof Botha is a partner at Sequoia, where he has led investments in YouTube, Instagram, Eventbrite, Square, and MongoDB. Prior to venture capital, he served as the CFO of PayPal.
2shows
2appearances
41statements
12resolved
7supported
2contradicted
58%fully supported
206said about them ↓ Everything Roelof Botha said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Botha: Broadly investing in venture capital is 'return-free risk'
“So in my opinion, investing in venture is a return free risk.”
Botha: Only ~20 companies per decade reach real $1B+ exits
“If you look at every single decade, there are only about 20 companies that end up Getting exit values north of a billion dollars. Actual IPOs or M&As north of a billion. Not the paper write-ups. Only 20 companies.”
LPs wrongly assume a VC firm's single-hit success is repeatable
“You get a firm that has one success in their fund, And then they attract more capital because people think it's repeatable, and it's not.”
Fund managers will continue hiding behind the J-curve to excuse poor returns
“I think people will still hide behind the J curve effect. And they'll say, yeah, my fund is only at 1.5 X right now, but it's only four years in and you know, the winners are going to emerge. And so I think this hope springs eternal dynamic and such a long tim…”
Botha: Sequoia requires unanimous consensus among partners for investment decisions
“So when we make investment decisions at Sequoia, it's a consensus decision.”
Botha: Sequoia-backed companies account for over 30% of NASDAQ value
“The companies in which we were private investors when they were little companies today account for over 30% of the total value of the Nasdaq.”
Sequoia Capital Fund gained $6.7B by holding post-IPO stock
“Now, to give you a sense, since we launched this three and a half years ago, we've accumulated another 6.7 billion in gains by doing nothing except being patient.”
Success in one domain doesn't give VCs the right to compete elsewhere
“We have no MD PhDs on our team at Sequoia, and I think, you know, it's very dangerous when people think that your success in one domain just naturally makes you gives you the right to compete in other domains.”
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.”
Botha: Sequoia employs as many developers as investors
“We have about as many developers at Sequoia as we have investors and they're building products for us so that we are much more effective and productive than we might've been.”
Botha: Sequoia uses AI to summarize business plans and analyze competitors
“If we get business plan submissions, we have an AI system that'll summarize it for me, so I get a very quick read on the company, a quick summarization of the quality of the Team and a very quick analysis of the competitive dynamics and the other companies I s…”
Botha: Chinese startup creation fell from 51,000 in 2018 to 1,200 in 2023
“Some stat I got recently, in 2018, there were 51,000 companies started in China. In 2023, it was 1200.”
Botha: Sequoia is structured as a private partnership in perpetuity
“No, actually we've structured ourselves To be a private partnership in perpetuity to the extent possible under California law.”
Sequoia partners do not pay for equity or charge their successors
“We didn't have to pay to get the partnership from the previous generation and nor will we charge the next generation.”
Botha: Every investment mistake I've made stemmed from a failure of imagination
“When I've thought about my mistakes as an investor, by the way, every single time it comes down to a failure of imagination that I didn't think big enough, I didn't think about how this company could progress from where they were.”
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…”
Sam Altman and Jason Calacanis sourced Stripe and Uber for Sequoia
“You helped us with the investment in Uber. Sam Altman was in that group as well. He helped with an investment in a little company called Stripe.”
Botha: Sequoia's initial Scout program fund is 26x
“So at this point, that, that fund is a 26 X fund at this point.”
Botha: Sequoia's Venture 12 and 13 funds returned over 20x
“The highest multiple in history is I think Venture 12, which has Airbnb, Dropbox, Natera, AdMob, and a couple of other companies. And then Venture 13, which is the fund right after that, has Stripe and Square, now called Block, MongoDB, and a bunch of other co…”
The other half of the tape: Roelof Botha's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 190 times in 61 episodes across the shows. 16 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 76Jason Calacanis 22Kevin Hartz 13David Sacks 12Keith Rabois 10David Cahn 10Phil Libin 6Jeff Wang 6
Statements about Roelof Botha, by other people (16)
O'Driscoll: Sequoia's initial leadership transition to Botha was unsuccessful
“The transition, having made one transition to Roloff and having had to make another transition abruptly means the first transition wasn't that successful.”
Hartz: VCs should offer calm support in crises, tough love during success
“Tough love is needed when it's doing extraordinarily well. Like, when things are going terribly wrong, And there are the, you know, butterflies, and stomach, you know, is, like, seized up, and teammates are quitting, and somebody's hacked the site, or whatever…”
Frankel passed on Remitly after Sequoia's Roelof Botha raised diligence concerns
“Beam at Mobile, Matt Oppenheim comes to mind. I loved what he was doing, and then I got into diligence, and I spoke to Rulof Buerta, who was in Zoom, and he helped talk me out of it, just talking about how difficult, you know, foreign kind of compensation was,…”
Hartz: Eventbrite took Sequoia's Series A despite the lowest valuation
“In the case of Eventbrite, our Series A was actually the lowest price term sheet, but having that trust and knowing his brainpower and prowess in building companies, it became a very easy choice for us”
Ittycheria: Roelof Botha listens instead of dominating board conversations
“I found in many other companies, the largest investor always feels like they have the bully pulpit. They talk the most and they dominate the board conversations. Roloff was very different. He spoke very little. He listened very hard. And when he spoke, he had …”
Maguire names Sequoia's top deal pickers by sector
“Like if it's a SAS company, Pat Grady, if it's, you have to read someone, you only get like 10 minutes to read the person, then it's Doug Leone. If it's a, like a biotech company, it's definitely Ruloff. If it's an operationally heavy company, it's Alfred. If …”
Rabois: Khosla and Botha warned me 11 direct reports was excessive
“I used to get yelled at. I went pretty flat at square when I was running hot at like 11 and like Vinod and Roloff gave me feedback that that was too much.”
Rabois: Board members should probe founders with questions, not prescribe answers
“As a board member, one of the best ways is to ask things in terms of questions, not in terms of answers. So you probe by questions, because then you're never leading. You may be leading a little bit, but you're never prescribing, and it's a very big difference…”
Sequoia partners recorded 20 Loom videos to win Loom's Series B
“He sent an email that had 20 Sequoia partners and team members, including Rulof, Doug Leone, Michael Morwitz, who all recorded a Loom talking about why they were so excited to join Loom on our journey.”
Calacanis Chooses VC Partners Over Firms, Recommends Roelof Botha
“Listen, you know, I like partners, not firms, so I would step back, and I would, you know, do it that way, and then I would also look at who's good at media, right? So I would look at who has backed media companies, who wants to work with media companies, who …”
Calacanis was Thumbtack's second investor before bringing Sequoia to the deal
“I was the second investor in Thumbtack after Marco's parents, and then roll off, I brought him The A round, I brought him the B round, I brought him the C round, and Roloff eventually and Sequoia did the B round.”
Rajaram: PayPal raised prices five times in three years early on
“And he told us that PayPal back in the day, raised prices five times. In three years, because there's such stickiness. They knew their customers really couldn't do anything.”
Wang: Roelof Botha memorizes every Sequoia employee's newborn child's name
“And then at events like our holiday party where he makes a speech every year, he makes it a point to remember every single person within all of Sequoia who had a baby that year and the name of their child. He memorizes it, no cards.”
Hulme: Great board members act as shock absorbers for founders
“Great board members are like shock absorbers. They kind of reduce the highs and they will cushion the blows and let founders know the negatives aren't as bad.”
Roelof Botha: Deciding which first meetings to take is VC's hardest part
“Roloff mentioned this to me. I remember talking to him a year after he joined Sequoia. It was probably like 2004 and we had coffee and I said, what's the hardest part of the job? And he said, deciding which first meetings to take.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 155
All-In 35
2026 7 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- OpenAI Buys TBPN & Their Management Team Reboot | Mercor Hack & Why Now is the Time for Cyber · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Gokul Rajaram: How to Analyse for Durability and Defensibility in a World of AI · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Open-Source | Token Maxing, AI Hangovers & The Coming ROI Reckoning · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- "Cursor is Dead" is Total BS: Here is Why | Miles Clements · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Klarna CEO: SaaS is Dead: Why Systems of Record Will Die in an Agentic World · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2026, scene by scene →
2025 20 mentions in 11 episodes 2 per episode
- Every Investor Needs To Understand This Concept - David Friedberg
- Sequoia Partner, David Cahn on Who Wins in AI, Defence & The New $0–$100M Playbook · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- AI Psychosis, America's Broken Social Fabric, Trump Takes Over DC Police, Is VC Broken?
- Biggest LBO Ever, SPAC 2.0, Open Source AI Models, State AI Regulation Frenzy
- 20VC Exclusive: Mercury Founder Launches First $26M Fund with Immad Akhund · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Michael Burry Shorts NVIDIA and Palantir & Has Defensibility Died in a World of AI? · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Deel CEO, Alex Bouaziz on Raising $300M+ at a $17BN Valuation · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- OpenAI's GPT-5 Flop, AI's Unlimited Market, China's Big Advantage, Rise in Socialism, Housing Crisis
- 3 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 71 mentions in 15 episodes 5 per episode
- Jeff Wang: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta|E1212 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Kevin Hartz: "How I Lost Airbnb at Seed Because of an Exploding Term Sheet" | E1180 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- David Cahn: Why Servers, Steel and Power Are the Pillars Powering the Future of AI | E1186 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Keith Rabois on Rejoining Khosla Ventures | E1102 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Trump's Cabinet, Google's Quantum Chip, Apple's Flop, TikTok, State of VC
- Shaun Maguire: Why Iran is the World's Greatest Evil & Trump is the Only Hope for Peace | E1189 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Break up Google, Starbucks CEO out, Kamala’s price controls, Boeing disaster, Kursk offensive
- Pat Grady: Sequoia Partner on Investing Lessons from Doug Leone, Roelof Botha and Alfred Lin | E1174 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 7 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 8 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- E132: SEC goes after crypto giants, Sequoia splits, LIV/PGA, Messi's deal + LIVE Q&A!
- Christian Lanng: "How Being a Founder Almost Killed Me" | E1065 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Miles Grimshaw: The 5 Pillars of Venture Capital & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strategy | E1061 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- E141: State of Series A's, VC dry powder, IPO window opens + more with Bill Gurley & Brad Gerstner
- Marcelo Claure & Shu Nyatta: LATAM's New $500M Growth Fund; Investing Billions at SoftBank | E1042 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 28 mentions in 9 episodes 3 per episode
- E68: Trudeau invokes emergency powers, Bitcoin vs. government, Tiger Global's new strategy and more
- 20VC: 23andMe's Anne Wojcicki on How To Approach Trust in Business and Personal Relationships, Leadership Lessons from Sheryl Sandberg and Reflections on How The Best Founders Manage Their Boards
- 20VC Exclusive: Sequoia's Luciana Lixandru Unveils Sequoia's New 8 Week Accelerator, Arc | Biggest Takeaways from Working with Doug Leone and Roelof Botha | The Journey From a Small Town In Romania to Partner @ Sequoia
- E66: $FB's big drop, Rogan/Spotify mess, Xi/Putin meetup & supply chain issues with Ryan Petersen
- Kyle Harrison: Why 75% of Active Investors Will Disappear in the Next Few Years | 20VC #940 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Semil Shah: Lessons Learned Scaling from a $1M to a $50M Fund | 20VC #951 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Cathie Wood: Elon & Twitter; Why Facebook is a Value Stock Now; ARK's Performance | 20VC #949 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- E102: Elon closes Twitter deal, $META uncertainty, Zuck's historic bet, big tech decline & more
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2022 →
2021 11 mentions in 5 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Evernote & mmhmm Founder Phil Libin on Why We are Beginning a Multi-Trillion Dollar Restructuring of the World, Why Shortcuts are the Biggest Mistakes Startups Make & The Future of Video and The Unbundling of Zoom
- E60: The 2021 Bestie Awards PLUS Jack Dorsey starts the Web3 Wars
- E47: Facebook's week from hell, Ellen Pao on sexism in Elizabeth Holmes coverage, Newsom wins & more
- 20VC: Sequoia's Doug Leone on What Has Been Instrumental To Scaling Sequoia Over Generations, How Sequoia Think About International Expansion and What They Learned From China and India & Why When You Lose Pre-Seed You Become Private Equity
- 20VC: Greylock's David Sze on His Biggest Lessons Working with Mark Zuckerberg and Reid Hoffman, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, How To Think Through Price Discipline Today and How Truly Strong Venture Partnerships Function
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 32 mentions in 5 episodes 6 per episode
- 20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
- 20VC: MongoDB CEO, Dev Ittycheria on Why Sometimes You Have To Be Inefficient To Be Effective, The 2 Different Types of Decisions and How Great Leaders Respond To Each & Why Value To Overhead Ratio Is The Metric To Use When Selecting Investors
- 20VC: SPACs. What Are They? Why Now? How Do They Change The Venture Landscape? Are They Better Than IPOs & Direct Listings? How Should Founders Think About Them? Kevin Hartz & Troy Steckenrider @ A*
- 20VC: Intercom Founder, Eoghan McCabe on How To Deal with the Weight of Expectation, Having Your Identity Tied To Your Company, How To Be Your Authentic Self Even with Stakeholders & Why There Are No Rules
- 20VC: Loom Founder Joe Thomas on Whether To Take Multi-Stage Money at Seed, How Early Stage Founders Should Select Their VC, How Sequoia Won The Loom Deal & The 3 Rules To Operate Remote Teams Successfully
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2019 3 mentions in 1 episode
2017 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
- 20VC: Eventbrite Founder, Julia Hartz on The Lessons Learned Scaling Eventbrite to Unicorn Valuation & $3Bn in Gross Ticket Sales
- 20VC: Jason Calacanis on The 4 Questions Investors Must Ask Founders, Whether YC Have Scaled Their Process Successfully & Why Early Founder Liquidity Is Good Not Bad
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
2016 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2015 6 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Roelof's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ALL-INLEDGER | Partner, Sequoia Capital | 1 | 23 | 50% 4/8 | full record on All-In → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Partner, Sequoia | 1 | 18 | 75% 3/4 | full record on 20VC → |